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It's a fallacy to believe that the ability to determine the truthfulness of the content of an ad is binary. 100% or 0%. It's a spectrum. There are obvious truth
by jonbronson 7y ago
It's a fallacy to believe that the ability to determine the truthfulness of the content of an ad is binary. 100% or 0%. It's a spectrum. There are obvious truths, shades of gray, blatant misinformation, and everything in between. At the very least, they should clearly disallow verifiably false information. An advertisement aimed at Black voters with the wrong day for voting? That's clearly voter disinformation aimed at voter suppression. How close Facebook gets to the gray areas is by no means an easy problem, but it's patently false to pretend they can do nothing.
- makomk 7y agoFacebook do disallow clear voter suppression ads like that one, though. They have a specific rule banning voter suppression which applies to all advertisers including politicians, and they definitely enforce it. One of the articles going after their hands-off approach to political ads (I think in the Guardian) even specifically attacked them for banning this whilst leaving other lies alone.
- humanrebar 7y agoDisinformation about voting dates or choices seems out of bounds. But any negative ad is at a basic level voter suppression.
- paulddraper 7y ago> It's a spectrum The parent comment agrees very strongly with that. > verifiably false information Look at Snopes for an example. Relatively few assertions are "pants on fire" false.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y agoEmpowering Snopes to effectively censor Facebook by deciding what is true and false seems incredibly dangerous to me.