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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

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.
  - ska 7y ago
    We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse. This statement doesn't make sense to me. Nothing to do with conservative vs. liberal biases; just that the majority of current political discourse does not go through even nominally journalistic outlets, let alone rigorously journalistic.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse How does "a permanent, public repository of political ads" give journalists any advantage? I just mentioned them as one potential user of a public database.
  - JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
    If anything, I think journalists need more influence on political discourse. Currently the discourse is controlled by media companies, not journalists - and there is a big difference there.
  - whatthesmack 7y ago
    I was just going to upvote and keep scrolling, but I saw the three replies to your post critique something you said that I strongly agreed with. > We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse This so true in this day and age. The quality of journalism has collectively nosedived, but the journalists keep producing and continue to guide the “conversation”. I’m not quite sure what those who disagree with the statement actually do believe is going well and why journalists need to have even more control over the conversation. > ...would just let pass false information that just happens to comport with liberal beliefs This is the natural course for a technology company in modern society. The biases of tech company employees is clearly more left-leaning. If Facebook employees or contractors were deciding what’s true and false, the information displayed on Facebook would (does?) have a leftist slant. This is a bad thing to any fair-minded person and why Facebook shouldn’t be regulating free speech in political ads.
- jpadkins 7y ago
  option 2 will create status quo bias. The system in power will marginally favor ads that keeps the current system in power. option 1 can't be effective unless you also know the targeting criteria of the ads. Otherwise, interested parties cannot create 'counter propaganda' at the same cost/benefit ratio as the original propaganda campaign. And all it is really doing is decreasing the time to counter propaganda, not reducing the volume of it. good ideas tho
- kansface 7y ago
  > This lets journalists and the public fact-check them before they're blasted to a targeted group. I believe this proposal to be worse than the current state of affairs. I would not delegate censorship of what I may read or watch to a non-elected political body, and doubly so to one which skews >90% to one political party. > Another option is FEC, or some other independent body, overseeing political ads. Once again, I do not understand this rational! I assume you do not like how one party in particular is acting, but you would delegate that very same party the power to oversee the censors over all online electoral ads?
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > I would not delegate censorship of what I may read or watch to a non-elected political body Who said anything about censorship? What I proposed has two parts. One, when a political ad is bought, it must wait a certain amount of time (I propose a week) before being displayed. Two, immediately on being bought, it must be made publicly accessible in a permanent database. The latter lets anyone fact check the ad. They DON'T get to take down the ad. But the public gets time to evaluate it before it's blasted to users. This deters micro-targeting groups with misinformation. It also creates a public record of what a campaign has said to whom, for contemporaneous and later reference by the public. A lot of people got triggered by the term "journalist." I'm using that term broadly, to include anyone from a hobbyist with a blog to the mass media. I fundamentally disagree with censoring political speech, even lies. But the current system is unworkable. We need heightened and broadened disclosures for micro-targeted ads.
    - justin66 7y ago
      > But the public gets time to evaluate it before it's blasted to users. I believe I understand the implied difference between sequestering a video somewhere where it can be evaluated by the public and simply "blasting it to users" alongside content they are consuming, but I wonder if sequestering videos in this way would have the effect you think it will have. It's a system that would reward highly provocative videos with the potential to immediately go viral regardless of their intrinsic merit or truthfulness. > A lot of people got triggered by the term "journalist." Right. The issue with the system you're describing is, entirely too many people will react to an online story from the NY Times pointing out a dozen untruthful things about the latest, newly introduced and sequestered angry political ad from whoever by delighting in the distress caused by the lies in the ad, joking about how the libs have been owned, passing links around to the video, and generally spreading falsehoods about the critiques of the ad and the people doing the critiqing. If the whole trolling effort is successful then it will become a meta-story about stupidity and falsehood among the people who aren't dumb enough to believe whatever is being asserted in the ad, but the one thing that will not happen is everyone joining together to condemn the falsehoods in the ad. > I'm using that term broadly, to include anyone from a hobbyist with a blog to the mass media. Right, and as nice and democratizing as that can be, the practical effect is often to legitimize bullshitters and put them on the same level as serious people. I am afraid in the example above that is part of how these ads would go viral. Or maybe it's not all that bad. I guess I hope not. I do think your idea is interesting.
vasirian 7y ago
They do seem to have successfully shifted the debate to whether or not they should be deciding about the ad instead of why they are somehow exempt from FEC regulations.
- cryptica 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure that the government is in on it. Every elected member of government is probably just thinking to themselves "I better be really nice to Facebook if I want to get myself re-elected".
baq 7y ago
And yet Facebook is a privately owned company and thus should be free to allow or deny any content including particular political ads. Isn’t that the whole freedom of speech thing?
- eropple 7y ago
  Facebook, like any corporation, has a charter granting it extraordinary powers by the society in which it operates. Implicit in that grant is the idea that the corporation betters society by its existence. If, by reaching a certain scale, that society by necessity has to say "hey, you need to do X because you're not keeping up your end of the bargain", that's completely fine.
  - gwright 7y ago
    > Implicit in that grant is the idea that the corporation betters society by its existence. Really? I don't think that is a thing, but happy to learn otherwise with a reference to some legal doctrine or legislation that spells this out. That isn't to say that there can't be additional legislation that regulates an industry beyond the legal infrastructure that enables the formation of a corporation.
    - eropple 7y ago
      You're asking for "legal doctrine". I am pointing out to you telos. I mean, forget stakeholder theory and other minimally responsible theories of operation, because that stuff is kind of new--just look at judicial dissolution. It exists on the books and it's been done in practice. That ability would have no reason to exist if it were to not protect the United States and its citizens from the malfeasance of a corporate entity to which a charter has been granted. But this argument is wholly backwards. Why should corporate entities be granted any rights at all? We deign to grant them the status of existence. We, the people, not the fictitious ones but those pesky "natural" ones. Why should a corporation exist for any other reason than to better our society? Why should a society empower random individuals to create liability-shielding immortal pseudopeople if that society doesn't think they're supposed to make that society better by existing? Hell, go even further. Why should a society do anything if it doesn't make the society in aggregate better for the doing?

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.
- ska 7y ago
  We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse. This statement doesn't make sense to me. Nothing to do with conservative vs. liberal biases; just that the majority of current political discourse does not go through even nominally journalistic outlets, let alone rigorously journalistic.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse How does "a permanent, public repository of political ads" give journalists any advantage? I just mentioned them as one potential user of a public database.
- JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
  If anything, I think journalists need more influence on political discourse. Currently the discourse is controlled by media companies, not journalists - and there is a big difference there.
- whatthesmack 7y ago
  I was just going to upvote and keep scrolling, but I saw the three replies to your post critique something you said that I strongly agreed with. > We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse This so true in this day and age. The quality of journalism has collectively nosedived, but the journalists keep producing and continue to guide the “conversation”. I’m not quite sure what those who disagree with the statement actually do believe is going well and why journalists need to have even more control over the conversation. > ...would just let pass false information that just happens to comport with liberal beliefs This is the natural course for a technology company in modern society. The biases of tech company employees is clearly more left-leaning. If Facebook employees or contractors were deciding what’s true and false, the information displayed on Facebook would (does?) have a leftist slant. This is a bad thing to any fair-minded person and why Facebook shouldn’t be regulating free speech in political ads.
jpadkins 7y ago
option 2 will create status quo bias. The system in power will marginally favor ads that keeps the current system in power. option 1 can't be effective unless you also know the targeting criteria of the ads. Otherwise, interested parties cannot create 'counter propaganda' at the same cost/benefit ratio as the original propaganda campaign. And all it is really doing is decreasing the time to counter propaganda, not reducing the volume of it. good ideas tho
kansface 7y ago
> This lets journalists and the public fact-check them before they're blasted to a targeted group. I believe this proposal to be worse than the current state of affairs. I would not delegate censorship of what I may read or watch to a non-elected political body, and doubly so to one which skews >90% to one political party. > Another option is FEC, or some other independent body, overseeing political ads. Once again, I do not understand this rational! I assume you do not like how one party in particular is acting, but you would delegate that very same party the power to oversee the censors over all online electoral ads?
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > I would not delegate censorship of what I may read or watch to a non-elected political body Who said anything about censorship? What I proposed has two parts. One, when a political ad is bought, it must wait a certain amount of time (I propose a week) before being displayed. Two, immediately on being bought, it must be made publicly accessible in a permanent database. The latter lets anyone fact check the ad. They DON'T get to take down the ad. But the public gets time to evaluate it before it's blasted to users. This deters micro-targeting groups with misinformation. It also creates a public record of what a campaign has said to whom, for contemporaneous and later reference by the public. A lot of people got triggered by the term "journalist." I'm using that term broadly, to include anyone from a hobbyist with a blog to the mass media. I fundamentally disagree with censoring political speech, even lies. But the current system is unworkable. We need heightened and broadened disclosures for micro-targeted ads.
  - justin66 7y ago
    > But the public gets time to evaluate it before it's blasted to users. I believe I understand the implied difference between sequestering a video somewhere where it can be evaluated by the public and simply "blasting it to users" alongside content they are consuming, but I wonder if sequestering videos in this way would have the effect you think it will have. It's a system that would reward highly provocative videos with the potential to immediately go viral regardless of their intrinsic merit or truthfulness. > A lot of people got triggered by the term "journalist." Right. The issue with the system you're describing is, entirely too many people will react to an online story from the NY Times pointing out a dozen untruthful things about the latest, newly introduced and sequestered angry political ad from whoever by delighting in the distress caused by the lies in the ad, joking about how the libs have been owned, passing links around to the video, and generally spreading falsehoods about the critiques of the ad and the people doing the critiqing. If the whole trolling effort is successful then it will become a meta-story about stupidity and falsehood among the people who aren't dumb enough to believe whatever is being asserted in the ad, but the one thing that will not happen is everyone joining together to condemn the falsehoods in the ad. > I'm using that term broadly, to include anyone from a hobbyist with a blog to the mass media. Right, and as nice and democratizing as that can be, the practical effect is often to legitimize bullshitters and put them on the same level as serious people. I am afraid in the example above that is part of how these ads would go viral. Or maybe it's not all that bad. I guess I hope not. I do think your idea is interesting.

vasirian 7y ago

They do seem to have successfully shifted the debate to whether or not they should be deciding about the ad instead of why they are somehow exempt from FEC regulations.

cryptica 7y ago
I'm pretty sure that the government is in on it. Every elected member of government is probably just thinking to themselves "I better be really nice to Facebook if I want to get myself re-elected".

baq 7y ago

And yet Facebook is a privately owned company and thus should be free to allow or deny any content including particular political ads. Isn’t that the whole freedom of speech thing?

eropple 7y ago
Facebook, like any corporation, has a charter granting it extraordinary powers by the society in which it operates. Implicit in that grant is the idea that the corporation betters society by its existence. If, by reaching a certain scale, that society by necessity has to say "hey, you need to do X because you're not keeping up your end of the bargain", that's completely fine.
- gwright 7y ago
  > Implicit in that grant is the idea that the corporation betters society by its existence. Really? I don't think that is a thing, but happy to learn otherwise with a reference to some legal doctrine or legislation that spells this out. That isn't to say that there can't be additional legislation that regulates an industry beyond the legal infrastructure that enables the formation of a corporation.
  - eropple 7y ago
    You're asking for "legal doctrine". I am pointing out to you telos. I mean, forget stakeholder theory and other minimally responsible theories of operation, because that stuff is kind of new--just look at judicial dissolution. It exists on the books and it's been done in practice. That ability would have no reason to exist if it were to not protect the United States and its citizens from the malfeasance of a corporate entity to which a charter has been granted. But this argument is wholly backwards. Why should corporate entities be granted any rights at all? We deign to grant them the status of existence. We, the people, not the fictitious ones but those pesky "natural" ones. Why should a corporation exist for any other reason than to better our society? Why should a society empower random individuals to create liability-shielding immortal pseudopeople if that society doesn't think they're supposed to make that society better by existing? Hell, go even further. Why should a society do anything if it doesn't make the society in aggregate better for the doing?