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There's simply no reason why Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media company needs to be involved in the business of political campaigns. They're completel

There's simply no reason why Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media company needs to be involved in the business of political campaigns. They're completely free to decline such business and refuse to run political advertisements. It's not like they'd lose much: the income they earn from political ads is a drop in the bucket, proportionally speaking. Given the intense amount of scrutiny they're under, and their apparent inability to make clear, consistent, and sensible rules regarding their content, perhaps it would be better for them to just get out of the business altogether.

ColinWright 7y ago
> They're completely free to decline such business and refuse to run political advertisements. Except that if politicians want to run ads on Facebook, and Facebook declines, then politicians will, with impunity, have the power to enact laws that will damage Facebook. People who end up in a position of power can be vindictive.
- otterley 7y ago
  I comment about this below, but the same applies: In this scenario, politicians and their backers would still be free to post whatever they want. But they wouldn't be able to use a paid advertisement to force their (potentially false) messages into people's News Feeds.
- r00fus 7y ago
  Refusing to take all political money would be a no-brainer. Candidates would then just need to use the non-paid approach and organic shares.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    You say this as if it were something simple or even possible to achieve. How do you tell the difference between political and non-political money? Not taking money directly from campaigns is easy enough, but that’s not where most of the ‘political money’ comes from. What about every dollar that’s spent to promote a political idea that doesn’t come directly from a campaign? How do you even discern between a political idea and a non-political one? There’s no way to do any of that from a neutral position, because all of that is highly subjective.
    - otterley 7y ago
      We’re taking about paid advertisements, not mere posts. The volume of paid ads is infinitesimally small compared to user-generated content. It should be very straightforward to review ad submissions to determine whether they are selling a product or service, as opposed to an idea, promotion or complaint about a person or group of people, and deny by default if there’s any doubt.
      - AmericanChopper 7y ago
        I just opened Facebook and checked all of the orgs who have targeted me with ads. About 15% of them were companies that don’t sell any sort of product, and were just promoting some sort of idea. Of that, only one of them was an actual political party. That doesn’t even include ads for products that include some sort of political messaging (something that’s pretty commonplace now). What’s more, that assessment of which orgs were delivering a political message is entirely based on my own opinions. You might look at the same list and draw different conclusions. What you’re talking about simply doesn’t seem possible, and I can’t even see any reason why it would be a good idea to begin with.
        otterley 7y ago
        You just said you yourself were able to identify them. Why couldn’t someone else? And, suppose they were missing from your News Feed. How much would you miss them? And why would you need them back? Finally, I’d love to hear about some of these “ads for products that have political messaging” (assuming they’re not the obvious case of T-shirts, stickers, etc. promoting a candidate or cause).
        AmericanChopper 7y ago
        > You just said you yourself were able to identify them. Why couldn’t someone else? Because as I also said, anybody else would likely make different judgements. The assessment I described is entirely my own opinion, and it would be impossible for me (or anybody else) to make any form of assessment that wasn’t influenced by opinion. > And, suppose they were missing from your News Feed. How much would you miss them? I personally don’t care about ads at all. But you’re understating how extreme your suggestion is. News outlets would be excluded from any sort of promotion on FB. Basically any NGO would be excluded, including environmental groups. I would expect such an extreme idea to have a very strong justification, and I can’t see anything other than FB employees not liking it. > Finally, I’d love to hear about some of these “ads for products that have political messaging” Nike and Gillette have two incredibly high profile examples. There’s plenty of smaller ones too. Any company that participates in pride month is delivering a political message. The issue with classifying political speech is that it depends much more on the views of the audience than it does the content of the speech. The graphics used in a weather report would be considered politically charged by a flat earther. It is simply not possible for FB to take a neutral position on this matter, so your choice is between FB taking a political stance on what election ads are allowed on its platform, or having FB not moderate them.
bluGill 7y ago
Are they? In the US radio and TV cannot refuse such ads. I'm not sure how/if this regulation applies to Facebook (radio/tv get there because as a limited space part of their license says that have to support them), but Facebook is too big to try to thumb its nose at politicians like that. There are many ways politics can make life hard for Facebook while staying in the letter of the constitution. Facebook when it was 100 friends from Harvard could ignore politics. Facebook with millions of users cannot.
- otterley 7y ago
  > I'm not sure how/if this regulation applies to Facebook It doesn't. > Facebook is too big to try to thumb its nose at politicians like that. I don't really see it as "thumbing its nose." Politicians and their backers would still be free to post whatever they want. But they wouldn't be able to use a paid advertisement to force their (potentially false) messages into people's News Feeds.
- r00fus 7y ago
  FB ads and TV/Radio ads are not the same. FB has organic content that politicians and their campaigns can get involved with already to the tune of millions of followers. FB declining all political money doesn't sound like a discrimination issue.
mc32 7y ago
I think they are working in new territories. Their options now are allow all candidate for public office ads or refuse all of such ads. The tendency, given our 1A context would be to allow all. But I think the Congress should step in and set the rules for how companies should govern this new territory. Not doing so leaves an important aspect of democracy in the hands of companies to make decisions for politicians.
reroute1 7y ago
Why should they? People can make up their own minds we don't need to restrict online advertisements. False messages appear in all other forms of advertisement, facebook or twitter is no different.
- otterley 7y ago
  Because the potential for societal harm is arguably greater when politicians manipulate the population through falsehoods than it is by purchasing a good or service based on false advertising. And consumers have direct recourse to the law (i.e., damages) for fraud, whereas no such recourse is available to the public until re-election if they elect a politician based on falsehoods.
  - reroute1 7y ago
    But how is this different than political ads on the radio or tv or a billboard? Sounds like you are against political advertisements of any kind. I don't disagree there could be damage done by misinformation, but I don't think that's a compelling reason to ban political ads. I still think people should look at the ads and decide for themselves what is true.
    - otterley 7y ago
      This is a tricky question. Traditionally, communication with the public was mainly two-way; the public could directly question candidates and hold them accountable there if the candidate lied. I’m very much for traditional free speech here as there is direct accountability. With the rise of broadcast media (TV, radio, newspapers) came a new era of marketing-driven candidacies. Candidates became much further removed from the process of attracting voters, and they figured out ways (helped by Madison Avenue ad men) to manipulate the public using those ads. By the 1990s we reached peak crazy with negative ads, innuendo, third party ads, and the elimination of “equal time” rules on broadcast TV that required at least an attempt to level the playing field. Now with social media, we have the most challenging combination of marketing savvy, cheap and automated provisioning of ads, and precise targeting - and even worse accountability. We’ve even heard possibilities that politicians might target ads to non-aligned voters misdirecting them as to voting instructions or locations. So: am I against free speech? No. I’m definitely a believer in it. But am I against delivering political advertisements through certain channels? Yes.

ColinWright 7y ago

> They're completely free to decline such business and refuse to run political advertisements. Except that if politicians want to run ads on Facebook, and Facebook declines, then politicians will, with impunity, have the power to enact laws that will damage Facebook. People who end up in a position of power can be vindictive.

otterley 7y ago
I comment about this below, but the same applies: In this scenario, politicians and their backers would still be free to post whatever they want. But they wouldn't be able to use a paid advertisement to force their (potentially false) messages into people's News Feeds.
r00fus 7y ago
Refusing to take all political money would be a no-brainer. Candidates would then just need to use the non-paid approach and organic shares.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  You say this as if it were something simple or even possible to achieve. How do you tell the difference between political and non-political money? Not taking money directly from campaigns is easy enough, but that’s not where most of the ‘political money’ comes from. What about every dollar that’s spent to promote a political idea that doesn’t come directly from a campaign? How do you even discern between a political idea and a non-political one? There’s no way to do any of that from a neutral position, because all of that is highly subjective.
  - otterley 7y ago
    We’re taking about paid advertisements, not mere posts. The volume of paid ads is infinitesimally small compared to user-generated content. It should be very straightforward to review ad submissions to determine whether they are selling a product or service, as opposed to an idea, promotion or complaint about a person or group of people, and deny by default if there’s any doubt.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      I just opened Facebook and checked all of the orgs who have targeted me with ads. About 15% of them were companies that don’t sell any sort of product, and were just promoting some sort of idea. Of that, only one of them was an actual political party. That doesn’t even include ads for products that include some sort of political messaging (something that’s pretty commonplace now). What’s more, that assessment of which orgs were delivering a political message is entirely based on my own opinions. You might look at the same list and draw different conclusions. What you’re talking about simply doesn’t seem possible, and I can’t even see any reason why it would be a good idea to begin with.
      - otterley 7y ago
        You just said you yourself were able to identify them. Why couldn’t someone else? And, suppose they were missing from your News Feed. How much would you miss them? And why would you need them back? Finally, I’d love to hear about some of these “ads for products that have political messaging” (assuming they’re not the obvious case of T-shirts, stickers, etc. promoting a candidate or cause).
        AmericanChopper 7y ago
        > You just said you yourself were able to identify them. Why couldn’t someone else? Because as I also said, anybody else would likely make different judgements. The assessment I described is entirely my own opinion, and it would be impossible for me (or anybody else) to make any form of assessment that wasn’t influenced by opinion. > And, suppose they were missing from your News Feed. How much would you miss them? I personally don’t care about ads at all. But you’re understating how extreme your suggestion is. News outlets would be excluded from any sort of promotion on FB. Basically any NGO would be excluded, including environmental groups. I would expect such an extreme idea to have a very strong justification, and I can’t see anything other than FB employees not liking it. > Finally, I’d love to hear about some of these “ads for products that have political messaging” Nike and Gillette have two incredibly high profile examples. There’s plenty of smaller ones too. Any company that participates in pride month is delivering a political message. The issue with classifying political speech is that it depends much more on the views of the audience than it does the content of the speech. The graphics used in a weather report would be considered politically charged by a flat earther. It is simply not possible for FB to take a neutral position on this matter, so your choice is between FB taking a political stance on what election ads are allowed on its platform, or having FB not moderate them.

bluGill 7y ago

Are they? In the US radio and TV cannot refuse such ads. I'm not sure how/if this regulation applies to Facebook (radio/tv get there because as a limited space part of their license says that have to support them), but Facebook is too big to try to thumb its nose at politicians like that. There are many ways politics can make life hard for Facebook while staying in the letter of the constitution. Facebook when it was 100 friends from Harvard could ignore politics. Facebook with millions of users cannot.

otterley 7y ago
> I'm not sure how/if this regulation applies to Facebook It doesn't. > Facebook is too big to try to thumb its nose at politicians like that. I don't really see it as "thumbing its nose." Politicians and their backers would still be free to post whatever they want. But they wouldn't be able to use a paid advertisement to force their (potentially false) messages into people's News Feeds.
r00fus 7y ago
FB ads and TV/Radio ads are not the same. FB has organic content that politicians and their campaigns can get involved with already to the tune of millions of followers. FB declining all political money doesn't sound like a discrimination issue.

mc32 7y ago

I think they are working in new territories. Their options now are allow all candidate for public office ads or refuse all of such ads. The tendency, given our 1A context would be to allow all. But I think the Congress should step in and set the rules for how companies should govern this new territory. Not doing so leaves an important aspect of democracy in the hands of companies to make decisions for politicians.

reroute1 7y ago

Why should they? People can make up their own minds we don't need to restrict online advertisements. False messages appear in all other forms of advertisement, facebook or twitter is no different.

otterley 7y ago
Because the potential for societal harm is arguably greater when politicians manipulate the population through falsehoods than it is by purchasing a good or service based on false advertising. And consumers have direct recourse to the law (i.e., damages) for fraud, whereas no such recourse is available to the public until re-election if they elect a politician based on falsehoods.
- reroute1 7y ago
  But how is this different than political ads on the radio or tv or a billboard? Sounds like you are against political advertisements of any kind. I don't disagree there could be damage done by misinformation, but I don't think that's a compelling reason to ban political ads. I still think people should look at the ads and decide for themselves what is true.
  - otterley 7y ago
    This is a tricky question. Traditionally, communication with the public was mainly two-way; the public could directly question candidates and hold them accountable there if the candidate lied. I’m very much for traditional free speech here as there is direct accountability. With the rise of broadcast media (TV, radio, newspapers) came a new era of marketing-driven candidacies. Candidates became much further removed from the process of attracting voters, and they figured out ways (helped by Madison Avenue ad men) to manipulate the public using those ads. By the 1990s we reached peak crazy with negative ads, innuendo, third party ads, and the elimination of “equal time” rules on broadcast TV that required at least an attempt to level the playing field. Now with social media, we have the most challenging combination of marketing savvy, cheap and automated provisioning of ads, and precise targeting - and even worse accountability. We’ve even heard possibilities that politicians might target ads to non-aligned voters misdirecting them as to voting instructions or locations. So: am I against free speech? No. I’m definitely a believer in it. But am I against delivering political advertisements through certain channels? Yes.