20 ms·

Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads

309 points by mindgam3 7y ago

rpmisms 7y ago
So, Facebook is operating like TV did forever?
- mikece 7y ago
  I don't see how they have a choice. If they decide to exercise editorial control then they might be considered in the content creation business by virtue of exercising editorial control and forfeit immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If Facebook had to be liable for what was published on their system they would be facing the possibility of liability judgements many times their market cap. Link: https://technology.findlaw.com/modern-law-practice/understanding-the-legal-issues-for-social-networking-sites-and.html https://technology.findlaw.com/modern-law-practice/understan...
  - javagram 7y ago
    That is the exact opposite of what Section 230 does. Section 230 allows platforms to make moderation decisions while retaining legal immunity for the user created content they choose not to moderate. However, this is currently being threatened by republicans in the senate and Facebook is trying to avoid them taking steps to reduce the scope of 230 (which was already weakened recently by inclusion of a sex trafficking exemption).
    - HeroOfAges 7y ago
      One of the biggest reasons Section 230 is being threatened by Republicans in the senate is because they believe Facebook has a bias against conservative content and viewpoints on their platform. If it's up to Facebook to moderate content as they see fit, I find it very unlikely they would find a way to do so without appearing to be biased against someone or something.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        Of course Facebook has a bias against conservative viewpoints. You think the Facebook employees quoted in the article are referring to “misinformation” such as false assertions that our schools are “underfunded?” That is not to detract from the crazy things the right has said. But it’s impossible to read the NYT or HuffPo or the like without cringing over misleading assertions. And it’s not just those organizations. As a card carrying ACLU member, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked up a froth reading some email to members describing a case, only to be distraught when the representation turned out to be gravely misleading when I researched the case. I’ve started to notice that on HN, even EFF articles get some comments these days asking “wait, is that characterization accurate?”
        kevingadd 7y ago
        So biased that they team up with major conservative news outlets and regularly consult with high profile conservative politicians and lobbyists, you mean? On an ongoing basis, conservative news sites tend to rank highly on FB's highest-traffic posts. If you want to live in a fantasy world that's fine, but please don't spread nonsense. FB has teamed up with Breitbart - a news outlet explicitly described as a platform for the alt-right, with a Black Crime vertical - for their new Journalism work, and Zuckerberg sits down with conservatives on a constant basis: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/10/14/deletefacebook-trends-after-report-says-zuckerberg-secretly-dined-with-conservatives/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/10/14/deletefacebook-...
        rayiner 7y ago
        The fact that Zuckerberg is getting in trouble for having meetings in “his home over the summer with conservative figures, including talk show hosts, journalists and at least one Republican” proves the biased context within which Facebook and Zuckerberg must operate. Zuckerberg is surrounded by people who are so partisan that the fact that he had dinner with “at least one Republican” is casus belli. Note that your own article discredits your premise that it is “nonsense” to suggest that Zuckerberg is in league with conservatives. Quoting a “normal“ Facebook user, it states: > “I think that it would be leveling the playing field if he reaches out to Conservatives because he surely reached out to Liberals,” she said.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- threeseed 7y ago
  But TV stations curate their advertising. Many types of political ads are not able to be shown.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- alkonaut 7y ago
  Political TV ads should be banned too. Would make it consistent and understandable.
- lalos 7y ago
  I didn’t now TV ads offered targeting and tuning ads to highly specific groups of people, why didn’t Cambridge Analytica use tv ads instead of FB? The issue here is the micro targeting based on the personality of the uses stringing them along without them knowing. It is known that CA used personality tests to craft specific messages. How can it be the same?
aphextim 7y ago
Buying political ad is kind of like buying a new car, or a firearm. If you leave the dealership with your new vehicle, and decide to go run over 10 people, the dealer is not on the hook for your actions. Same with gun stores not being held liable for gun owners. There may be background checks in place to ensure they aren't selling a car to someone that can't drive (Driver's license) or to make sure someone can own a gun (Background check), but once you pass the initial screening you are on your own for liability. Political ads should be the same, basic KYC to verify the person buying the ad is who they say they are or allowed to represent an entity, but beyond that anything they want say let them say it, let the public scrutinize it, and let their ideas be debated. I could see a world of hurt if this was completely unregulated, as in anyone could pretend to be anyone and buy an ad any which way without verification. This would lead to an insane amount of slander/mudslinging. Just my 2 cents, probably not worth a penny.
- deleted 7y ago
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- throwaway_law 7y ago
  >If you leave the dealership with your new vehicle, and decide to go run over 10 people, the dealer is not on the hook for your actions. Same with gun stores not being held liable for gun owners. That is not true of the law. If a gun store sells someone a gun, and the store owners knew or should have known you intend to kill someone with it...they gun store is most certainly liable. Even when the gun store wasn't aware the buyer intends to shoot someone, the gun store can be liable if it was negligent in the sale, like this case where KMart sold a gun to a drunk person who shot a woman, KMart was found negligent and liable for $12M
  - aphextim 7y ago
    >That is not true of the law. If a gun store sells someone a gun, and the store owners knew or should have known you intend to kill someone with it...they gun store is most certainly liable. This is why literally the next line I say after the KYC/background check. Obviously if a guy sells a gun to someone without doing the proper checks they will be liable. Same if a dealer sells a car to someone without a license. >Same with gun stores not being held liable for gun owners. There may be background checks in place to ensure they aren't selling a car to someone that can't drive (Driver's license) or to make sure someone can own a gun (Background check), but once you pass the initial screening you are on your own for liability. >Political ads should be the same, basic KYC to verify the person buying the ad is who they say they are or allowed to represent an entity, but beyond that anything they want say let them say it, let the public scrutinize it, and let their ideas be debated.
diego 7y ago
The problem here is not so much Facebook (a company doing what companies do) as it is the regulatory system they fit in. This situation is unprecedented, as no single company had ever concentrated the media power Facebook has. Our legislators are barely starting to understand the problem, the ball is in their court really. In the meantime, Facebook will sit at the intersection of what's best for the company and what the law allows.
- throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
  Facebook probably has considerably less media power than TV stations of old. But that was ok, because they got regulated.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
If Facebook decides which political ads are truthful, then either they reject all political ads (because when was the last time someone ran a political ad that was wholly truthful?), or else they have do decide where to draw the line. Wherever they draw the line, they're going to reject someone's ad, and be exposed to screams of how they're biased for the other side. That's not going to end well for them. I mean, just running them all is also getting Zuckerberg raked over the coals[1], but I think picking and choosing which ads are "truthful enough" is going to be worse. And that's if Facebook is actually completely unbiased. If this becomes a vehicle for the biases of those at FB charged with judging the ads, that's even worse. [1] Zuck was getting raked over the coals in the name of truth, but I suspect it was at least partly because those who did so thought they would benefit politically if FB censored their opponents' ads.
- eranima 7y ago
  Not all ads necessarily contain statements that would force Facebook to take a side on any issue or become an arbiter of truth. They could simply restrict political ads to essentially just "Vote for [candidate]", or something similar.
  - dmix 7y ago
    You mean ads paid for by (American?) registered campaigns or anyone who buys an advertisement deemed 'political'? It's easy to define an ideal ad or ideal bad-guy scenario, the problem is in the grey areas of categorizing such a chaotic, broad, and unpredictable group of content. That's always what ends up making this sort of thing a bad idea. They're always at massive risk for false positives, selective enforcement, moral panics, etc. It's also a giant distraction from real problems in the world and provides little long-term ROI compared to all the work that will go into it. It should be either all ads are okay with some obvious-tier moderation (ie, no ads promoting violence) OR no political ads at all. Let's not give FB et al even more power to choose what ads are okay, please.
    - vkou 7y ago
      What about ads that promote war? That obviously seems to be promoting violence to me, but unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be a popular opinion.
viburnum 7y ago
Does anyone know of a good group for tech workers to join to counter these issues? As an individual I don’t feel like I can do anything about this.
- samename 7y ago
  Checkout the Tech Workers Coalition! Edit: https://techworkerscoalition.org/ https://techworkerscoalition.org/
  - viburnum 7y ago
    Thanks!
- tathougies 7y ago
  > As an individual I don’t feel like I can do anything about this. Welcome to living in a liberal democracy where we don't get to force someone to stop saying something because it makes us mad.
  - viburnum 7y ago
    Ummm Mark Zuckerberg has a billion times more power than I do.
    - johnp314 7y ago
      But does not his vote count at +1, the exact same as your's does?
      - eppp 7y ago
        Its not the individual vote so much as the difference in effective power. Who cares how many votes he gets if he can spend billions of dollars to get what he wants. If he had the same sized speech as any average individual then who would care what he has to say about anything.
cryptica 7y ago
It would give Facebook way too much power if they could decide what is true and what is not. Better allow lies than to block free speech. I wonder if this open letter by employees advocating for more control over content combined with Mark Zuckerberg's 'hands-off stance on political ads' are just a coordinated act of 'good cop, bad cop' designed to manipulate the public. Also, my cynical side thinks that maybe some of these government authorities are in on this charade. It seems like a show to make people think that the good employees of Facebook are on the public's side. Whatever the big mean Zuckerberg wants must be bad for everyone. Facebook must have a PR team the size of a small country working for them by now. Of course everything they do is orchestrated. We have to be really cynical to see through the BS. The government is completely under the thumb of these big corporations. Many of the regulations that are coming out of Washington are carefully crafted by corporate lobbyists to superficially look like they're bad for corporations and good for the public, but in reality they're intended to give corporations more power and to create a moat around their monopolies. The government and corporations are on the same team; their common objective is to fool the public into slowly accepting the erosion of their most basic rights so that corporations can have more money and governments can have more power for themselves.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > Facebook should allow politicians to lie in ads There are more options than "Facebook regulates its ads" and "Facebook permits everything." I am in favor of having a permanent, public repository of political ads, where they have to sit for a "cooling-down" period prior to going out. This lets journalists and the public fact-check them before they're blasted to a targeted group. Another option is FEC, or some other independent body, overseeing political ads. There are a lot of options between open season and censorship, and it's only to Facebook's benefit that the debate is constrained to this axis.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse. Because you know that any such institution would just let pass false information that just happens to comport with liberal beliefs, while giving enhanced scrutiny to assertions from other viewpoints.
buboard 7y ago
He should not have allowed political ads in the US election. I dont' remember what was his excuse for allowing them but it sounded like a bad decision. There's just no winning in that game. He allows himself to be used as a scapegoat. Of course then they 'll go on and ask for facebook to censor all user posts , but that will probably hit free speech protections.
- baq 7y ago
  Remember Zuck wanted to run for president not that long ago. He wants to sit at the table and to do that he absolutely has to pick a side. How to do that and still pretend it’s in the interest of shareholders is what we’re kinda witnessing now.
  - buboard 7y ago
    He has a seat in that table anyway, a front one. And even if he bans paid advertising, it is going to happen nevertheless through normal user posts. And if what you say is true, he should do the bidding of democrats and ban them.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    > Remember Zuck wanted to run for president not that long ago. This is absolutely false. There has never been any evidence for this whatsoever, and it is a good example of a falsehood becoming true in the media by constant repetition.
    - ashelmire 7y ago
      If by this day, 40 years from now, Zuck hasn't at least launched an exploratory committee for a presidential run, I would be extremely surprised. If this were reddit, I'd promise to do something like eat an insect or a shoe or something.
      - catalogia 7y ago
        This is the same man who tried to suck up to the PRC by asking Xi Jinping to name his daughter. If he actually tried to run for POTUS, it would be a shitshow. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11910668/Chinese-president-snubs-Mark-Zuckerbergs-request-for-baby-name.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/119106...
Merrill 7y ago
Just put a heavy crawling international distress orange outline around political ads with a watermark saying "not fact checked".
- devtul 7y ago
  Imagine a law mandating a sign be put on every toilet stall door with the message "wipe your ass". Rather than overregulating, we should allow ourselves time to adapt to this new world, this might include - block your kid's ears - committing quite a few mistakes and learning with them.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    We do have restaurant washroom signs - "Handwashing Laws For All 50 States" - https://www.signs.com/blog/handwashing-laws-for-all-50-states/ https://www.signs.com/blog/handwashing-laws-for-all-50-state...
  - throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
    Not so clear when there’s a professional psychologist hired to convince you your ass will be clean whispering through the glory hole.
rayiner 7y ago
Do you want to get CDA 230 repealed? Because this is how you get CDA 230 repealed.
Miner49er 7y ago
One thing to note: this only applies to politicians. It seems normal people and political groups can't post false political ads. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-technology-202/2019/10/28/the-technology-202-facebook-takes-down-false-ad-from-political-group-but-it-still-won-t-police-politicians-directly/5db5bf61602ff10cf14f97e5/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-tec...
- w-j-w 7y ago
  This is what makes Facebook's behavior really inexcusable. Facebook has granted these people a special power on the platform, but are unwilling to police it.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    Once again you are dammed if you do and damned if you don’t. If you like, imagine a totally random hypothetical set of Facebook rules (for example, the exact reverse of what the current rules are). You will find that it is easy, really completely trivial, to come up with reasons that this is “inexcusable” as well. The whole discourse around this is poisoned. I have literally watched people completely flip their principles in mere minutes, just to keep condemning Facebook.
    - burkaman 7y ago
      You're not damned if you don't. Stop hosting political ads. I guess then you're "damned" because you make less money, but I don't think that's what you meant.
      - knzhou 7y ago
        And what is a political ad? Does an ad for an abortion clinic count? How about an ad asking for donations for Palestine? Or Hong Kong? Or wall construction? How about an ad that only points out that stocks have gone up, along with a picture of Donald Trump and a flag in the background? Obviously this falls prey to the classic problem, which is that every partisan sees messages that benefit the other side, even incredibly indirectly, as insidious manipulation, while dismissing outright propaganda from their own side as “just getting the truth out”.
w-j-w 7y ago
The amount of people making weak "both sides" arguments (nobody runs political ads without lies in them) in this thread is alarming. Facebook is easily capable of fact checking every ad on their platform, and if they can't, they should'nt run them at all. We should be prepared to demand that all political advertising be free of outright falsehoods.
- spunker540 7y ago
  I agree that claims like "the earth is flat" and "vaccinations cause autism" should probably be removed - but the trump ad in question while likely to be false, does not constitute an outright falsehood. If you ask anyone on the right they'll say it's probably true and at the very least just as truthful as any leftist political ad. Furthermore, in the 1400s an ad claiming that the world is round would have been deemed outright false, and in the early 1900s an ad claiming equality between all races would have been deemed outright false, and in 2001 an ad claiming that Iraq had no WMDs would have been deemed outright false -- yet all are now known to be true.
ALittleLight 7y ago
250 signatures on a letter at a company with 35,000 employees is an eruption of dissent? I'm reminded of a quote about urban warfare, something like "In a city of 10 million, if 1% of the population opposes you, you have 100,000 adversaries." That seems to apply here. 0.7% of the company is writing to complain? Okay - what amount do you expect to complain? How many would complain about the opposite direction?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- fuzzyset 7y ago
  Publicly stating your opposition to a contentious issue your company is facing isn't exactly an easy thing to do. Workplace marginalization is a real thing.
  - tastygreenapple 7y ago
    Don't you think workplace marginalization would cut the other way? If you have 250 people angry enough about this to leak to the press, imagine what they'd do to their fellow employees who oppose them.
  - the_watcher 7y ago
    It's pretty common at Facebook. Andrew Bosworth repeatedly writes about the importance of malcontents, and there are many employees who repeatedly push back on leadership. This takes place almost entirely on Workplace.
    - huntermonk 7y ago
      I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. This is correct. I've never worked somewhere where challenging leadership is so encouraged.
- deleted 7y ago
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- 7y ago
40acres 7y ago
I don't understand why Zuckerberg doesn't just cut his losses and remove political ads. It does not seem worth it financially or non-financially.
- cryptozeus 7y ago
  Non-financially is a big one...they can really determine the outcome of elections here , that is a power they don't want to loose
  - mliker 7y ago
    > that is a power they don't want to lose What makes you think they want that power in the first place?
    - maxdamantus 7y ago
      Because they get to sell that power (advertising space) to others.
    - jeffshek 7y ago
      IIRC, Zuck has debated running in the future. Having Facebook with that power would probably benefit.
      - war1025 7y ago
        With the fit everyone threw over Trump having (relatively speaking) minor business connections, I'd hate to see what people would say over Zuckerberg running for any sort of office.
    - baddox 7y ago
      I'm not really sure how to answer that question without just saying how extremely obvious it is that a massive national (and international) company would benefit massively from having influence over USA national politics.
rando14775 7y ago
The problem with Facebook is that it's too big. Different online communities have different standards of what sort of behaviour is acceptable. Facebook is effectively splintered, there is no one community and so there is disagreement on the community standards, to a degree that I don't think can realistically be resolved. Splintering may very well be the result. If social media were more decentralized, the responsibility would also be decentralized. Standards would set by the communities. And as for overall standards, that would be dealt with by the legislature and courts, which would be a huge improvement, as those are way more transparent and fair than Facebook et al. Abuse of power by Facebook (or advertisers pressuring them) would be much less of a problem if people could move more easily between social media platforms. I think a more decentralized model of social media would be good all around. Add some interoperability so you can still communicate when you're not on the same platform, this should alleviate some of the tendencies for these platforms to become so big and centralized.
specialist 7y ago
The Correct Answer is to restore the Fairness Doctrine, updated to include cable, social, etc. Media companies rejoiced when Reagan sabotaged political discourse. Political ads are huge money and are almost pure profit. Why would Facebook, Twitter, etc. behave any differently? https://wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
- buboard 7y ago
  Facebook makes way more than a couple hundred $$M that they spent in last elections. And the cost of being broken up post election is far higher, so it definitely doesn't make economic sense for them
  - specialist 7y ago
    What would Twitter be worth today without politics? CNN? Perhaps the same is true of Facebook. Can't think why it wouldn't be, but don't care enough to find out. Because it's Facebook.
dwoozle 7y ago
I don’t know why Zuckerberg has so colossally failed to convince the world that Facebook, Inc. should not be an arbiter of what is true and what is false.
docmars 7y ago
The responsibility of handling and interpreting misinformation needs to be shifted to the consumer. People will lie to you almost every day, and you must figure out how to deal with it. The validity of information should be vetted by those consuming it, not an entity who is in any kind of power. If enough people think someone is lying or untruthful, with enough evidence, then the content should be flagged, labeled, or potentially taken down, because every consumer had the opportunity to contribute their perspective leading up to handling said content. We need to move away from the idea that certain authorities in our lives (governments, companies, organizations, or any entity with significant power) can determine what's true or not, because it's highly likely to be biased in either direction. It's incredibly easy for a collective body to double cross their word—to say one thing and intend another at the expense of those who aren't in power. The problem is, when an organization makes the decision to censor content, it is usually a very small few who make that biased decision on behalf of the—seemingly big—company. Effectively, it is a small team, or even one or two people, unless it's done by a dedicated team of moderators driven by policies, procedures—or worse: bribery—that may or may not be something those individuals believe in. When it's left to the people interacting with that content, it's their choice in how to deal with it individually or collectively. That is maximum freedom. To enforce censorship, as a government or organization, is to assume that consumers are idiots, and that's not an assumption they should be making.
- skybrian 7y ago
  Yes, people do lie, but there are plenty of regulations for commercial speech. There are laws against fraud, and so on. Acceptable ads policies may be implemented by private companies, but few people would say they aren't needed or aren't in the public interest. Furthermore, you've bought into some libertarian assumptions about how markets work that aren't actually true. Some trust is necessary to make buying convenient, and the organizations running marketplaces have incentive to regulate who can sell there.
  - docmars 7y ago
    I think the point I'm trying to drive more is: the opportunity and ability to moderate content, speech, etc. needs to be in the hands of the people, not just the entity. On Facebook, I have the ability to report or flag a post, and that's a fair amount of power I have, especially since I have the opportunity to fact-check said post if I want to, and contribute to a sincere and meaningful debate around whether that content should be available to others or not. I don't think an organization should be able to blanket-determine what's acceptable or not, lacking transparency into the exact vetting process used show or hide a piece of content, because their values may be at odds with enough of the people using it (i.e. a large enough group of people hold a political view that Facebook may deem "dangerous"). I am confident we can agree that fraud is universally something that most people do not want, except for our lovely fraudsters. When it comes to politics, that is an entirely different ballgame. We are dealing with equally valid views on both ends of the spectrum, in an environment where the majority of those in power are condemning and attempting to control speech coming from the one side. I say this because of the sheer number of anecdotes (including my own) that have noticed practically unanimous support from most major media institutions for one side, while also condemning the other side. I'm not going to specify which sides, because I believe it's obvious.
oxplot 7y ago
Why are the only two options to let ads through or reject them? How about, fact check them and visibly mark them as being potentially false and a link to more details. This should make both sides happy: Zuck who believes the public should decide for themselves, and the rest.
- sachdevap 7y ago
  It would not make the GOP politicians happy who wield their administrative power over FB, and have a lot of political capital invested in blatantly lying to the public.
- knzhou 7y ago
  Again, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. In fact in this case we’ve already been through this. Instead of “why does Facebook allow possibly false ads” the discourse instantly becomes “why did Facebook allow this possibly false ad to go without a marker / why did Facebook put a marker on this ad that’s true in spirit”. For every action there is an equal and opposite hit piece.
  - sachdevap 7y ago
    I've seen you repeat these arguments over and over in this thread, without suggesting any solution. I am guessing you are content with the status quo of Facebook.
    - knzhou 7y ago
      I agree there is a problem, I simply disagree that there is an easy solution. All "solutions" people suggest either propose to make Facebook nakedly partisan, or would just cause the very same criticisms to reignite in essentially the same form the next day.
      - sachdevap 7y ago
        Facebook is already doing moderation of political content posted by non-politicians. See the latest news about content removed about Lindsey Graham. Facebook is choosing not to stay on the sidelines themselves already. They are just doing so for politicians. The status quo of Facebook is worse than them not touching any of the political content on their site.
scottrogers86 7y ago
Money is a powerful drug.
devtul 7y ago
I don't want a private owned platform that as far as today plays a huge role in being a place for the public discourse to regulate speech. Of course, and it pains me to have to state the obvious for fear of strawmaning, saved the applicable boundaries like distribution of child porn, terrorist groups recruiting pages and so on. Take Twitter as an example, does an abhorrent job on that, they have no standard other than liked/disliked people. - They have no transparency, people you follow will get banned and you won't be notified. - People will get banned for tweeting exactly what "liked" people tweeted. - They made the utterly stupid decision of changing the interpretation of their Verified mark from "This is the real person" which is perfect, to "we kind of support whatever this verified person says" which makes no freaking sense. Can you imagine a Bell PR guy saying at a press conference "We are sorry for what one of our landlines customers said on the phone, we turned their line off"? It is transparent to me that any effort in making platforms like Facebook, Twitter and so on to take the role of speech regulators isn't coming from regular people, it comes to the detriment of the common folk like me and you.
- simlevesque 7y ago
  I downvoted you because you are basically saying that if we don't agree with you, we're not regular people or common folk.
  - kryogen1c 7y ago
    > I downvoted you I initially frowned upon your comment, interpreting it as self-involved, ego-stroking, grandstanding. Upon further reflection, this is a forum, and one that that aims specifically for intellectual discourse. If we are not simply to degenerate into some kind of karma farm, i think opening the conversation in this manner is a good idea.
  - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
    No, the comment was about the source of the driving force of the effort. Even if there are regular people who share the same sentiment, the fact is that the effort is being coopted by those special interests. Have you heard of the term "astroturf"?
MayeulC 7y ago
Maybe it is just me, as I didn't see it in the comments. But why on earth should Facebook have to run political ads at all? This should be regulated. Provide the same exposure to all the candidates. No targetted ads (how come targetted + political ever seemed like a good idea?). Only link to their program if there's a need at all. But I bet there's plenty of people in queue for ads on FB's platform, so I don't think that not running political ads would hurt them much.
Bhilai 7y ago
This has came up in my conversations with friends who work at Facebook and they always seem to use some internal talking points about creating a "Ministry of truth" type of situation. They argue that Facebook cannot (or should not) be the arbitrator of truth. My answer to them is very simple, if you want to be a (social) media company then you have to take some (social) responsibility and not amplify falsehoods in an already charged environment. Corporate profits at the cost of ruining the society by spreading falsehoods should not be an acceptable norm.
- knzhou 7y ago
  And precisely who do you think should be appointed to head your “ministry of truth”? For example, I believe Facebook employees currently skew 90% Democrat. Should the committee seek out and add more Republicans in order to have a 50/50 split reflective of the nation, or is a 90/10 split okay? If so, how do you justify this to the other side?
  - sangnoir 7y ago
    > And precisely who do you think should be appointed to head your “ministry of truth”? The FEC. If an ad can't be printed in a newspaper or shown on TV, it shouldn't be on FB.
    - bryan_w 7y ago
      Then you may be surprised to find out that most ads being discussed are allowed on TV: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct/15/elizabeth-warren/phony-facebook-ad-warren-said-most-tv-networks-wil/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...
    - the_watcher 7y ago
      Advertisements that are false, in many cases, are legally required to be aired on TV or in newspapers, for precisely the reason that there is a public interest in avoiding media outlets becoming arbiters of truth and restricting access to political speech. Those media outlets are free to fact check and run articles or programs challenging the content of the ads.
braythwayt 7y ago
This is not a rhetorical question: If it's ok to lie in a political ad, if the entire responsibility for determining its truthfulness lies on the shoulders of the people view the ad, is it also ok for an administration to lie to citizens?
- standardUser 7y ago
  Based on all of the evidence thus far, yes, there are no consequences whatsoever for the federal executive to lie about all manner of topics literally every day, up to an including matters of national security.
  - deleted 7y ago
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salimmadjd 7y ago
The mainstream media has lost control of the narrative because of places like FB. Everything that covers politics is a form of political ad and EVERYONE has an agenda. So how will you control that? What NYT, WaPo others offered was a brand and certain Network Effects (subscription). They can not compete with the Network Effects of FB and have been trying to rein in FB. These entities are desperate to regain control of the narrative or they'll lose their value. The reality is, NYT or WAPO can run false news or "political ads" under the name of op-eds. On their own platforms they can highlight these op-eds on their homepage or they can just boost them on FB. If NYT is fine with op-eds that talks about anything political related as "political ads" then they have a standing here. It no longer has to be op-ed. Even their news coverage is turning to political propaganda. You know how bad NYT's own editorial practice is? Just watch this recent re-writing of history [0]. Any let's not forget it wasn't the political ads that gave us Donal Trump, but the $5 Billion free advertising that Trump got by the mainstream media [1], watch Bannon talk about how Trump got initial boost in the polls[2] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78CE8eiWItY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78CE8eiWItY [1] https://www.thestreet.com/story/13896916/1/donald-trump-rode-5-billion-in-free-media-to-the-white-house.html https://www.thestreet.com/story/13896916/1/donald-trump-rode... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKuPYArH0Gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKuPYArH0Gs (this is an interesting interview and Bannon talks about how Trump got his boost in the polls by mainstream media)
tenebrisalietum 7y ago
I can't blame Zuck to work so hard and try to execute the balancing act to get that political ad money, because it's targeting what is now Facebook's core demographic. Young people aren't using Facebook anymore. This doesn't mean young people don't have an account, but I suspect no one under 35-40 is really engaging with the platform meaningfully. Facebook is the new TV and is going to go out like TV - in a slow, overly long drawn out whimper chock-full of pharmaceutical, lawyer, and mesothelioma ads aimed at the aging demographic. Facebook has a stranglehold over older people but younger people are not falling into the trap. Facebook's ability to give Zuckerberg power is going to fade over time.
- bmarquez 7y ago
  > pharmaceutical, lawyer, and mesothelioma ads aimed at the aging demographic I created a new fake account a while back and for a while many of my ads were about vape pen litigation, similar to TV lawyer ads but for a younger crowd.
- cal5k 7y ago
  ...you're aware that Facebook owns Instagram, yes?
tomohawk 7y ago
Facts and truth are two different things. A set of facts can be chosen to say something untruthful. And there can be different 'truths' depending on the values people bring to the analysis of facts. Having Facebook, or their designates, arbitrate 'truth' will only create a privatized ministry of truth.
MaysonL 7y ago
A few links that may indicate in which direction Facebook is biased: https://twitter.com/donie/status/1188593050546855937 https://twitter.com/donie/status/1188593050546855937 https://mashable.com/article/facebook-false-green-new-deal-ad-removed/ https://mashable.com/article/facebook-false-green-new-deal-a... https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing
the_watcher 7y ago
> For the past two weeks, the text of the letter has been publicly visible on Facebook Workplace, a software program that the Silicon Valley company uses to communicate internally. For those who have never used Workplace, this literally just means "someone posted it to Workplace." It's not an abnormal or unique thing. It also wouldn't surprise me if "250 people signed it" means "250 people commented in agreement". I wish the reporting gave more details on who posted the petitions and what it means to "sign the petition". I understand protecting sources, but unless Workplace has added new features, anything posted has to come from someone with a profile. That said, it's still (arguably, at least) news to cover internal divisions over a policy, but unfortunately the authors don't seem to realize how common it is at Facebook for employees to openly push back on leadership decisions while concurrently working as hard as they can to deliver impact downstream of them (it may sound odd, but it's entirely possible to disagree with a strategy and vocally advocate for your preferred course but also trust that your leadership may be better equipped to set said strategy and work to implement a strategy that is not what you would have chosen).
- 18pfsmt 7y ago
  Is less than 1% of an employee population expressing disagreement worthy of a discussion on HN? NYT has completely dropped their mask of objectivity. This is clearly agenda pushing by an extremist minority. WaPO called 'al big-daddy' an "austere scholar" yesterday. Beyond ridculous.
  - the_watcher 7y ago
    Personally, I agree with you in this example. As I mentioned elsewhere, given the culture at Facebook and its size, it's hard for me to imagine any major strategic decision that would not generate 250 employees willing to sign their name opposing it, down to things like eliminating single-use plastic. In my original comment, I was simply conceding that covering internal disagreement about a major policy, in general, is at least arguably news, while still trying to make the rest of my point: that this article is either written in bad faith or wildly unaware of how employees communicate internally at Facebook.
the_watcher 7y ago
I have a lot of issues with the framing of this article (it's hard to imagine any major strategic decision of Facebook that you couldn't find 250 employees to sign their name opposing it, and nearly everything that happens at Facebook has a corresponding, public, Workplace post). Moving past that, the ideas mentioned in the final paragraphs did have one interesting suggestion: change the visual display for political ads. Zuck has consistently made the good point that it's very difficult to set a clear boundary for what constitutes a political issue, but it is not difficult to determine whether or not an ad is being run by or in service of a given politician. Changing the visual display (even something as draconian as a persistent disclaimer stating that this is an advertisement with claims made by a politician and that everyone should do their own research) would at least remind people of the policy.
18pfsmt 7y ago
I hereby nominate Senator Warren for Minister of Truth due to her 25 years of service on the Cherokee Tribal council.
partiallypro 7y ago
Facebook has no business saying which ads are wrong/lies. If they do this it opens up such a can of worms. Their stance is the only logical stance. I imagine if AOC's ads were blocked on Facebook she would suddenly want answers and claim she was censored.
- throw_m239339 7y ago
  > Facebook has no business saying which ads are wrong/lies I mean it can and it does. The problem for Facebook is who Facebook should pander to. Politicians that want to break up Facebook, Google and co, or their opponent? There is an obvious conflict of interest, but many businesses have no problem promoting this or that political camp or politicians. What is interesting in Facebook case is the internal struggle between the top and some political activist employees who disagree on who Facebook should give a platform to.
  - partiallypro 7y ago
    The people that want to break up Facebook are the same people that want Facebook policing political speech. I don't see the conflict of interest on Facebook's part in this regard.
    - throw_m239339 7y ago
      Yes, but the dissident employees also want Facebook policing political speech.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      You're making an awful lot of assumptions. I want to break up Facebook; but so long as it exists in its present form, I don't want it to be policing any speech, much less political speech.
jdkee 7y ago
I posted this in the other thread on the topic, "The Facebook workers called for specific changes including holding political ads to the same standards as other advertising, stronger design measures to better distinguish political ads from other content, and restricting targeting for political ads. The employees also recommended imposing a silence period ahead of elections and imposing spend caps for politicians." In the U.S., political speech is often afforded the highest amount of protection from govt. censorship (c.f. the FB is private platform/publisher). One of the reasons articulated by some First Amendment commentators is that political speech is important to self-government in a democratic society. To quote Brandeis, "Political discussion is a political duty." Further, "Implied here is the notion of civic virtue - the duty to participate in politics, the importance of deliberation, and the notion that the end of the state is not neutrality by active assistance in provided conditions of freedom . . . ." [1] Public political speech should not be censored based on perceived truth or falsehood. In fact, political speech that promulgates false or misleading messages should be exposed to criticism. Again quoting Brandeis, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants . . . ." However, political speech is regulated to an extent by the F.E.C., e.g. requiring disclosure notices, etc. However, the political speech issues presented on FB can be more complex than that of traditional 20th century print and broadcast media. For example, micro-targeting political speech to certain demographics may cross the line from public political speech to private speech, and perhaps should be affored less protections. See Alexander Meiklejohn [2]. Also, content based prohibitions of speech tend to be more troubling than content neutral restrictions, such as time, place or manner restrictions on political ads or spending caps as mentioned in the employee statement above. [1] Lahav, Holmes and Brandeis: Libertarian and Republican Justifications for Free Speech, 4 J.L. & Pol. 451 (1987). [2] Meiklejohn, Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Governemnt (1948).
booboolayla 7y ago
Let's just remember that all this fake outrage over Facebook ads exists purely because HRC lost to DJT. When Google was providing not only ads as a product but actual human power to Obama's campaign, when tech execs went to work for Obama's administration (DJ Patil, Ravi from Twitter, many from Google) no one said a thing. DJT's campaign outsmarts HRC by using a perfectly legal product and here we are.
newscracker 7y ago
Honestly, I’ll believe that Facebook employees are sincerely concerned when I see them walking out or quitting in large numbers. “Open letters” will do zilch in a company known for lies, dishonesty and deception. Only if the earnings take a big hit will Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg do anything. Edit: Where were these employees when fake news and misinformation resulted in the killing of thousands of people in other countries?
vageli 7y ago
Why are we going after the platform and not the party posting the deceitful ads?
obiefernandez 7y ago
Am I the only one that wishes social media would just ban political advertising altogether?
deleted 7y ago
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rdlecler1 7y ago
Why doesn’t Facebook just reject political ads and keep itself out of trouble. It seems like it could be the less costly alternative.
burtonator 7y ago
These people are going to be constructively terminated. Constructive termination is where they want to fire you for 'x' but can't legally so they construct 'y' as the real reason for firing you.
iamleppert 7y ago
Why should Facebook now be responsible for fact-checking political ads? Watching the testimony where a bunch of politicians basically berated Mark Zuckerberg about how it’s now Facebook’s job to police politicians and keep them honest (because, you know, ALL politicians lie and cannot be trusted) is very telling about the state of our government and democracy. Our leaders cannot police themselves or their peers so they are looking to an outside entity to do it, and moreover casting blame for their own failures. Political attack ads have always been on cable TV, spouting bold-faced lies and half-truths for as long as I can remember. It now seems that politicians have found a new medium. And they want that service to bear the brunt of their operational status quo. Why not address the real problem in politics that leads to the symptoms of the disease at hand instead of shifting the work and burden of honesty to someone like Facebook? Has it even been proven they are equipped and capable of the task?
- StanislavPetrov 7y ago
  Forget about "equipped and capable". Who decides what is "true"? Is it the the US government's official version of "truth"? Is it "truth" that has the most objectively provable information? How are vague and/or ambiguous claims, about anything, supposed to be regarded in relation to their "truth"? Only someone who is incredibly stupid and/or trying to advance their own agenda would suggest that there is some sort of indisputable "truth" that can be discerned, let alone discerned by Facebook. The easy answer to this problem is, and has always been, to teach everyone how to think critically. Teach the Socratic Method to every child from birth, and reinforce that mode of thinking continually through their entire educational journey. But there lies the rub. The powers that be aren't interested in "truth" or people who are able to discern truth. They want to be able to disseminate their message, and have it uncritically absorbed by the masses. That isn't possible if the people are intelligent and equipped with the tools to think critically and recognize logical inconsistencies. For decades they had it both ways. The government had a population who largely lacked critical thinking skills and uncritically absorbed what they were told as "truth". The government also largely controlled the message disseminated by the corporate media outlets, which were very few before the explosion of the internet. They controlled the narrative, and had conditioned a population that uncritically accepted this narrative. Once the internet exploded on the scene, they lost control of the narrative. All of a sudden you had people who weren't equipped with critical thinking skills, who were extremely vulnerable to whatever narrative was being pushed, and you had a wide variety of people pushing a whole range of messages on the internet and over social media. Now the genie out of of the bottle. Information and (dis)information spreads like a virus across the internet and social media. How do you deal with this? There are two ways. Either make a concerted effort to teach people how to think, hash information and employ logical consistency in their thinking (which the powers that be don't want to do, because it means the permanent loss of control), or try to put the genie back in the bottle and silence all competing narratives. Its clear that the powers that be have chosen to attempt the latter, and it won't end well for anyone who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of action or freedom of thought.
luckydata 7y ago
The problem to me can be summarized pretty simply: since unfortunately the USA doesn't have any law on the books to require political advertisement to be truthful (contrary to normal advertisement where it is enforced aggressively). Considering how effective is Facebook at targeting individuals; you can do a lot of damage spreading lies on the platform. The question is moral: even if there's no law forbidding Facebook from spreading lies, should the company hold itself to a higher standard? IMHO Facebook should do that, because it risks creating a lifelong enemy in the political side that's likely to win the next elections and as the Romans would say, Vae Victis. https://www.factcheck.org/2004/06/false-ads-there-oughta-be-a-law-or-maybe-not/ https://www.factcheck.org/2004/06/false-ads-there-oughta-be-...
m463 7y ago
Maybe it would be preferable to provide an immutable log of political ads that have been run, who ran them and with all targeting information. This would be open and transparent and allow politicians to police the turf instead of facebook.
ismail-khan 7y ago
Title: > Dissent Erupts at Facebook Over Hands-Off Stance on Political Ads From the article: > More than 250 employees have signed the message Facebook has >35,000 employees. 250 signees is <0.7% of employees. Hardly seems like an "eruption" of dissent. The article does acknowledge this: > While the number of signatures on the letter was a fraction of Facebook’s 35,000-plus work force... So why use such a misleading title? "A tiny fraction of company employees does not like company policies" is a statement you can make about every sizable company.
sacrificedcapon 7y ago
Another example of "news" companies creating news to further their political agenda rather than reporting on actual news. More than 99% of facebook employees didn't "sign" the message. Less than 1% of facebook employees "signed/commented" on the message. But the "less than 1%" is in line with NYTimes political agenda so it gets artificially turned into major story and then spammed all over social media by their tech team. Wonderful. Also, isn't it about time NYTimes gets penalized for their endless spam here? Why are they allowed to spam 4 or 5 "news" articles to the frontpage everyday when others are not afforded the same privilege?
deleted 7y ago
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zachguo 7y ago
Why would people be willing to give up their fundamental rights so easily. Isn't free speech mainly about invalidating what is false or immoral through discourse?
renaudg 7y ago
Silicon Valley's propension to introduce externalities into the world yet never want to deal with the negative ones because "you guys have no idea how hard this is" will never cease to amaze me. But hey, I guess this is why that book is named "Chaos Monkeys". You know, if it's too hard to run a political ads business that doesn't enable mass scale targeted disinformation and wreaking havoc on democracies, then maybe the responsible thing to say isn't "sorry our platform has enabled 2 major election fuck-ups in the Western world in 2016, but it's not our role to be an arbiter of truth so we'll do nothing" but rather : "ok, we haven't yet found a way to operate this that's not harmful to society, so we've decided not to run political ads until we do " ? Because at the end of the day, if you don't take this into your own hands and instead you make it look like it's a choice between preserving a 15 years old private company's bottom line and keeping centuries old democracies functioning, that's gonna be a really easy one to make for lawmakers around the world. The hands off stance is a recipe for being regulated into oblivion eventually, which isn't good for shareholders either.
adultSwim 7y ago
"hands-off stance" That phrase is doing a lot of work

309 points by mindgam3 7y ago

rpmisms 7y ago

So, Facebook is operating like TV did forever?

mikece 7y ago
I don't see how they have a choice. If they decide to exercise editorial control then they might be considered in the content creation business by virtue of exercising editorial control and forfeit immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If Facebook had to be liable for what was published on their system they would be facing the possibility of liability judgements many times their market cap. Link: https://technology.findlaw.com/modern-law-practice/understanding-the-legal-issues-for-social-networking-sites-and.html https://technology.findlaw.com/modern-law-practice/understan...
- javagram 7y ago
  That is the exact opposite of what Section 230 does. Section 230 allows platforms to make moderation decisions while retaining legal immunity for the user created content they choose not to moderate. However, this is currently being threatened by republicans in the senate and Facebook is trying to avoid them taking steps to reduce the scope of 230 (which was already weakened recently by inclusion of a sex trafficking exemption).
  - HeroOfAges 7y ago
    One of the biggest reasons Section 230 is being threatened by Republicans in the senate is because they believe Facebook has a bias against conservative content and viewpoints on their platform. If it's up to Facebook to moderate content as they see fit, I find it very unlikely they would find a way to do so without appearing to be biased against someone or something.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      Of course Facebook has a bias against conservative viewpoints. You think the Facebook employees quoted in the article are referring to “misinformation” such as false assertions that our schools are “underfunded?” That is not to detract from the crazy things the right has said. But it’s impossible to read the NYT or HuffPo or the like without cringing over misleading assertions. And it’s not just those organizations. As a card carrying ACLU member, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked up a froth reading some email to members describing a case, only to be distraught when the representation turned out to be gravely misleading when I researched the case. I’ve started to notice that on HN, even EFF articles get some comments these days asking “wait, is that characterization accurate?”
      - kevingadd 7y ago
        So biased that they team up with major conservative news outlets and regularly consult with high profile conservative politicians and lobbyists, you mean? On an ongoing basis, conservative news sites tend to rank highly on FB's highest-traffic posts. If you want to live in a fantasy world that's fine, but please don't spread nonsense. FB has teamed up with Breitbart - a news outlet explicitly described as a platform for the alt-right, with a Black Crime vertical - for their new Journalism work, and Zuckerberg sits down with conservatives on a constant basis: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/10/14/deletefacebook-trends-after-report-says-zuckerberg-secretly-dined-with-conservatives/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/10/14/deletefacebook-...
        rayiner 7y ago
        The fact that Zuckerberg is getting in trouble for having meetings in “his home over the summer with conservative figures, including talk show hosts, journalists and at least one Republican” proves the biased context within which Facebook and Zuckerberg must operate. Zuckerberg is surrounded by people who are so partisan that the fact that he had dinner with “at least one Republican” is casus belli. Note that your own article discredits your premise that it is “nonsense” to suggest that Zuckerberg is in league with conservatives. Quoting a “normal“ Facebook user, it states: > “I think that it would be leveling the playing field if he reaches out to Conservatives because he surely reached out to Liberals,” she said.
- deleted 7y ago
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threeseed 7y ago
But TV stations curate their advertising. Many types of political ads are not able to be shown.
deleted 7y ago
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alkonaut 7y ago
Political TV ads should be banned too. Would make it consistent and understandable.
lalos 7y ago
I didn’t now TV ads offered targeting and tuning ads to highly specific groups of people, why didn’t Cambridge Analytica use tv ads instead of FB? The issue here is the micro targeting based on the personality of the uses stringing them along without them knowing. It is known that CA used personality tests to craft specific messages. How can it be the same?

aphextim 7y ago

Buying political ad is kind of like buying a new car, or a firearm. If you leave the dealership with your new vehicle, and decide to go run over 10 people, the dealer is not on the hook for your actions. Same with gun stores not being held liable for gun owners. There may be background checks in place to ensure they aren't selling a car to someone that can't drive (Driver's license) or to make sure someone can own a gun (Background check), but once you pass the initial screening you are on your own for liability. Political ads should be the same, basic KYC to verify the person buying the ad is who they say they are or allowed to represent an entity, but beyond that anything they want say let them say it, let the public scrutinize it, and let their ideas be debated. I could see a world of hurt if this was completely unregulated, as in anyone could pretend to be anyone and buy an ad any which way without verification. This would lead to an insane amount of slander/mudslinging. Just my 2 cents, probably not worth a penny.

deleted 7y ago
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throwaway_law 7y ago
>If you leave the dealership with your new vehicle, and decide to go run over 10 people, the dealer is not on the hook for your actions. Same with gun stores not being held liable for gun owners. That is not true of the law. If a gun store sells someone a gun, and the store owners knew or should have known you intend to kill someone with it...they gun store is most certainly liable. Even when the gun store wasn't aware the buyer intends to shoot someone, the gun store can be liable if it was negligent in the sale, like this case where KMart sold a gun to a drunk person who shot a woman, KMart was found negligent and liable for $12M
- aphextim 7y ago
  >That is not true of the law. If a gun store sells someone a gun, and the store owners knew or should have known you intend to kill someone with it...they gun store is most certainly liable. This is why literally the next line I say after the KYC/background check. Obviously if a guy sells a gun to someone without doing the proper checks they will be liable. Same if a dealer sells a car to someone without a license. >Same with gun stores not being held liable for gun owners. There may be background checks in place to ensure they aren't selling a car to someone that can't drive (Driver's license) or to make sure someone can own a gun (Background check), but once you pass the initial screening you are on your own for liability. >Political ads should be the same, basic KYC to verify the person buying the ad is who they say they are or allowed to represent an entity, but beyond that anything they want say let them say it, let the public scrutinize it, and let their ideas be debated.

diego 7y ago

The problem here is not so much Facebook (a company doing what companies do) as it is the regulatory system they fit in. This situation is unprecedented, as no single company had ever concentrated the media power Facebook has. Our legislators are barely starting to understand the problem, the ball is in their court really. In the meantime, Facebook will sit at the intersection of what's best for the company and what the law allows.

throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
Facebook probably has considerably less media power than TV stations of old. But that was ok, because they got regulated.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

If Facebook decides which political ads are truthful, then either they reject all political ads (because when was the last time someone ran a political ad that was wholly truthful?), or else they have do decide where to draw the line. Wherever they draw the line, they're going to reject someone's ad, and be exposed to screams of how they're biased for the other side. That's not going to end well for them. I mean, just running them all is also getting Zuckerberg raked over the coals[1], but I think picking and choosing which ads are "truthful enough" is going to be worse. And that's if Facebook is actually completely unbiased. If this becomes a vehicle for the biases of those at FB charged with judging the ads, that's even worse. [1] Zuck was getting raked over the coals in the name of truth, but I suspect it was at least partly because those who did so thought they would benefit politically if FB censored their opponents' ads.

eranima 7y ago
Not all ads necessarily contain statements that would force Facebook to take a side on any issue or become an arbiter of truth. They could simply restrict political ads to essentially just "Vote for [candidate]", or something similar.
- dmix 7y ago
  You mean ads paid for by (American?) registered campaigns or anyone who buys an advertisement deemed 'political'? It's easy to define an ideal ad or ideal bad-guy scenario, the problem is in the grey areas of categorizing such a chaotic, broad, and unpredictable group of content. That's always what ends up making this sort of thing a bad idea. They're always at massive risk for false positives, selective enforcement, moral panics, etc. It's also a giant distraction from real problems in the world and provides little long-term ROI compared to all the work that will go into it. It should be either all ads are okay with some obvious-tier moderation (ie, no ads promoting violence) OR no political ads at all. Let's not give FB et al even more power to choose what ads are okay, please.
  - vkou 7y ago
    What about ads that promote war? That obviously seems to be promoting violence to me, but unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be a popular opinion.

viburnum 7y ago

Does anyone know of a good group for tech workers to join to counter these issues? As an individual I don’t feel like I can do anything about this.

samename 7y ago
Checkout the Tech Workers Coalition! Edit: https://techworkerscoalition.org/ https://techworkerscoalition.org/
- viburnum 7y ago
  Thanks!
tathougies 7y ago
> As an individual I don’t feel like I can do anything about this. Welcome to living in a liberal democracy where we don't get to force someone to stop saying something because it makes us mad.
- viburnum 7y ago
  Ummm Mark Zuckerberg has a billion times more power than I do.
  - johnp314 7y ago
    But does not his vote count at +1, the exact same as your's does?
    - eppp 7y ago
      Its not the individual vote so much as the difference in effective power. Who cares how many votes he gets if he can spend billions of dollars to get what he wants. If he had the same sized speech as any average individual then who would care what he has to say about anything.

cryptica 7y ago

It would give Facebook way too much power if they could decide what is true and what is not. Better allow lies than to block free speech. I wonder if this open letter by employees advocating for more control over content combined with Mark Zuckerberg's 'hands-off stance on political ads' are just a coordinated act of 'good cop, bad cop' designed to manipulate the public. Also, my cynical side thinks that maybe some of these government authorities are in on this charade. It seems like a show to make people think that the good employees of Facebook are on the public's side. Whatever the big mean Zuckerberg wants must be bad for everyone. Facebook must have a PR team the size of a small country working for them by now. Of course everything they do is orchestrated. We have to be really cynical to see through the BS. The government is completely under the thumb of these big corporations. Many of the regulations that are coming out of Washington are carefully crafted by corporate lobbyists to superficially look like they're bad for corporations and good for the public, but in reality they're intended to give corporations more power and to create a moat around their monopolies. The government and corporations are on the same team; their common objective is to fool the public into slowly accepting the erosion of their most basic rights so that corporations can have more money and governments can have more power for themselves.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> Facebook should allow politicians to lie in ads There are more options than "Facebook regulates its ads" and "Facebook permits everything." I am in favor of having a permanent, public repository of political ads, where they have to sit for a "cooling-down" period prior to going out. This lets journalists and the public fact-check them before they're blasted to a targeted group. Another option is FEC, or some other independent body, overseeing political ads. There are a lot of options between open season and censorship, and it's only to Facebook's benefit that the debate is constrained to this axis.
- rayiner 7y ago
  We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse. Because you know that any such institution would just let pass false information that just happens to comport with liberal beliefs, while giving enhanced scrutiny to assertions from other viewpoints.

buboard 7y ago

He should not have allowed political ads in the US election. I dont' remember what was his excuse for allowing them but it sounded like a bad decision. There's just no winning in that game. He allows himself to be used as a scapegoat. Of course then they 'll go on and ask for facebook to censor all user posts , but that will probably hit free speech protections.

baq 7y ago
Remember Zuck wanted to run for president not that long ago. He wants to sit at the table and to do that he absolutely has to pick a side. How to do that and still pretend it’s in the interest of shareholders is what we’re kinda witnessing now.
- buboard 7y ago
  He has a seat in that table anyway, a front one. And even if he bans paid advertising, it is going to happen nevertheless through normal user posts. And if what you say is true, he should do the bidding of democrats and ban them.
- knzhou 7y ago
  > Remember Zuck wanted to run for president not that long ago. This is absolutely false. There has never been any evidence for this whatsoever, and it is a good example of a falsehood becoming true in the media by constant repetition.
  - ashelmire 7y ago
    If by this day, 40 years from now, Zuck hasn't at least launched an exploratory committee for a presidential run, I would be extremely surprised. If this were reddit, I'd promise to do something like eat an insect or a shoe or something.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      This is the same man who tried to suck up to the PRC by asking Xi Jinping to name his daughter. If he actually tried to run for POTUS, it would be a shitshow. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11910668/Chinese-president-snubs-Mark-Zuckerbergs-request-for-baby-name.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/119106...

Merrill 7y ago

Just put a heavy crawling international distress orange outline around political ads with a watermark saying "not fact checked".

devtul 7y ago
Imagine a law mandating a sign be put on every toilet stall door with the message "wipe your ass". Rather than overregulating, we should allow ourselves time to adapt to this new world, this might include - block your kid's ears - committing quite a few mistakes and learning with them.
- Merrill 7y ago
  We do have restaurant washroom signs - "Handwashing Laws For All 50 States" - https://www.signs.com/blog/handwashing-laws-for-all-50-states/ https://www.signs.com/blog/handwashing-laws-for-all-50-state...
- throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
  Not so clear when there’s a professional psychologist hired to convince you your ass will be clean whispering through the glory hole.

rayiner 7y ago

Do you want to get CDA 230 repealed? Because this is how you get CDA 230 repealed.

Miner49er 7y ago

One thing to note: this only applies to politicians. It seems normal people and political groups can't post false political ads. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-technology-202/2019/10/28/the-technology-202-facebook-takes-down-false-ad-from-political-group-but-it-still-won-t-police-politicians-directly/5db5bf61602ff10cf14f97e5/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-tec...

w-j-w 7y ago
This is what makes Facebook's behavior really inexcusable. Facebook has granted these people a special power on the platform, but are unwilling to police it.
- knzhou 7y ago
  Once again you are dammed if you do and damned if you don’t. If you like, imagine a totally random hypothetical set of Facebook rules (for example, the exact reverse of what the current rules are). You will find that it is easy, really completely trivial, to come up with reasons that this is “inexcusable” as well. The whole discourse around this is poisoned. I have literally watched people completely flip their principles in mere minutes, just to keep condemning Facebook.
  - burkaman 7y ago
    You're not damned if you don't. Stop hosting political ads. I guess then you're "damned" because you make less money, but I don't think that's what you meant.
    - knzhou 7y ago
      And what is a political ad? Does an ad for an abortion clinic count? How about an ad asking for donations for Palestine? Or Hong Kong? Or wall construction? How about an ad that only points out that stocks have gone up, along with a picture of Donald Trump and a flag in the background? Obviously this falls prey to the classic problem, which is that every partisan sees messages that benefit the other side, even incredibly indirectly, as insidious manipulation, while dismissing outright propaganda from their own side as “just getting the truth out”.

w-j-w 7y ago

The amount of people making weak "both sides" arguments (nobody runs political ads without lies in them) in this thread is alarming. Facebook is easily capable of fact checking every ad on their platform, and if they can't, they should'nt run them at all. We should be prepared to demand that all political advertising be free of outright falsehoods.

spunker540 7y ago
I agree that claims like "the earth is flat" and "vaccinations cause autism" should probably be removed - but the trump ad in question while likely to be false, does not constitute an outright falsehood. If you ask anyone on the right they'll say it's probably true and at the very least just as truthful as any leftist political ad. Furthermore, in the 1400s an ad claiming that the world is round would have been deemed outright false, and in the early 1900s an ad claiming equality between all races would have been deemed outright false, and in 2001 an ad claiming that Iraq had no WMDs would have been deemed outright false -- yet all are now known to be true.

ALittleLight 7y ago

250 signatures on a letter at a company with 35,000 employees is an eruption of dissent? I'm reminded of a quote about urban warfare, something like "In a city of 10 million, if 1% of the population opposes you, you have 100,000 adversaries." That seems to apply here. 0.7% of the company is writing to complain? Okay - what amount do you expect to complain? How many would complain about the opposite direction?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fuzzyset 7y ago
Publicly stating your opposition to a contentious issue your company is facing isn't exactly an easy thing to do. Workplace marginalization is a real thing.
- tastygreenapple 7y ago
  Don't you think workplace marginalization would cut the other way? If you have 250 people angry enough about this to leak to the press, imagine what they'd do to their fellow employees who oppose them.
- the_watcher 7y ago
  It's pretty common at Facebook. Andrew Bosworth repeatedly writes about the importance of malcontents, and there are many employees who repeatedly push back on leadership. This takes place almost entirely on Workplace.
  - huntermonk 7y ago
    I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. This is correct. I've never worked somewhere where challenging leadership is so encouraged.
deleted 7y ago
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7y ago

40acres 7y ago

I don't understand why Zuckerberg doesn't just cut his losses and remove political ads. It does not seem worth it financially or non-financially.

cryptozeus 7y ago
Non-financially is a big one...they can really determine the outcome of elections here , that is a power they don't want to loose
- mliker 7y ago
  > that is a power they don't want to lose What makes you think they want that power in the first place?
  - maxdamantus 7y ago
    Because they get to sell that power (advertising space) to others.
  - jeffshek 7y ago
    IIRC, Zuck has debated running in the future. Having Facebook with that power would probably benefit.
    - war1025 7y ago
      With the fit everyone threw over Trump having (relatively speaking) minor business connections, I'd hate to see what people would say over Zuckerberg running for any sort of office.
  - baddox 7y ago
    I'm not really sure how to answer that question without just saying how extremely obvious it is that a massive national (and international) company would benefit massively from having influence over USA national politics.

rando14775 7y ago

The problem with Facebook is that it's too big. Different online communities have different standards of what sort of behaviour is acceptable. Facebook is effectively splintered, there is no one community and so there is disagreement on the community standards, to a degree that I don't think can realistically be resolved. Splintering may very well be the result. If social media were more decentralized, the responsibility would also be decentralized. Standards would set by the communities. And as for overall standards, that would be dealt with by the legislature and courts, which would be a huge improvement, as those are way more transparent and fair than Facebook et al. Abuse of power by Facebook (or advertisers pressuring them) would be much less of a problem if people could move more easily between social media platforms. I think a more decentralized model of social media would be good all around. Add some interoperability so you can still communicate when you're not on the same platform, this should alleviate some of the tendencies for these platforms to become so big and centralized.

specialist 7y ago

The Correct Answer is to restore the Fairness Doctrine, updated to include cable, social, etc. Media companies rejoiced when Reagan sabotaged political discourse. Political ads are huge money and are almost pure profit. Why would Facebook, Twitter, etc. behave any differently? https://wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

buboard 7y ago
Facebook makes way more than a couple hundred $$M that they spent in last elections. And the cost of being broken up post election is far higher, so it definitely doesn't make economic sense for them
- specialist 7y ago
  What would Twitter be worth today without politics? CNN? Perhaps the same is true of Facebook. Can't think why it wouldn't be, but don't care enough to find out. Because it's Facebook.

dwoozle 7y ago

I don’t know why Zuckerberg has so colossally failed to convince the world that Facebook, Inc. should not be an arbiter of what is true and what is false.

docmars 7y ago

The responsibility of handling and interpreting misinformation needs to be shifted to the consumer. People will lie to you almost every day, and you must figure out how to deal with it. The validity of information should be vetted by those consuming it, not an entity who is in any kind of power. If enough people think someone is lying or untruthful, with enough evidence, then the content should be flagged, labeled, or potentially taken down, because every consumer had the opportunity to contribute their perspective leading up to handling said content. We need to move away from the idea that certain authorities in our lives (governments, companies, organizations, or any entity with significant power) can determine what's true or not, because it's highly likely to be biased in either direction. It's incredibly easy for a collective body to double cross their word—to say one thing and intend another at the expense of those who aren't in power. The problem is, when an organization makes the decision to censor content, it is usually a very small few who make that biased decision on behalf of the—seemingly big—company. Effectively, it is a small team, or even one or two people, unless it's done by a dedicated team of moderators driven by policies, procedures—or worse: bribery—that may or may not be something those individuals believe in. When it's left to the people interacting with that content, it's their choice in how to deal with it individually or collectively. That is maximum freedom. To enforce censorship, as a government or organization, is to assume that consumers are idiots, and that's not an assumption they should be making.

skybrian 7y ago
Yes, people do lie, but there are plenty of regulations for commercial speech. There are laws against fraud, and so on. Acceptable ads policies may be implemented by private companies, but few people would say they aren't needed or aren't in the public interest. Furthermore, you've bought into some libertarian assumptions about how markets work that aren't actually true. Some trust is necessary to make buying convenient, and the organizations running marketplaces have incentive to regulate who can sell there.
- docmars 7y ago
  I think the point I'm trying to drive more is: the opportunity and ability to moderate content, speech, etc. needs to be in the hands of the people, not just the entity. On Facebook, I have the ability to report or flag a post, and that's a fair amount of power I have, especially since I have the opportunity to fact-check said post if I want to, and contribute to a sincere and meaningful debate around whether that content should be available to others or not. I don't think an organization should be able to blanket-determine what's acceptable or not, lacking transparency into the exact vetting process used show or hide a piece of content, because their values may be at odds with enough of the people using it (i.e. a large enough group of people hold a political view that Facebook may deem "dangerous"). I am confident we can agree that fraud is universally something that most people do not want, except for our lovely fraudsters. When it comes to politics, that is an entirely different ballgame. We are dealing with equally valid views on both ends of the spectrum, in an environment where the majority of those in power are condemning and attempting to control speech coming from the one side. I say this because of the sheer number of anecdotes (including my own) that have noticed practically unanimous support from most major media institutions for one side, while also condemning the other side. I'm not going to specify which sides, because I believe it's obvious.

oxplot 7y ago

Why are the only two options to let ads through or reject them? How about, fact check them and visibly mark them as being potentially false and a link to more details. This should make both sides happy: Zuck who believes the public should decide for themselves, and the rest.

sachdevap 7y ago
It would not make the GOP politicians happy who wield their administrative power over FB, and have a lot of political capital invested in blatantly lying to the public.
knzhou 7y ago
Again, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. In fact in this case we’ve already been through this. Instead of “why does Facebook allow possibly false ads” the discourse instantly becomes “why did Facebook allow this possibly false ad to go without a marker / why did Facebook put a marker on this ad that’s true in spirit”. For every action there is an equal and opposite hit piece.
- sachdevap 7y ago
  I've seen you repeat these arguments over and over in this thread, without suggesting any solution. I am guessing you are content with the status quo of Facebook.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    I agree there is a problem, I simply disagree that there is an easy solution. All "solutions" people suggest either propose to make Facebook nakedly partisan, or would just cause the very same criticisms to reignite in essentially the same form the next day.
    - sachdevap 7y ago
      Facebook is already doing moderation of political content posted by non-politicians. See the latest news about content removed about Lindsey Graham. Facebook is choosing not to stay on the sidelines themselves already. They are just doing so for politicians. The status quo of Facebook is worse than them not touching any of the political content on their site.

scottrogers86 7y ago

Money is a powerful drug.

devtul 7y ago

I don't want a private owned platform that as far as today plays a huge role in being a place for the public discourse to regulate speech. Of course, and it pains me to have to state the obvious for fear of strawmaning, saved the applicable boundaries like distribution of child porn, terrorist groups recruiting pages and so on. Take Twitter as an example, does an abhorrent job on that, they have no standard other than liked/disliked people. - They have no transparency, people you follow will get banned and you won't be notified. - People will get banned for tweeting exactly what "liked" people tweeted. - They made the utterly stupid decision of changing the interpretation of their Verified mark from "This is the real person" which is perfect, to "we kind of support whatever this verified person says" which makes no freaking sense. Can you imagine a Bell PR guy saying at a press conference "We are sorry for what one of our landlines customers said on the phone, we turned their line off"? It is transparent to me that any effort in making platforms like Facebook, Twitter and so on to take the role of speech regulators isn't coming from regular people, it comes to the detriment of the common folk like me and you.

simlevesque 7y ago
I downvoted you because you are basically saying that if we don't agree with you, we're not regular people or common folk.
- kryogen1c 7y ago
  > I downvoted you I initially frowned upon your comment, interpreting it as self-involved, ego-stroking, grandstanding. Upon further reflection, this is a forum, and one that that aims specifically for intellectual discourse. If we are not simply to degenerate into some kind of karma farm, i think opening the conversation in this manner is a good idea.
- CompanionCuuube 7y ago
  No, the comment was about the source of the driving force of the effort. Even if there are regular people who share the same sentiment, the fact is that the effort is being coopted by those special interests. Have you heard of the term "astroturf"?

MayeulC 7y ago

Maybe it is just me, as I didn't see it in the comments. But why on earth should Facebook have to run political ads at all? This should be regulated. Provide the same exposure to all the candidates. No targetted ads (how come targetted + political ever seemed like a good idea?). Only link to their program if there's a need at all. But I bet there's plenty of people in queue for ads on FB's platform, so I don't think that not running political ads would hurt them much.

Bhilai 7y ago

This has came up in my conversations with friends who work at Facebook and they always seem to use some internal talking points about creating a "Ministry of truth" type of situation. They argue that Facebook cannot (or should not) be the arbitrator of truth. My answer to them is very simple, if you want to be a (social) media company then you have to take some (social) responsibility and not amplify falsehoods in an already charged environment. Corporate profits at the cost of ruining the society by spreading falsehoods should not be an acceptable norm.

knzhou 7y ago
And precisely who do you think should be appointed to head your “ministry of truth”? For example, I believe Facebook employees currently skew 90% Democrat. Should the committee seek out and add more Republicans in order to have a 50/50 split reflective of the nation, or is a 90/10 split okay? If so, how do you justify this to the other side?
- sangnoir 7y ago
  > And precisely who do you think should be appointed to head your “ministry of truth”? The FEC. If an ad can't be printed in a newspaper or shown on TV, it shouldn't be on FB.
  - bryan_w 7y ago
    Then you may be surprised to find out that most ads being discussed are allowed on TV: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct/15/elizabeth-warren/phony-facebook-ad-warren-said-most-tv-networks-wil/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...
  - the_watcher 7y ago
    Advertisements that are false, in many cases, are legally required to be aired on TV or in newspapers, for precisely the reason that there is a public interest in avoiding media outlets becoming arbiters of truth and restricting access to political speech. Those media outlets are free to fact check and run articles or programs challenging the content of the ads.

braythwayt 7y ago

This is not a rhetorical question: If it's ok to lie in a political ad, if the entire responsibility for determining its truthfulness lies on the shoulders of the people view the ad, is it also ok for an administration to lie to citizens?

standardUser 7y ago
Based on all of the evidence thus far, yes, there are no consequences whatsoever for the federal executive to lie about all manner of topics literally every day, up to an including matters of national security.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

salimmadjd 7y ago

The mainstream media has lost control of the narrative because of places like FB. Everything that covers politics is a form of political ad and EVERYONE has an agenda. So how will you control that? What NYT, WaPo others offered was a brand and certain Network Effects (subscription). They can not compete with the Network Effects of FB and have been trying to rein in FB. These entities are desperate to regain control of the narrative or they'll lose their value. The reality is, NYT or WAPO can run false news or "political ads" under the name of op-eds. On their own platforms they can highlight these op-eds on their homepage or they can just boost them on FB. If NYT is fine with op-eds that talks about anything political related as "political ads" then they have a standing here. It no longer has to be op-ed. Even their news coverage is turning to political propaganda. You know how bad NYT's own editorial practice is? Just watch this recent re-writing of history [0]. Any let's not forget it wasn't the political ads that gave us Donal Trump, but the $5 Billion free advertising that Trump got by the mainstream media [1], watch Bannon talk about how Trump got initial boost in the polls[2] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78CE8eiWItY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78CE8eiWItY [1] https://www.thestreet.com/story/13896916/1/donald-trump-rode-5-billion-in-free-media-to-the-white-house.html https://www.thestreet.com/story/13896916/1/donald-trump-rode... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKuPYArH0Gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKuPYArH0Gs (this is an interesting interview and Bannon talks about how Trump got his boost in the polls by mainstream media)

tenebrisalietum 7y ago

I can't blame Zuck to work so hard and try to execute the balancing act to get that political ad money, because it's targeting what is now Facebook's core demographic. Young people aren't using Facebook anymore. This doesn't mean young people don't have an account, but I suspect no one under 35-40 is really engaging with the platform meaningfully. Facebook is the new TV and is going to go out like TV - in a slow, overly long drawn out whimper chock-full of pharmaceutical, lawyer, and mesothelioma ads aimed at the aging demographic. Facebook has a stranglehold over older people but younger people are not falling into the trap. Facebook's ability to give Zuckerberg power is going to fade over time.

bmarquez 7y ago
> pharmaceutical, lawyer, and mesothelioma ads aimed at the aging demographic I created a new fake account a while back and for a while many of my ads were about vape pen litigation, similar to TV lawyer ads but for a younger crowd.
cal5k 7y ago
...you're aware that Facebook owns Instagram, yes?

tomohawk 7y ago

Facts and truth are two different things. A set of facts can be chosen to say something untruthful. And there can be different 'truths' depending on the values people bring to the analysis of facts. Having Facebook, or their designates, arbitrate 'truth' will only create a privatized ministry of truth.

MaysonL 7y ago

A few links that may indicate in which direction Facebook is biased: https://twitter.com/donie/status/1188593050546855937 https://twitter.com/donie/status/1188593050546855937 https://mashable.com/article/facebook-false-green-new-deal-ad-removed/ https://mashable.com/article/facebook-false-green-new-deal-a... https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing

the_watcher 7y ago

> For the past two weeks, the text of the letter has been publicly visible on Facebook Workplace, a software program that the Silicon Valley company uses to communicate internally. For those who have never used Workplace, this literally just means "someone posted it to Workplace." It's not an abnormal or unique thing. It also wouldn't surprise me if "250 people signed it" means "250 people commented in agreement". I wish the reporting gave more details on who posted the petitions and what it means to "sign the petition". I understand protecting sources, but unless Workplace has added new features, anything posted has to come from someone with a profile. That said, it's still (arguably, at least) news to cover internal divisions over a policy, but unfortunately the authors don't seem to realize how common it is at Facebook for employees to openly push back on leadership decisions while concurrently working as hard as they can to deliver impact downstream of them (it may sound odd, but it's entirely possible to disagree with a strategy and vocally advocate for your preferred course but also trust that your leadership may be better equipped to set said strategy and work to implement a strategy that is not what you would have chosen).

18pfsmt 7y ago
Is less than 1% of an employee population expressing disagreement worthy of a discussion on HN? NYT has completely dropped their mask of objectivity. This is clearly agenda pushing by an extremist minority. WaPO called 'al big-daddy' an "austere scholar" yesterday. Beyond ridculous.
- the_watcher 7y ago
  Personally, I agree with you in this example. As I mentioned elsewhere, given the culture at Facebook and its size, it's hard for me to imagine any major strategic decision that would not generate 250 employees willing to sign their name opposing it, down to things like eliminating single-use plastic. In my original comment, I was simply conceding that covering internal disagreement about a major policy, in general, is at least arguably news, while still trying to make the rest of my point: that this article is either written in bad faith or wildly unaware of how employees communicate internally at Facebook.

the_watcher 7y ago

I have a lot of issues with the framing of this article (it's hard to imagine any major strategic decision of Facebook that you couldn't find 250 employees to sign their name opposing it, and nearly everything that happens at Facebook has a corresponding, public, Workplace post). Moving past that, the ideas mentioned in the final paragraphs did have one interesting suggestion: change the visual display for political ads. Zuck has consistently made the good point that it's very difficult to set a clear boundary for what constitutes a political issue, but it is not difficult to determine whether or not an ad is being run by or in service of a given politician. Changing the visual display (even something as draconian as a persistent disclaimer stating that this is an advertisement with claims made by a politician and that everyone should do their own research) would at least remind people of the policy.

18pfsmt 7y ago

I hereby nominate Senator Warren for Minister of Truth due to her 25 years of service on the Cherokee Tribal council.

partiallypro 7y ago

Facebook has no business saying which ads are wrong/lies. If they do this it opens up such a can of worms. Their stance is the only logical stance. I imagine if AOC's ads were blocked on Facebook she would suddenly want answers and claim she was censored.

throw_m239339 7y ago
> Facebook has no business saying which ads are wrong/lies I mean it can and it does. The problem for Facebook is who Facebook should pander to. Politicians that want to break up Facebook, Google and co, or their opponent? There is an obvious conflict of interest, but many businesses have no problem promoting this or that political camp or politicians. What is interesting in Facebook case is the internal struggle between the top and some political activist employees who disagree on who Facebook should give a platform to.
- partiallypro 7y ago
  The people that want to break up Facebook are the same people that want Facebook policing political speech. I don't see the conflict of interest on Facebook's part in this regard.
  - throw_m239339 7y ago
    Yes, but the dissident employees also want Facebook policing political speech.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    You're making an awful lot of assumptions. I want to break up Facebook; but so long as it exists in its present form, I don't want it to be policing any speech, much less political speech.

jdkee 7y ago

I posted this in the other thread on the topic, "The Facebook workers called for specific changes including holding political ads to the same standards as other advertising, stronger design measures to better distinguish political ads from other content, and restricting targeting for political ads. The employees also recommended imposing a silence period ahead of elections and imposing spend caps for politicians." In the U.S., political speech is often afforded the highest amount of protection from govt. censorship (c.f. the FB is private platform/publisher). One of the reasons articulated by some First Amendment commentators is that political speech is important to self-government in a democratic society. To quote Brandeis, "Political discussion is a political duty." Further, "Implied here is the notion of civic virtue - the duty to participate in politics, the importance of deliberation, and the notion that the end of the state is not neutrality by active assistance in provided conditions of freedom . . . ." [1] Public political speech should not be censored based on perceived truth or falsehood. In fact, political speech that promulgates false or misleading messages should be exposed to criticism. Again quoting Brandeis, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants . . . ." However, political speech is regulated to an extent by the F.E.C., e.g. requiring disclosure notices, etc. However, the political speech issues presented on FB can be more complex than that of traditional 20th century print and broadcast media. For example, micro-targeting political speech to certain demographics may cross the line from public political speech to private speech, and perhaps should be affored less protections. See Alexander Meiklejohn [2]. Also, content based prohibitions of speech tend to be more troubling than content neutral restrictions, such as time, place or manner restrictions on political ads or spending caps as mentioned in the employee statement above. [1] Lahav, Holmes and Brandeis: Libertarian and Republican Justifications for Free Speech, 4 J.L. & Pol. 451 (1987). [2] Meiklejohn, Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Governemnt (1948).

booboolayla 7y ago

Let's just remember that all this fake outrage over Facebook ads exists purely because HRC lost to DJT. When Google was providing not only ads as a product but actual human power to Obama's campaign, when tech execs went to work for Obama's administration (DJ Patil, Ravi from Twitter, many from Google) no one said a thing. DJT's campaign outsmarts HRC by using a perfectly legal product and here we are.

newscracker 7y ago

Honestly, I’ll believe that Facebook employees are sincerely concerned when I see them walking out or quitting in large numbers. “Open letters” will do zilch in a company known for lies, dishonesty and deception. Only if the earnings take a big hit will Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg do anything. Edit: Where were these employees when fake news and misinformation resulted in the killing of thousands of people in other countries?

vageli 7y ago

Why are we going after the platform and not the party posting the deceitful ads?

obiefernandez 7y ago

Am I the only one that wishes social media would just ban political advertising altogether?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rdlecler1 7y ago

Why doesn’t Facebook just reject political ads and keep itself out of trouble. It seems like it could be the less costly alternative.

burtonator 7y ago

These people are going to be constructively terminated. Constructive termination is where they want to fire you for 'x' but can't legally so they construct 'y' as the real reason for firing you.

iamleppert 7y ago

Why should Facebook now be responsible for fact-checking political ads? Watching the testimony where a bunch of politicians basically berated Mark Zuckerberg about how it’s now Facebook’s job to police politicians and keep them honest (because, you know, ALL politicians lie and cannot be trusted) is very telling about the state of our government and democracy. Our leaders cannot police themselves or their peers so they are looking to an outside entity to do it, and moreover casting blame for their own failures. Political attack ads have always been on cable TV, spouting bold-faced lies and half-truths for as long as I can remember. It now seems that politicians have found a new medium. And they want that service to bear the brunt of their operational status quo. Why not address the real problem in politics that leads to the symptoms of the disease at hand instead of shifting the work and burden of honesty to someone like Facebook? Has it even been proven they are equipped and capable of the task?

StanislavPetrov 7y ago
Forget about "equipped and capable". Who decides what is "true"? Is it the the US government's official version of "truth"? Is it "truth" that has the most objectively provable information? How are vague and/or ambiguous claims, about anything, supposed to be regarded in relation to their "truth"? Only someone who is incredibly stupid and/or trying to advance their own agenda would suggest that there is some sort of indisputable "truth" that can be discerned, let alone discerned by Facebook. The easy answer to this problem is, and has always been, to teach everyone how to think critically. Teach the Socratic Method to every child from birth, and reinforce that mode of thinking continually through their entire educational journey. But there lies the rub. The powers that be aren't interested in "truth" or people who are able to discern truth. They want to be able to disseminate their message, and have it uncritically absorbed by the masses. That isn't possible if the people are intelligent and equipped with the tools to think critically and recognize logical inconsistencies. For decades they had it both ways. The government had a population who largely lacked critical thinking skills and uncritically absorbed what they were told as "truth". The government also largely controlled the message disseminated by the corporate media outlets, which were very few before the explosion of the internet. They controlled the narrative, and had conditioned a population that uncritically accepted this narrative. Once the internet exploded on the scene, they lost control of the narrative. All of a sudden you had people who weren't equipped with critical thinking skills, who were extremely vulnerable to whatever narrative was being pushed, and you had a wide variety of people pushing a whole range of messages on the internet and over social media. Now the genie out of of the bottle. Information and (dis)information spreads like a virus across the internet and social media. How do you deal with this? There are two ways. Either make a concerted effort to teach people how to think, hash information and employ logical consistency in their thinking (which the powers that be don't want to do, because it means the permanent loss of control), or try to put the genie back in the bottle and silence all competing narratives. Its clear that the powers that be have chosen to attempt the latter, and it won't end well for anyone who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of action or freedom of thought.

luckydata 7y ago

The problem to me can be summarized pretty simply: since unfortunately the USA doesn't have any law on the books to require political advertisement to be truthful (contrary to normal advertisement where it is enforced aggressively). Considering how effective is Facebook at targeting individuals; you can do a lot of damage spreading lies on the platform. The question is moral: even if there's no law forbidding Facebook from spreading lies, should the company hold itself to a higher standard? IMHO Facebook should do that, because it risks creating a lifelong enemy in the political side that's likely to win the next elections and as the Romans would say, Vae Victis. https://www.factcheck.org/2004/06/false-ads-there-oughta-be-a-law-or-maybe-not/ https://www.factcheck.org/2004/06/false-ads-there-oughta-be-...

m463 7y ago

Maybe it would be preferable to provide an immutable log of political ads that have been run, who ran them and with all targeting information. This would be open and transparent and allow politicians to police the turf instead of facebook.

ismail-khan 7y ago

Title: > Dissent Erupts at Facebook Over Hands-Off Stance on Political Ads From the article: > More than 250 employees have signed the message Facebook has >35,000 employees. 250 signees is <0.7% of employees. Hardly seems like an "eruption" of dissent. The article does acknowledge this: > While the number of signatures on the letter was a fraction of Facebook’s 35,000-plus work force... So why use such a misleading title? "A tiny fraction of company employees does not like company policies" is a statement you can make about every sizable company.

sacrificedcapon 7y ago

Another example of "news" companies creating news to further their political agenda rather than reporting on actual news. More than 99% of facebook employees didn't "sign" the message. Less than 1% of facebook employees "signed/commented" on the message. But the "less than 1%" is in line with NYTimes political agenda so it gets artificially turned into major story and then spammed all over social media by their tech team. Wonderful. Also, isn't it about time NYTimes gets penalized for their endless spam here? Why are they allowed to spam 4 or 5 "news" articles to the frontpage everyday when others are not afforded the same privilege?

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zachguo 7y ago

Why would people be willing to give up their fundamental rights so easily. Isn't free speech mainly about invalidating what is false or immoral through discourse?

renaudg 7y ago

Silicon Valley's propension to introduce externalities into the world yet never want to deal with the negative ones because "you guys have no idea how hard this is" will never cease to amaze me. But hey, I guess this is why that book is named "Chaos Monkeys". You know, if it's too hard to run a political ads business that doesn't enable mass scale targeted disinformation and wreaking havoc on democracies, then maybe the responsible thing to say isn't "sorry our platform has enabled 2 major election fuck-ups in the Western world in 2016, but it's not our role to be an arbiter of truth so we'll do nothing" but rather : "ok, we haven't yet found a way to operate this that's not harmful to society, so we've decided not to run political ads until we do " ? Because at the end of the day, if you don't take this into your own hands and instead you make it look like it's a choice between preserving a 15 years old private company's bottom line and keeping centuries old democracies functioning, that's gonna be a really easy one to make for lawmakers around the world. The hands off stance is a recipe for being regulated into oblivion eventually, which isn't good for shareholders either.

adultSwim 7y ago

"hands-off stance" That phrase is doing a lot of work