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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 polit

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.
  - rocqua 7y ago
    Promote it in the abstract, or promote a very specific war. The first seems inside the line to me (stuff like 'support our troops' or 'Join the army, take the fight to our enemy'). The second is past the line (stuff like 'we need boots on the ground in Syria, write your senator!'). I guess legally there is a difference between 'promoting violence between citizens' and 'promoting violence in war'. Since the first is usually illegal, and the second is not.
  - ivalm 7y ago
    In general, government has a monopoly on legal violence. As such ads that promote war are promoting legal violence. Rules against promoting violence are (implicitly) targeting illegal violence. At the same time, if FB reduced political adds (including any war/military related ones), I would be supportive.

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.
- rocqua 7y ago
  Promote it in the abstract, or promote a very specific war. The first seems inside the line to me (stuff like 'support our troops' or 'Join the army, take the fight to our enemy'). The second is past the line (stuff like 'we need boots on the ground in Syria, write your senator!'). I guess legally there is a difference between 'promoting violence between citizens' and 'promoting violence in war'. Since the first is usually illegal, and the second is not.
- ivalm 7y ago
  In general, government has a monopoly on legal violence. As such ads that promote war are promoting legal violence. Rules against promoting violence are (implicitly) targeting illegal violence. At the same time, if FB reduced political adds (including any war/military related ones), I would be supportive.