15 ms·
"From now on, every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads will need to be authorized. To get authorized, advertisers will need to confirm their ide
by corrigible 8y ago
"From now on, every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads will need to
be authorized. To get authorized, advertisers will need to confirm their identity
and location. Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running
political or issue ads. We will also label them and advertisers will have to show
you who paid for them. We’re starting this in the U.S. and expanding to the rest of
the world in the coming months."
Interesting!
- nugi 8y agoAnother gatekeeper in the political arena. Just what we don't need. This is not a good outcome.
- atwebb 8y agoIt could keep out some honest actors but transparency in funding is important.
- gt_ 8y agoThe sane and obvious solution is to cap campaign spending. Anything else, willful or not, is either corruption or mere oligarchy.
- smsm42 8y agoNo it is not. You don't have the right to invade privacy of groups of people no more than I have the right to invade your privacy and inspect your bank accounts. Maybe you're Russian troll? Maybe you are paid by Putin? Would like to make your bank accounts public for everybody to ensure it is not the case? Probably not. Then why should other people who make political statements?
- corrigible 8y agoThis is something that should have been a day-1 feature, IMHO
- gdulli 8y agoWe've now seen what happens without gatekeepers and there's no way we can call that "better."
- cheez 8y agoWhat has happened? I'm not USian so I didn't follow the calamity that has befallen America.
- freehunter 8y agoYou're literally commenting on an article about it.
- cheez 8y agoI have to be honest, I read the GP as a political statement. Maybe conflated with the GGP.
- freehunter 8y agoI did too, but I tried to take the most charitable interpretation. I've had enough conversations with dang about engaging with political trolls recently so I'm trying this new thing where I'm being nice to people. It's harder than you might think. I don't know if HN has taken any steps to combat the right-wing/Russian propaganda campaign that's impacting most US social websites, but it'd be naive to think the site hasn't been targeted.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bsbechtel 8y agoThe electoral college is another gatekeeper, and many advocating for Facebook's better political advertising controls advocated for abolishment of the electoral college.
- 8y ago
- chasing 8y agoThere are existing prohibitions to how foreigners may participate in US elections. This seems to make it easier for Facebook to make sure it's following those laws. https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/
- rhizome 8y agoMaybe displaying ads should require a license.
- frockington 8y agoIf we cant even zone districts without controversy I highly doubt we'll ever be able to distribute licenses in an effective manner
- rhizome 8y agoWhat does "zone districts" mean?
- Delmania 8y agoIf anything, we need more gatekeepers like this that are shedding light on the dark money used for political advertising.
- jonknee 8y agoWhatever Facebook decides to do they are still a gatekeeper...
- giarc 8y agoWas the problem political ads though? I think a lot of the content shared across Facebook was meme-like images that received shares and likes organically after an initial push by bots and Russian facebook users?
- CodeCube 8y ago"initial push" being the operative term ... posts can be shared to a broad audience by giving fb money, which they did.
- giarc 8y agoSo boosting the post, but that wouldn't count as a political ad. I'd like to see what Facebook would count as a "political ad". The top image here (http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/11/house-democrats-release-russian-troll-facebook-election-ads.html http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/11/house-democrats-release-r...) is one of these Russia ads. However, I wouldn't call that a political ad, just a terrible meme that happens to be about Clinton and the election.
- jaawn 8y agoObviously we don't know yet, but I would be absolutely shocked if they don't basically flag everything about well-known politicians as "political", and paying to boost something like that should fall under the new restrictions. It would be trivial for most large tech companies to make an automatic "political post" classifier at this point. The post "boosting" use case is a pretty easy target too because blocking someone from paying to boost something is fairly low-risk.
- CodeCube 8y agoYou'd be surprised at how influential memes are these days ... as ridiculous as it is to consider, they are absolutely political speech, and can be used as propaganda.
- gt_ 8y agoIs this a serious question? Maybe ask why America is the only democratic nation with uncapped campaign spending.
- jsgo 8y agoI actually feel for anyone that buys ad space for politics on Facebook as they obviously don't handle it particularly well. Tons of times in 2016 I saw ads for where someone was running for in-state legislature of another state entirely (one I had never even been to or driven through) being rendered for me. What value is an impression if the receiver couldn't vote for you if they wanted? I did actually comment on a couple of them saying good luck from a guy out of state (and that the ad showed up in my state, hoping they can recoup some of their advertising costs).
- paulie_a 8y ago> I actually feel for anyone that buys ad space for politics on Facebook as they obviously don't handle it particularly well. Why,? The world would be a better place with less pointless political advertising
- reaperducer 8y ago>Why,? The world would be a better place with less pointless political advertising Who gets to define "pointless?"
- paulie_a 8y agoEvery once and a while society can and does use common sense, it's not a Boolean flag
- smsm42 8y agoObviously, political advertisement you disagree with is "pointless" and the world would be a better place without it. </sarc> More specifically, the filtering would be informed by the biases and prejudices of those who control the gates. As it always is.
- jsgo 8y agobecause there are quite a few people at the local levels nationally (and internationally as well I imagine) that run for various positions that don't have the financial backing of a Koch or similar that deserve an opportunity to have the same footing as someone as financially backed. If we want to get special interests out of everything like we claim, then we need to have the platforms for people to get themselves out there to be both effective and cheap enough to do so.
- nfoz 8y agoThis crafty term "political or issue ads". Is that a legal / enforceable term, or is this something that Facebook gets to decide? Whatever it is, we're going to see that "ads which influence the public for political aims" are going to bleed juuuust on the other edge of that definition. Also interesting that Facebook's response to this issue is to collect more data -- this time about "advertisers with specific political agendas", which seems like an interesting database to mine (although maybe not that hard to collect, idk).
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> Is that a legal / enforceable term, or is this something that Facebook gets to decide? In this context, Facebook decides. Broadly, the FEC has jurisdiction over defining and regulating "electioneering communications" [1]. [1] https://transition.fec.gov/pages/brochures/spec_notice_brochure.pdf https://transition.fec.gov/pages/brochures/spec_notice_broch...
- gt_ 8y agoNevermind that Facebook is precisely an “advertiser with specific political agendas”
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y agoEdit: I mistook this from being a government action, not a private company action. I totally agree a private company is allowed to restrict things in this way. >Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads. How does this interact with the First Amendment? If I'm paying for a local TV company to run an add, wouldn't restricting my ability be in violation? What if I buy the local TV company and choose which ads are ran? Edit: What about non-political or non-issue ads that still have a political component? For example, if I was a billionaire wanting to cause some certain political divides, I could definitely create ads that still cause great controversy. For example, spend some money developing a bullet proof school outfit, and then advertise it heavily. It is a bunch of extra work and expenditure I wouldn't do if I could just run gun control ads, but if those were banned are you going to ban any advertisements related to any merchandise that is related to political issues?
- theresistor 8y agoThe First Amendment is about government restriction of speech.
- neuromantik8086 8y ago> How does this interact with the First Amendment? It doesn't interact with the First Amendment at all. Private corporations can make their own rules about what speech they will and will not allow. The First Amendment only deals with the government's ability to censor individuals, not a private entity's policies regarding allowable communications. Most Americans don't seem to understand this.
- vageli 8y agoInterestingly, this was not always the case in the United States.[0] [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
- sarah180 8y agoIt's noteworthy that this rule existed for broadcast networks, under the rationale that they were entrusted users of a scarce shared/public resource (slices of the radio spectrum). Cable distribution of television doesn't involve a public resource and was treated differently.
- quantumwoke 8y agoSome more interesting tidbits from the testimony: "For even greater political ads transparency, we have also built a tool that lets anyone see all of the ads a page is running [and are] creating a searchable archive of past political ads." "In order to require verification for all of these pages and advertisers, we will hire thousands of more people." Sounds like Facebook has a lot more work to do.
- wiremine 8y agoI don't see (yet?) how this directly solves the problem. Let's say I'm a foreign intelligence agency and want to influence people through ads. Feels like I just need to set up a shell corporation based in the states. Once I'm authorized, I can load the creative offshore.
- s2g 8y ago> I don't see (yet?) how this directly solves the problem. It solves the problem of Facebook getting bad PR. I'd be shocked if Zuck gives 2 shits about any of this, beyond thinking about how he can utilize facebook to get himself elected.
- dillondoyle 8y agoLol welcome to post Citizen's United. Anyone with an LLC can spend unlimited money on an election legally. No need to hide foreign money, just spend $50 and make a new corp based in the US.
- jimmytucson 8y agoThere are so many other ways to "influence" people's opinions by distorting what they see on their news feed, front page Google results, etc. For instance (from Wikipedia): > In April 2016, Correct the Record announced that it would be spending $1 million to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about Clinton.[1][4] The organization's president, Brad Woodhouse, said they had "about a dozen people engaged in [producing] nothing but positive content on Hillary Clinton" and had a team distributing information "particularly of interest to women".
- superioritycplx 8y agoThen there's ShareBlue.
- gaius 8y agoObama’s team bragged that Facebook was actively helping them in 2012. So we can assume that political ads that fit the narrative will be rubber-stamped.
- moduspol 8y ago> There are so many other ways to "influence" people's opinions But those ways didn't help Donald Trump get elected.
- rock_hard 8y agoHow do you know that?
- methodover 8y ago> There are so many other ways to "influence" people's opinions by distorting what they see on their news feed, front page Google results, etc. ... and Hacker News, Reddit, Twitter, etc. When I'm discussing politics with friends on Facebook, at least I know I'm talking to real people whom I've met in person. This isn't true with most other platforms. (Except some followers on Twitter...)
- 8y ago
- gray_-_wolf 8y agoI wonder how will this go together with GDPR. For showing paid ads facebook does not need to know identity of the advetiser, so they should probably have a right to refuse to provide it under GDPR, right?
- s2g 8y agoDoes this include the half dozen or so things that my grandpa likes from "Conservatives for Canada" and the like?
- smsm42 8y agoAlso, extremely scary. This means that if you want to do any political action, you need to entrust your most detailed personal identification to Facebook. And if Facebook is latter served with a subpoena to disclose these data, they will be only too happy to oblige. It may not be too much a concern in a country where there is a functioning democracy and strong judiciary protections, but in countries where you could disappear for criticizing the government it makes Facebook completely unfit for use by anyone but government propaganda outlets. It will also have chilling effects for speech even in the US - there are numerous examples of people being subject to bullying and personal destruction campaigns for either publishing or even sponsoring messages that some influential groups did not like. Of course, Facebook has no legal responsibility to support this - or any kind of - speech, but elimination of this kind of speech from any public place hurts the democratic process much more than minuscule influence of some bad actors. Anonymous or pseudonymous political speech is very valuable for a robust democratic debate, and it is extremely sad - though not exactly surprising - that it is being eradicated under the guise of "transparency" and "protecting the elections from foreign influence" and all kinds of bullshit like that.
- pjc50 8y agoThe UK already has this as a requirement for printed political material: https://www.labourprint.co.uk/single-post/2014/12/16/Your-Questions-on-Imprints-Answered https://www.labourprint.co.uk/single-post/2014/12/16/Your-Qu... It doesn't apply to online ads, which has become a serious problem with the amount of money flowing into Brexit from illegally-anonymous sources.