6 ms·

>it would effectively be utilizing their corporate resources to disproportionately benefit certain candidates at the expense of others Which is still not illeg

>it would effectively be utilizing their corporate resources to disproportionately benefit certain candidates at the expense of others Which is still not illegal. Fox News does it all the time.

cwkoss 7y ago
Would it be legal for Fox News to price political ads based on whether they agree with the bias?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rwc 7y ago
  It is not legal.
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    Under what law?
    - protomyth 7y ago
      In the US, it would be Communications Act of 1934, as amended (Title 47 United States Code).
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - roywiggins 7y ago
        Aha: https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/statutes-and-rules-candidate-appearances-advertising https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/statutes-and-rules-candidat...
therein 7y ago
Yeah, Google probably has no legal obligation to be an equal-opportunity ad platform however they really should be more careful when it comes to internal procedures like this. For instance whitelisting all potential candidates would have been a better idea. Besides, if they are so eager to make algorithms decide things like this only to be fixed later by a human, they should at least set better thresholds or include some heuristics to find correlations that might legitimize the increase in spending or clickthrough.
- ctdonath 7y ago
  However, Google does have legal liability for damages. If you hire me to do a task, and my ineptitude costs you a substantial sum, you can sue accordingly. Google users have reasonable expectations for monetization, and the shockingly arbitrary & rapid demonetization without notice nor recourse, usually during a narrow window of opportunity, certainly is actionable. Would be easy for Google to simply withhold payment subject to review, rather than deny payment altogether for the contended period.
  - nradov 7y ago
    Ineptitude doesn't create any legal liability. And loss of potential revenue isn't a basis for establishing damages.
    - ctdonath 7y ago
      Methinks Google would have a hard time establishing, or even admitting to, ineptitude as a legal defense.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- einpoklum 7y ago
  That's debatable. Once certain kind of social interaction happens exclusively on a single platform or one of a few platforms, it can be argued (IANAL) that these platforms, even if privately owned, now have a public function - and thus have a "dual nature", partly public and private (that's an actual formal term in some non-US legal systems).
ex1710_01 7y ago
Google is a monopoly. Fox News is not.
- nova22033 7y ago
  How is google a monopoly? Every day we have people on HN telling us how they switched to bing or DDG.
  - theturtletalks 7y ago
    Is HN a good indication of the total search market? 99% of the people I interact with don't even know about DDG or how to change the default search engine on their browsers.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Monopoly status is legally irrelevant (in direct terms) when it comes to political activity. Now, it's true that (especially natural) monopoly status is often a justification for laws imposing common carrier rules, but such laws have not been adopted which apply to Google in the activity in question , whether or not such would be a desirable policy, so their alleged monopoly status isn't indirectly relevant that way, either.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - writepub 7y ago
    In-kind political favors by companies is expressly illegal under FEC regulations. Google propping up a candidate or suppressing another is effectively campaign contributions (or suppression) worth millions of dollars by Google to certain candidates, in violation of FEC regulations. The monopoly status has weight in such cases, as it can be construed as illegal electioneering, given Google's control over speech discovery on the internet.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
writepub 7y ago
It becomes illegal and election interference when that Corp is a monopoly with effective control of speech and discovery on the internet. No law entitles Google to gaslight America and interfere with democracy.
- roywiggins 7y ago
  Under what law?
  - writepub 7y ago
    Multiple FEC laws where companies are barred from electioneering in kind, which is exactly what is alleged to be happening here. Political activity by companies is regulated. A petroleum company cannot offer in-kind donations of "unlimited" gas to a candidate, without flouting FEC campaign contribution and electioneering laws. Likewise, Google cannot artificially prop-up, or suppress a candidate without breaking FEC regulations
    - roywiggins 7y ago
      That has nothing in particular to do with whether Google is a monopoly or not, though. Google doesn't graduate into being regulated by the FEC just because it's big.
      - writepub 7y ago
        Tulsi and the article are specific in their mention of Google's 88% market share, because it is material to her being heard in 2019, when most of our communication is online. The FEC has no mandate to regulate monopolies, but when a monopoly with the power to manipulate elections violates electioneering laws, it automatically becomes the most egregious offender, and the focus of any logic based decision making at the FEC. Obviously, these are still allegations, but Tulsi has won many elections over 15 years, and her campaign is likely seasoned in managing Google advertising accounts. Which is why her allegations seem believable, given her overt criticism of Google, and Google employees' support of other candidates
stcredzero 7y ago
Which is still not illegal. But it feels so very slimy. Also, such events seem to happen with alarming frequency. (I'm thinking of people's gmail accounts that disappear when their posts go viral, then get quickly restored.) What if electric utilities were like, "oops!" then claim an "algorithm" shut off the power to your campaign HQ. What if internet providers were doing things like that. In those cases, people could switch providers. In the case of online ads, I'm not sure that's a viable option for a campaign and many others.
buboard 7y ago
> Which is still not illegal. I think it most of europe it is illegal. Not so in the US ?
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  More importantly, who cares about campaign ads when the election coverage that’s supposedly impartial is larger age more frequent. The relentless focus on the Republican candidate we hate most by the US media did more to elect Trump than any ads.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  In the Netherlands, political advertising is much more strictly regulated than in the US. And there are other EU countries with even stricter rules.
not_a_cop75 7y ago
Glad to hear that even liberals set the bar at "Fox News does it - it must be okay." There is no more moral ground on either side.
Mike_Ehling 7y ago
BUT Tulsi has bought and paid for the Google Ads that were disabled during a critical SIX hours when interest in her was high and her top placed ad would have driven traffic to her donation page. She BOUGHT that ad time just as much as an advertiser buys Superbowl ad time. This was an outright breach of contract.
- belltaco 7y ago
  Pretty sure her campaign wasn't charged for ads that weren't shown. If you buy a Superbowl ad and it wasn't shown and you weren't charged for it, it isn't a breach of contract.
  - Erik816 7y ago
    In that hypothetical, it would definitely be a breach of contract. If you paid for an ad during the Super Bowl expecting it to be run, and then it wasn't, that's a breach. Refunding your money may or may not make you whole. What if that was the only way to reach your target customers, and now you can't do it for another year? There are contracts you can breach and just provide a refund, and no one is worse off. But that's not always the case, and any material failure to not perform under the contract is a breach.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      It's quite possible to structure a contract such that payment entitles you to either some other benefit or a refund; whether there is a breach at all depends on the terms of the contract. And it is the norm that return of consideration is the limit to damages for breach of contract; the exceptional circumstances permitting additional recovery almost all involve you having—both in fact and in the other parties knowledge (and, IIRC, generally requires this to be expressly part of the body of agreement in the contract)—relied on the promise in the contract to forego some other opportunity that is lost in the breach.
      - speedplane 7y ago
barry-cotter 7y ago
And Facebook supported Obama. It’s not like Silicon Valley attempts to be impartial on any level. https://ijr.com/ex-obama-campaign-director-fb/ https://ijr.com/ex-obama-campaign-director-fb/ > A former Obama campaign official is claiming that Facebook knowingly allowed them to mine massive amounts of Facebook data — more than they would’ve allowed someone else to do https://www.rt.com/usa/421808-obama-facebook-mine-data/ https://www.rt.com/usa/421808-obama-facebook-mine-data/ Carol Davidsen, former director for media analytics for Obama’s 2012 campaign, has poured oil onto the fire by reveling in a series of tweets that Facebook allowed them to do “things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do.” That reportedly included “suck[ing] out the entire social graph” – an individual’s network of friends on Facebook – in a bid to target more and more potential voters through friends’ friends on social media. ... After Facebook “realized” what the Obama campaign staffers had been doing, they preferred to turn a blind eye for one simple reason: “they were on our side,” Davidsen claimed. They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.
- adamsea 7y ago
  That is entirely possible but I don’t trust Russia Today as a source, and, I have never heard of IJR before. Would like to see other sources saying the same.
  - nailer 7y ago
    Keep on mind the top post is recommending we read a Vox media site.
    - compuguy 7y ago
      Last time I checked, Vox media isn't tied to, nor funded by the Russian government. Russia Today (RT) is.
      - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        Is Fox News funded by the Russian Government? If not, does that make them ok? NPR is funded by the US government does that make everything they say untrue? Seems like it might be better to use critical thinking of work off original sources rather than trusting any media organization to do that for you.
brighter2morrow 7y ago
>Fox News does it all the time. FB and G are natural monopolies, while Fox News is a branded commodities dealer.

>it would effectively be utilizing their corporate resources to disproportionately benefit certain candidates at the expense of others Which is still not illegal. Fox News does it all the time.

cwkoss 7y ago

Would it be legal for Fox News to price political ads based on whether they agree with the bias?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rwc 7y ago
It is not legal.
- roywiggins 7y ago
  Under what law?
  - protomyth 7y ago
    In the US, it would be Communications Act of 1934, as amended (Title 47 United States Code).
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - roywiggins 7y ago
      Aha: https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/statutes-and-rules-candidate-appearances-advertising https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/statutes-and-rules-candidat...

therein 7y ago

Yeah, Google probably has no legal obligation to be an equal-opportunity ad platform however they really should be more careful when it comes to internal procedures like this. For instance whitelisting all potential candidates would have been a better idea. Besides, if they are so eager to make algorithms decide things like this only to be fixed later by a human, they should at least set better thresholds or include some heuristics to find correlations that might legitimize the increase in spending or clickthrough.

ctdonath 7y ago
However, Google does have legal liability for damages. If you hire me to do a task, and my ineptitude costs you a substantial sum, you can sue accordingly. Google users have reasonable expectations for monetization, and the shockingly arbitrary & rapid demonetization without notice nor recourse, usually during a narrow window of opportunity, certainly is actionable. Would be easy for Google to simply withhold payment subject to review, rather than deny payment altogether for the contended period.
- nradov 7y ago
  Ineptitude doesn't create any legal liability. And loss of potential revenue isn't a basis for establishing damages.
  - ctdonath 7y ago
    Methinks Google would have a hard time establishing, or even admitting to, ineptitude as a legal defense.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
einpoklum 7y ago
That's debatable. Once certain kind of social interaction happens exclusively on a single platform or one of a few platforms, it can be argued (IANAL) that these platforms, even if privately owned, now have a public function - and thus have a "dual nature", partly public and private (that's an actual formal term in some non-US legal systems).

ex1710_01 7y ago

Google is a monopoly. Fox News is not.

nova22033 7y ago
How is google a monopoly? Every day we have people on HN telling us how they switched to bing or DDG.
- theturtletalks 7y ago
  Is HN a good indication of the total search market? 99% of the people I interact with don't even know about DDG or how to change the default search engine on their browsers.
dragonwriter 7y ago
Monopoly status is legally irrelevant (in direct terms) when it comes to political activity. Now, it's true that (especially natural) monopoly status is often a justification for laws imposing common carrier rules, but such laws have not been adopted which apply to Google in the activity in question , whether or not such would be a desirable policy, so their alleged monopoly status isn't indirectly relevant that way, either.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- writepub 7y ago
  In-kind political favors by companies is expressly illegal under FEC regulations. Google propping up a candidate or suppressing another is effectively campaign contributions (or suppression) worth millions of dollars by Google to certain candidates, in violation of FEC regulations. The monopoly status has weight in such cases, as it can be construed as illegal electioneering, given Google's control over speech discovery on the internet.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago

writepub 7y ago

It becomes illegal and election interference when that Corp is a monopoly with effective control of speech and discovery on the internet. No law entitles Google to gaslight America and interfere with democracy.

roywiggins 7y ago
Under what law?
- writepub 7y ago
  Multiple FEC laws where companies are barred from electioneering in kind, which is exactly what is alleged to be happening here. Political activity by companies is regulated. A petroleum company cannot offer in-kind donations of "unlimited" gas to a candidate, without flouting FEC campaign contribution and electioneering laws. Likewise, Google cannot artificially prop-up, or suppress a candidate without breaking FEC regulations
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    That has nothing in particular to do with whether Google is a monopoly or not, though. Google doesn't graduate into being regulated by the FEC just because it's big.
    - writepub 7y ago
      Tulsi and the article are specific in their mention of Google's 88% market share, because it is material to her being heard in 2019, when most of our communication is online. The FEC has no mandate to regulate monopolies, but when a monopoly with the power to manipulate elections violates electioneering laws, it automatically becomes the most egregious offender, and the focus of any logic based decision making at the FEC. Obviously, these are still allegations, but Tulsi has won many elections over 15 years, and her campaign is likely seasoned in managing Google advertising accounts. Which is why her allegations seem believable, given her overt criticism of Google, and Google employees' support of other candidates

stcredzero 7y ago

Which is still not illegal. But it feels so very slimy. Also, such events seem to happen with alarming frequency. (I'm thinking of people's gmail accounts that disappear when their posts go viral, then get quickly restored.) What if electric utilities were like, "oops!" then claim an "algorithm" shut off the power to your campaign HQ. What if internet providers were doing things like that. In those cases, people could switch providers. In the case of online ads, I'm not sure that's a viable option for a campaign and many others.

buboard 7y ago

> Which is still not illegal. I think it most of europe it is illegal. Not so in the US ?

barry-cotter 7y ago
More importantly, who cares about campaign ads when the election coverage that’s supposedly impartial is larger age more frequent. The relentless focus on the Republican candidate we hate most by the US media did more to elect Trump than any ads.
tripzilch 7y ago
In the Netherlands, political advertising is much more strictly regulated than in the US. And there are other EU countries with even stricter rules.

not_a_cop75 7y ago

Glad to hear that even liberals set the bar at "Fox News does it - it must be okay." There is no more moral ground on either side.

Mike_Ehling 7y ago

BUT Tulsi has bought and paid for the Google Ads that were disabled during a critical SIX hours when interest in her was high and her top placed ad would have driven traffic to her donation page. She BOUGHT that ad time just as much as an advertiser buys Superbowl ad time. This was an outright breach of contract.

belltaco 7y ago
Pretty sure her campaign wasn't charged for ads that weren't shown. If you buy a Superbowl ad and it wasn't shown and you weren't charged for it, it isn't a breach of contract.
- Erik816 7y ago
  In that hypothetical, it would definitely be a breach of contract. If you paid for an ad during the Super Bowl expecting it to be run, and then it wasn't, that's a breach. Refunding your money may or may not make you whole. What if that was the only way to reach your target customers, and now you can't do it for another year? There are contracts you can breach and just provide a refund, and no one is worse off. But that's not always the case, and any material failure to not perform under the contract is a breach.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    It's quite possible to structure a contract such that payment entitles you to either some other benefit or a refund; whether there is a breach at all depends on the terms of the contract. And it is the norm that return of consideration is the limit to damages for breach of contract; the exceptional circumstances permitting additional recovery almost all involve you having—both in fact and in the other parties knowledge (and, IIRC, generally requires this to be expressly part of the body of agreement in the contract)—relied on the promise in the contract to forego some other opportunity that is lost in the breach.
    - speedplane 7y ago

barry-cotter 7y ago

And Facebook supported Obama. It’s not like Silicon Valley attempts to be impartial on any level. https://ijr.com/ex-obama-campaign-director-fb/ https://ijr.com/ex-obama-campaign-director-fb/ > A former Obama campaign official is claiming that Facebook knowingly allowed them to mine massive amounts of Facebook data — more than they would’ve allowed someone else to do https://www.rt.com/usa/421808-obama-facebook-mine-data/ https://www.rt.com/usa/421808-obama-facebook-mine-data/ Carol Davidsen, former director for media analytics for Obama’s 2012 campaign, has poured oil onto the fire by reveling in a series of tweets that Facebook allowed them to do “things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do.” That reportedly included “suck[ing] out the entire social graph” – an individual’s network of friends on Facebook – in a bid to target more and more potential voters through friends’ friends on social media. ... After Facebook “realized” what the Obama campaign staffers had been doing, they preferred to turn a blind eye for one simple reason: “they were on our side,” Davidsen claimed. They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.

adamsea 7y ago
That is entirely possible but I don’t trust Russia Today as a source, and, I have never heard of IJR before. Would like to see other sources saying the same.
- nailer 7y ago
  Keep on mind the top post is recommending we read a Vox media site.
  - compuguy 7y ago
    Last time I checked, Vox media isn't tied to, nor funded by the Russian government. Russia Today (RT) is.
    - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
      Is Fox News funded by the Russian Government? If not, does that make them ok? NPR is funded by the US government does that make everything they say untrue? Seems like it might be better to use critical thinking of work off original sources rather than trusting any media organization to do that for you.

brighter2morrow 7y ago

>Fox News does it all the time. FB and G are natural monopolies, while Fox News is a branded commodities dealer.