8 ms·

Serious question(s), not trolling. Why shouldn't Facebook take down the ad that's calling for a break up of their Company? How is this any different from a pe

• sanxiyn 8y ago
  I think Facebook has every right to take down the ad calling for breakup of Facebook.
  • almost_usual 8y ago
    This would suggest Facebook supports censorship
    • malandrew 8y ago
      It's an ad, not organic content posted by users. If the latter were blocked, I could see it as censorship. Should <insert name of television or radio station> news be required to run ads that are critical of itself?
      • kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        Users aren't paying Facebook to host their content. FB have zero obligation to continue doing so. They are well within their rights to censor perniciously and arbitrarily.
    • cronix 8y ago
      Yeah, they probably censor child porn, and other things, too. Don't you support censorship?
      • stale2002 8y ago
        If Facebook wants to lose it's safe harbor protections, then yes, it has the legal right to censor content. I doubt that Facebook wants to lose those protections though.
  • amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    Of course they do, but it looks bad politically. There are a lot of things that it is perfectly legal to do, which you probably don't want to. Especially if you are a public company.
• anoncake 8y ago
  Because Facebook has a monopoly.
  • wvenable 8y ago
    On what exactly?
    • anoncake 8y ago
      Please dont play stupid.
  • tracer4201 8y ago
    What’s their monopoly on? Serious question. Too many people like using fb so we break them up? lolwut. Is fb actively stifling competition? Is there a market failure?
    • anoncake 8y ago
      > Serious question. I dont believe you. You know exactly what is Facebooks monopoly.
      • tracer4201 8y ago
        Your argument is that you’re 100% correct and “you don’t believe” others could have a different opinion. No offense but why are you on this forum? Do you seriously expect others to conform to your opinions?
        • anoncake 8y ago
          The arguments why Facebook is a monopoly are well-known. Feel free to disagree with them, but Im not going to waste my time explaining things to you that surely you already know.
          • headsoup 8y ago
• acdha 8y ago
  Facebook bills itself as a communications platform which follows rules which this didn’t violate so this is more akin to a newspaper refusing to run an ad which criticized them or a bar evicting someone who politely disagreed with the owner. Even if they successfully avoided regulation as a monopoly I would not be surprised if this led to people suing them for content which they didn’t take down on the theory that once you make arbitrary editorial decisions you’re responsible for everything. At the very least it would also give pause to all of the media companies whose content has made them so much money, since you’d have to ask which other areas would be meddled with. That doesn’t need to be a legal process to have an impact on their business.
  • chrisseaton 8y ago
    > or a bar evicting someone who politely disagreed with the owner Is this supposed to be an example of something unreasonable? Of course a publican can ask anyone to leave their bar for any reason or not reason at all, as long as it's not because of a protected characteristic. I think that's extremely reasonable.
    • Swenrekcah 8y ago
      True, but all of these small-business/relatable analogies break down because fb is a monopoly. It would be unreasonable if a polite disagreement with one person excluded you from 90% of bars in your state/country.
      • edmundsauto 8y ago
        It's more like getting kicked out of the most popular bar, where 90% of your friends go. Sure, there are other bars, but you want to go to the one with your friends.
        • faceplanted 8y ago
          I'd say it's more like getting kicked out of a library for being a republican and therefore not being allowed to ever enter any library in the country again.
• movedx 8y ago
  > How is this any different from a person walking into a store and asking to place an ad inside the store calling for breakup or shutting down of said store? What store owner would ever allow such a thing? I think this is a valid point, but it depends on the community the store is in and what it's selling. What if it's in a town that just had a school shooting and is selling fully automatic rifles? The store owner doesn't have to allow it, you're right, but I can understand why the store would come under fire (see what I did there?) But my point is you need to ask your self an important question: should the gun shop owner's right to run a store and earn a living outweigh the demands (a safer community, perhaps?) of the people living in that community, especially if it's a large majority of that community? The answer for me is very clear. Facebook haven't been going around shooting people, but they have clearly shown themselves to be a very nasty piece of work and I'm personally unsure what value they add to society as a closed, proprietary monolith. Now think about what Facebook has been doing wrong, and what more wrongs could be planned behind its closed doors, and ask your self the above question: is this for the betterment of society or only the small group of hyper-rich stakeholders? No, Facebook should not be forced to keep the adverts up. It's their network after all, but the adverts should prompt them to ask themselves the same above question about their own actions and existence, and work with society, not against it, to resolve the problems being presented. These adverts should open a dialogue, not simply be silenced. (And on a side note: it's actually quite unsettling to see only a few big ad networks in existence and they can control who gets to advertise what... not good.)
  • as300 8y ago
    I honestly don't think you should even be taking this comparison seriously at all. It'll just open up this side of the argument to straw man attacks. One is a store that sells things to customers, another is a company that has productized at-least 1/7 of the Earth's population...
    • movedx 8y ago
      Both are doing something that should raise questions, within their own minds, as to whether they're benefiting society, especially after public outcry. It doesn't matter what the store is: people should always be questioning themselves and their actions and deciding if they're for the good of all. That's all I'm trying to say.
• deogeo 8y ago
  The answer to questions 1, 3, and 4 is 'because free speech' (not to be confused with the 1st amendment). Once a business is large enough to substantially affect which messages can get attention, if they restrict certain messages, they're restricting speech - speech is no good if you can't get anyone to hear you. Facebook isn't big enough to entirely stifle a message, but they can substantially reduce its reach. That's the problem with corporate control of ads and communication - they act as a filter on which ideas they'll let through. That answers question 2 - if it's a small store, the person can place the ad in plenty of other places, and it'll still get enough attention. But if the store happens to own 80% of all ad space in the town... Edit: I should clarify - this is all about ethical should/should not, and (as remarked by the child comment) not meant to imply there currently exists a legal basis to force Facebook to run the ads. It's important not to confuse what the law is, with that we'd like it to be.
  • sykic 8y ago
    Your post should not be downvoted. You make good points and even if someone disagrees with them the points do have merit. In the U.S. we regulate political television ads by not allowing stations to refuse to run them. It seems appropriate to think that the same should hold for a company like Facebook. As you say it does have the power to stifle speech and thus society does have a compelling interest in this area. I believe, but am not certain, that there is no legal basis at this time to force Facebook to run such ads but their actions indicate that perhaps there should be. If for no other reason than to avoid the Streisand effect they should not have banned the ads. It’s a bad public image at a time when should be cultivating public goodwill. But perhaps they’ve calculated that this isn’t necessary.
• mirimir 8y ago
  Well, the Warren Campaign was playing them, and they fell right into it. Because, by taking down her ads, they supported her point that they have too much power to control debate. That is, that they've become a monopoly. So they either need to be very careful not to abuse their monopoly, or be highly regulated, or be broken up. Edit: Stole from ktjfi. [and spelling]
  • almost_usual 8y ago
    Pretty genius strategy, she’ll also gain support from traditional media companies which have been battling Facebook lately.
    • mirimir 8y ago
      Especially because they were $100 limited-reach ads. So she got lots of notice from ~no investment.
  • dgudkov 8y ago
    >That is, that they've become a monopoly. Facebook has no monopoly on internet advertisement. I'm not a big fan of Facebook but I don't see where it would be a monopolist.
    • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > Facebook has no monopoly on internet advertisement They do on local political ads. Google searches are no longer effective for targeting those not already political involved. The local papers have been run out of business. Direct mail is expensive and unreliable. Pretty much all roads in this arena lead to Facebook, which makes its willingness to censor opinions unfavourable to it disturbing. There are strong reasons to break up Facebook into, at the very least, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
      • dymk 8y ago
        Dissecting the company along those lines does nothing to curb their cumulative potential effect on controlling what ads a user sees. They all hook into the same ad backend anyways.
• jdoliner 8y ago
  From a purely strategical perspective I think Facebook probably did the calculus and realized that the negative press of not running her ads would far outweigh the damage it could do to her campaign. There's a good chance that Warren would have taken them to court, she wouldn't have had a case, and she would have known that, but the publicity for her platform would have totally been worth it. If I was Facebook I'd be essentially "playing dead" with respect to Warren, her entire strategy depends upon positioning herself as David, battling against Facebook's Goliath, for the good of the country. It's a good strategy, people will respond to that story-line, but only if it's interesting, which requires Facebook and the rest of FAANG to fight back, if it's just Warren shouting into the void it'll be boring. Eventually they'll have to respond, but if she doesn't get enough traction with the story he candidacy might be derailed before they have to and it'll all go away.
• pharrington 8y ago
  Clearly, FB, the multibillion dollar international behemoth that is the go-to platform for communicating to other human beings and makes their money patrolling said communictions isn't quite comparable to your local retailer that's selling widgets. But we don't even need to get to the realm of social and political responsibility to see the problem with FB's behavior in this case - try taking FB at their word: "We removed the ads because they violated our policies against use of our corporate logo. In the interest of allowing robust debate, we are restoring the ads." Yes, these ads are not in FB's best interest, and they do not have an obligation to do business with any/all potential customers. The problem, of course, arises on two fronts: first, when FB twice approves an ad they themselves claim violates their policies; second, when FB claims to be a promoter of robust debate in reaction to critical press.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• kerng 8y ago
  I think this was very well played by Warren. You are probably technically correct but it is what their campaign wanted to have happen, so they have good talking points around the control Facebook can assert around the globe, at scale, at will.
• ryandrake 8y ago
  Should Comcast let me send/post advertisements for a competing ISP using my Comcast Internet service?
• jaggednad 8y ago
  It’s different because Facebook has massive power to influence the National conversation by choosing which content to block or not block. Your local neighborhood store does not have such power, ergo, it’s reasonable to treat Facebook differently from the way we might treat a store.
• hyperpallium 8y ago
  If the "store" was a newspaper, and it refused to report parliamentary debate on its impartiality... It's not illegal, but does prove its partiality.
  • URSpider94 8y ago
    This is a paid advertisement. More like if a newspaper refused to run an ad encouraging you to boycott the newspaper. Which they probably would. A good newspaper would then report on the refusal to run the ad, and the recriminations that followed.
    • pimmen 8y ago
      But not if they were the only newspaper, or the newspaper with more than half of the market, because that would make it look like a monopoly abusing its power. In Europe, public service broadcasters (like the BBC) have no problem giving time to politicians or others who call for the dismantling of public service. If they didn't that would look really bad.
• kelnos 8y ago
  I think it's a intellectually dishonest to try draw a parallel between a local store that has a reach of hundreds (maybe thousands), and a platform that reaches and influences the world-changing (or at least country-changing) decisions of over a billion people. From a strict business perspective, of course you're right: an independent business that offers a subscription product should be allowed to terminate ongoing uses of that product that it doesn't like. But from a social and political perspective, FB censoring ads like this makes them look very, very bad, and basically proves the point that they have way too much control over what news and information reaches a troublingly-large number of people.
• killjoywashere 8y ago
  It's different because Facebook isn't selling coffee, they're selling a "community platform" and publicly insist they support free speech. Warren is demonstrating not "this is a terrible coffee, contrary to the company's claims" but "this is a terrible platform for freedom of speech, contrary to the company's claims". IF you believe representative democracy, though perhaps fatally flawed, is the best system of government we as humans can muster THEN demonstrating the forum for debate is flawed is more essential than roads and water.
• ddebernardy 8y ago
  Two words spring to mind: Streisand effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
• cabalamat 8y ago
  > Why shouldn't Facebook take down the ad that's calling for a break up of their Company? Because allowing fb to do so would tend to allow people with power to get more power. This is bad because concentrations of power will act in their own interest, not the public interest.
• buboard 8y ago
  > Why shouldn't Facebook take down the ad that's calling for a break up of their Company? This is surely not the first time someone posted an ad hating facebook, but they do take down all ads that use facebook's name and logos. This makes sense and it's totally normal (and probably automated), though her campaign team probably planned to use the takedown for political gain. By allowing this one, Facebook is doubling down on her game, i would say it is smart move on their part.
• pimmen 8y ago
  Nobody is calling Facebook immoral for taking down the ad. However, this is a string argument against Facebook being a neutral platform who just want to connect people and should be left alone from regulation. They're a nigh monopoly and what happened reinforced that point. Thus, they can't claim they shouldn't be treated and regulated as a monopoly with a straight face.
• cmsonger 8y ago
  > Why shouldn't Facebook take down the ad that's calling for a break up of their Company? For the same reason that TV stations should have to run ads for candidates that advocate for greater taxes on TV stations. Facebook operates in a stable environment created by the US' democratic governmental structure. In their role as communication channel, they have an obligation to preserve the process that created the environment in which they arose. I work in tech and while I might quibble with the wording, there's not one point that I feel is wrong on substance. They have bulldozed competition. They have profited from private information. They have tilted the playing field in their favor. Ironically, I would have thought this last point was the most arguable. Then Facebook took down her ad. ... Sigh. FB so predictably short sighted sometimes.