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This entire focus on FB and Twitter ads is completely ridiculous. They are open platforms that you can use in whatever way doesn't conflict with their ToS. You
by raiyu 9y ago
This entire focus on FB and Twitter ads is completely ridiculous. They are open platforms that you can use in whatever way doesn't conflict with their ToS. You can spread false information, or information that is dressed up or disguised. And politicians have been buying up negative ads on each other for quite some time which could be considered just about as harmful as the ads on twitter and FB, if not more so.
This isn't the story.
The story here is Jack's lack of transparency and trying to make something that his company did in a negative light, deliberately, and knowingly, and covering that up.
- adamnemecek 9y agoIt's fundamentally different from your example. Negative ads that politicians buy on each other are run of the mill in the US, however Russian ads are straight up propaganda.
- GVIrish 9y agoExcept there's this little problem of federal election law that prohibits foreign nationals from buying political ads. If Twitter, Facebook, or Google knowingly accepted political ad buys from the media propaganda arm of the Russian government, that could lead to legal trouble. One can make the argument that it doesn't matter who buys a political ad but that is not the current legal posture in the United States. The saving grace for the SV companies involved in this scandal may be that the ad buys were from the US arm of RT so would not have technically run afoul of any laws. But judging from how shady and evasive Facebook and Twitter have been about the whole issue, it seems likely that they knew there was something wrong with these ad buys.