8 ms·

Facebook staff demand Zuckerberg limit lies in politcal ads

54 points by Amicius 7y ago

Amicius 7y ago
This is getting to be a growing trend in Silicon Valley: employees demanding of their management and even CEOs certain action. Whether California a "right to work" state or not, I imaging employees demanding management do something that management doesn't want to do is grounds for dismissal. Are workers being let go for "standing up to management" like this?
- hos234 7y ago
  It's not just SV. Power dynamics within orgs have changed and are changing. Traditional Hierarchies are struggling because hyper-connecitivity within the org and to the outside world have increased exponentially. This diffuses power at every level within a hierarchy. You can't have power over someone 2 levels down if their network is as influential as your own.
  - tenpies 7y ago
    I don't think we can make that statement yet. What we can say is that there is a huge amount of bloat in current technology companies along with huge perceived competition for employees, so many employees feel they are worth more than they are. Most boom industries go through this. Then you get bad times, the fat gets trimmed, and a couple of lay offs later the employees realize that they are indeed fungible. Add a couple decades of maturity and they get a much more realistic view of work rather than "work is my life, and my life is work". And sure, there may be a handful of essential staff, but the odds that you are a political activist masquerading as an employee while also being essential are nearly zero.
  - throw_m239339 7y ago
    > It's not just SV. Power dynamics within orgs have changed and are changing. I mean, good luck doing that at Oracle or IBM for instance. > You can't have power over someone 2 levels down if their network is as influential as your own. Yes you absolutely can. If the employee refuses to cooperate it's called insubordination and it's ground for firing. Now of course the employee can spin it anyway he wants and use his network of influence to make the employer look bad, but it has limits.
- Nokinside 7y ago
  The fact that FB and Google workers make these demands is a indicator of how easy it is to replace them. Money = power. If FB workers are valuable, they have political power they can use. There are many employees who are close to "Fuck you" money and many more who can just walk out and get similar job almost instantly.
  - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
    Actually the fact that people make these demands suggest but they have the power. If the workers thought they didn't have the power, they wouldn't make the demands. There's a limit on the number of devs in tech, there's no limit on the number of jobs. There's a massive undersupply of tech workers. Facebook can get rid of their workers but there's limited ability to replace them from Amazon, Google excetera.
- archildress 7y ago
  I think companies who have largely recruited and built their brand as virtue-signaling "lifestyle" are getting exactly what they deserved. If your company constantly touts values, thought leadership, big ambitious ideas, etc, you can't respond with surprise when employees do the same.
  - nathanlied 7y ago
    I fully agree with you. Back when Google was doing it, I also thought it was a really dumb idea - you're essentially signalling "If you have these ideals, we want you working for us", which locks your company into a vision of the world that you can't change easily - and worse, it comes with other viewpoints that you may not necessarily want for your company, but your employees will bring. For instance, if your company visibly and heavily promotes LGBT causes, civil rights, etc., and goes so far as to seek employees who are actively involved in such fights, don't be surprised if they turn around and form unions, or advocate for a more left-friendly workplace hierarchy. When you get a politically-motivated workforce, you can't pick and choose which parts of their politics they'll bring to the workplace.
- megous 7y ago
  Company = company of people. Why should management have all the say and others should just shut up and do the work or leave? Why not have some shades of gray in between.
  - throw_m239339 7y ago
    > Why should management have all the say Because being an employee means you are expected to have a subordinate relationship with your employer in exchange for a money. Even in countries with strong worker protections, questioning management decisions that are completely unrelated to work conditions or legal matters is 100% ground for getting legally fired. Now if it was the "culture" encouraged by management then I'm all for it, if it is done with the employer's blessing there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In some businesses it's perfect acceptable to discuss partisan politics at work, wedge issues, and employees can voice their opinions as to who the business should have as a client or not...
    - megous 7y ago
      What's the law against questioning a management decisions by sending a letter with objections?
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  The conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is that you want employees who are willing to think about and talk about what the company should do. Sometimes that means conversations management would prefer not to have, but conversations aren’t that expensive.
andonisus 7y ago
Why don't they just ban political ads altogether?
- TuringNYC 7y ago
  because Revenue
- davidcbc 7y ago
  Because political ads are like printing money
  - rock_hard 7y ago
    Political ads make the company very little money actually
    - aquaticsunset 7y ago
      Source?
      - nathanlied 7y ago
        https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-isnt-taking-political-ads-for-the-money-coo-sheryl-sandberg-says/ https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-isnt-taking-political-ads... This is the first thing I found; take-out is, the flak they get over the whole political ads controversy isn't worth how much they make on them, comparatively. I'm inclined to believe them.
  - netsharc 7y ago
    At a certain point in 2008, Obama was certain to be the Dem primary winner against Hillary. But CNN was still framing it as a tight contest. I wondered how much of that editorial decision was based on making sure eyeballs stay glued to CNN, so they can tell their advertisers "A 30 second slot costs this much at the moment...".
- jMyles 7y ago
dominotw 7y ago
0.7% of Facebook’s staff ?
TooCreative 7y ago
Why does this come up in 2019 for the first time? How did Newspapers, Radio and then TV handle this for the past 1200 years?
- tvelichkov 7y ago
  I guess because on Newspapers, Radio and TV you cannot target a specific group of people. Yes, someone can argue that you can target a specific Newspaper, Radio or TV which may have a specific group of people, but I think its not the same.
- throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
  They were regulated.
- nathanlied 7y ago
  I don't know if you're posing a rhetorical question, but I'd genuinely like to know this. Lying in politics isn't new, and political ads are also not new. Is lying in political ads a new thing? If not, why is it a problem now? Is it because of how many people they can reach? Are the lies somehow worse? Or is this somewhat of an overreaction to the 2016 election, which was a confluence of factors, only one of which was social media (and ad) manipulation?
  - uneekname 7y ago
    I think this comment gets at something that has been bugging me about the Facebook advertising problem: I still don't see it as a problem. Yes, I disagree with dishonest political ads, and wish they didn't run on Facebook. But I don't see the need to change Facebook. As long as their terms of service are honest, I think they should be allowed to do whatever they want. If people don't like it, they can leave.
    - nathanlied 7y ago
      I think the argument around it reeks of dishonesty, really. People arguing against political ads or speech on Facebook are often skirting around the main elephantine problem of democracy: most people are disinterested or maliciously misinformed (as in, when presented with facts, they'll double down on their misinformation). In order to solve this whole kerfuffle, we'll have to tackle that head-on. That people are misinformed, disinterested, and downright apathetic. You can ban political ads on Facebook tomorrow, and it won't solve those fundamental problems. It's just kicking the can down the road.
cal5k 7y ago
Activism-driven policy is generally not a great governance model - you might satisfy the 250 employees who signed the letter, but disgruntle 5000 silent others who strongly believe it's not Facebook's job to fact-check political ads.
- foolrush 7y ago
  You realize that women’s right to vote, African American right to vote, LGBTQ marriage laws, minimum wage, and the rest of your progressive legislation was based on activism based policy?
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    I think they're saying that it's bad for business, regardless of whether it brings real-world improvements. Not that that's any better. Kind of worse, actually.
  - dijit 7y ago
    It's nice to think of policies I agree with when considering activism, but lets take a look at some I don't. Banning pork[0] for all meals being one of them, or maybe something like being forced to wear a burqa[1]? I mean, if there was a pro-trump activism rally in your workplace and seemingly the majority of workers were pro-trump, would you be silent? I would. (FWIW I'm playing devils advocate, suggesting that not all activism promotes social justice or advancement of society) [0]: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3936/denmark-bans-meatballs https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3936/denmark-bans-meatbal... [1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10323303/I-was-forced-to-wear-the-veil-and-I-wish-no-other-woman-had-to-suffer-it.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10323303/I-was-for...
    - foolrush 7y ago
      I wasn’t suggesting that all activism promotes progressive societal values. That is an ethical and epistemological question. I was suggesting that a good number of things that happen are a byproduct of activism. All that said, it cracks me up that HN does a vote down on such basic sociological things. What a culture.
oh_sigh 7y ago
250/35000 staff signed the letter. I guess "Less than 1% of FB employees demand Zuckerberg limit lies in political ads" doesn't have the same ring to it. I guarantee you can find more FB employees who believe the earth is flat, or are 9/11 truthers than the percent that signed this letter.
DevX101 7y ago
I don't think Facebook is really pushing back on this because it's a free speech issue. They're pushing back because it's technically and financially challenging to do. If claims in political ads were easily falsifiable, they probably would have done this a long time ago.
- nickthegreek 7y ago
  They are banning ads by political groups with lies, just not from candidates. So that theory doesn't hold up.
- rchaud 7y ago
  Given that they are one of the richest companies in the world, and can manage and scale a platform w/ 2bn users, excuses like these don't wash. Election-related ads are a cash cow for their ad department, and attack ads get far more engagement and shares than milquetoast "I'm ___ and I believe in ___, vote for me". Metrics for those ads look terrible and will drive away future customers.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  If it's important that political ads be fact checked, but it's not technically or financially feasible for Facebook to do so, maybe they just shouldn't run political ads?
  - mc32 7y ago
    What politician runs a campaign on telling the truth? Virtually none. Those that try get buried fast. If we don’t demand candidates themselves tell the truth, how can we ask ads to be truthful from those same campaigns. In any case it’d be tilting at windmills.
    - tenpies 7y ago
      Exactly. In 2016 you could fill a book with each of the two candidate's lies. For 2020 the Democrats don't even have a candidate yet and they have all lied. Honesty is a virtue for a reason: it is exceedingly rare and hard to find in a world that refuses to deal with truth.
ratsmack 7y ago
This is coming from 250 of Facebook's 35,000 employees which equates to about .7% of their employees. You will always have a small group within that number of people that will be vocal about something, so this is definitely not an uprising.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  Are you against newspapers, radio and TV refusing to run blatantly false ads from politicians? Why should Internet companies be exempt from those restrictions?
  - bloody-crow 7y ago
    Because radio has multiple stations you can choose from that prioritize certain lies over others. Same with TV. Fox news says one thing, when CNN says something completely different. There's lies and manipulation on both ends and you can pick and choose. Facebook is a lot closer to public infrastructure than both radio and TV currently. There's no other facebook you can go to when you don't like how this one is curating your content. When you force facebook to tell what is lies and what isn't, you're giving it way too much power.
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      There are plenty of other social networks: Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. But even given all that, if we still think Facebook has so much power that we're afraid of it fact-checking political ads, we should just break it up.
      - bloody-crow 7y ago
        All those other social networks fill other niches than facebook. You can't fully replace facebook with twitter or youtube, because they are intended for different use cases. It's like saying that if the electric company is refusing to provide service at your home address, you should just use gas instead. Not the same. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        jakelazaroff 7y ago
        I don’t buy it. Electricity and gas are two clearly distinct things; the lines between the social networks are much more nebulous. Can you enumerate the various social network “niches”?
wtmt 7y ago
Already discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21380227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21380227
dvt 7y ago
Per usual, nerdy engineers think they know it all. For example: "free speech and paid speech are not the same thing" -- this is literally what Citizens United v. FEC decided. It's the same thing. Read the damn law. Ought it be the same thing? Who knows. Maybe, maybe not. Don't agree with the status quo? Get out there, hit the streets, knock on doors, and get the law changed. SCOTUS doesn't make laws, and Facebook sure as hell doesn't make laws. But internet outrage and strongly-worded letters are a lot easier than actually organizing grassroots campaigns and getting people elected to Congress.
- thieving_magpie 7y ago
  I think it's obvious they were not asserting a professional legal opinion when they say "free speech and paid speech are not the same thing". It's disingenuous of you to tell them to "hit the streets", I think that's basically what they're doing at their place of employment that has a significant impact on our elections. I'm not sure what more you want from them.
- anotherman554 7y ago
  Your post misunderstands the fact that the Supreme Court's interpretation was brand new case law. They did in fact "make it up" when they claimed the constitution said something many, if not most Americans, would state it does not. But more importantly your post misunderstands the fact that "free speech" for purposes of the constitution has nothing to do with free speech for purposes of running a social media site or free speech for any other purpose.
- kstrauser 7y ago
  > Get out there, hit the streets, knock on doors, and get the law changed. Isn't that exactly what these employees did? They organized and are trying to get the internal law (aka company policy) changed.
- neplus 7y ago
  This is exactly right. Although your suggestion that a congressional law would overturn Citizens United is not necessarily true. It's a difficult question given the basis of the original decision. With that said, I'm rather surprised at how poorly constructed this letter is. If you're going to trot out trivial platitudes, you might as well go full bore and craft a persuasive polemic. Instead this letter reads to me as a mealy-mouthed, mushy argument crafted by people who self-evidently favor paternalistic oversight when their letter does little to persuade me these are the people who should have any oversight over anything at all. Ironically, if a politician of a favourable political persuasion linked to this letter in an ad I'm not sure how it could not be labeled as "misleading". It posits things that directly render many of the underlying "solutions" moot. The argument is broken almost immediately after it begins. The best treatment of Citizens United I've seen is by Laurence Tribe - who no one of any merit would consider an apologist for Republicans or a textualist - in his book "Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution". The actual decision itself reads well and is worth everyone's time. If memory serves, Laurence talks about his thinking on the case with Charlie Rose here: https://charlierose.com/videos/10259 https://charlierose.com/videos/10259 EDIT: Now we see the parent comment being the most downvoted in this thread; with no one engaging with the content of the comment. Quite a sad state.
khc 7y ago
Is "I will do x/y/z" a lie? Given how often politicians actually keep their promises you can say most candidates knew their promises were lies
jahaja 7y ago
What's wrong with employees trying to influence what they're working with?
FillardMillmore 7y ago
If FB starts fact-checking political ads, that to me would be one step closer to Facebook being a 'publisher' rather a 'platform', which would open Facebook up to a world of litigation when something nefarious or disagreeable slips through the cracks to the public. And of course, after political ads, what's next? Should they limit certain dietary advice if the purported results are not sufficiently substantiated? Another question would be - how are the 'lies' to be limited? Are the posts hidden, or marked with a "fake news" indicator? What if 80% of the content in an ad is true but the other 20% is unsubstantiated? Does that get tagged as well? "Partial fake news"? If Facebook implemented something like this, would they be open and transparent about how their site goes about verifying claims in ads so that the users can go straight to the source(s)? With all of Facebook's missteps and mistakes in the past, who really wants them to be the arbiter of truth? Would people even trust them to be the arbiter of truth? Or would Facebook's efforts to mitigate or limit certain ads embolden the political side represented by that ad? (Not to generalize, but there are certainly some out there who are immediately dismissive of claims of truth when they come from Fox News/CNN, depending on their political persuasion). It would seem more logical to me for Facebook to fund and coordinate some kind of 'awareness' campaign on the site in which it guides its users as to the level of skepticism to maintain when seeing political ads and how to go about verifying the veracity of claims in political ads they might see.
- iron0013 7y ago
  Hi, if you could stop spreading the lie that there is some magical distinction between a 'publisher' and a 'platform' that somehow limits what a business is legally allowed to do, I would really appreciate it, and I know a lot of other folks would too! Thanks! https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190613/03172142391/once-more-with-feeling-there-is-no-legal-distinction-between-platform-publisher.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190613/03172142391/once-...
mc32 7y ago
Might as well ask Zuck to hsve FB observe “business hours”. No service between 11PM and 5AM local times to protect users from over use and engagement. Set a limit on ads per hour per user. I’m sure he’ll see why they are great ideas.
matt_s 7y ago
The decision that solves a lot of problems is for social media sites to just not allow political ads of any kind. How much of their revenue is based on political ads?

54 points by Amicius 7y ago

This is getting to be a growing trend in Silicon Valley: employees demanding of their management and even CEOs certain action. Whether California a "right to work" state or not, I imaging employees demanding management do something that management doesn't want to do is grounds for dismissal. Are workers being let go for "standing up to management" like this?

hos234 7y ago
It's not just SV. Power dynamics within orgs have changed and are changing. Traditional Hierarchies are struggling because hyper-connecitivity within the org and to the outside world have increased exponentially. This diffuses power at every level within a hierarchy. You can't have power over someone 2 levels down if their network is as influential as your own.
- tenpies 7y ago
  I don't think we can make that statement yet. What we can say is that there is a huge amount of bloat in current technology companies along with huge perceived competition for employees, so many employees feel they are worth more than they are. Most boom industries go through this. Then you get bad times, the fat gets trimmed, and a couple of lay offs later the employees realize that they are indeed fungible. Add a couple decades of maturity and they get a much more realistic view of work rather than "work is my life, and my life is work". And sure, there may be a handful of essential staff, but the odds that you are a political activist masquerading as an employee while also being essential are nearly zero.
- throw_m239339 7y ago
  > It's not just SV. Power dynamics within orgs have changed and are changing. I mean, good luck doing that at Oracle or IBM for instance. > You can't have power over someone 2 levels down if their network is as influential as your own. Yes you absolutely can. If the employee refuses to cooperate it's called insubordination and it's ground for firing. Now of course the employee can spin it anyway he wants and use his network of influence to make the employer look bad, but it has limits.
Nokinside 7y ago
The fact that FB and Google workers make these demands is a indicator of how easy it is to replace them. Money = power. If FB workers are valuable, they have political power they can use. There are many employees who are close to "Fuck you" money and many more who can just walk out and get similar job almost instantly.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  Actually the fact that people make these demands suggest but they have the power. If the workers thought they didn't have the power, they wouldn't make the demands. There's a limit on the number of devs in tech, there's no limit on the number of jobs. There's a massive undersupply of tech workers. Facebook can get rid of their workers but there's limited ability to replace them from Amazon, Google excetera.
archildress 7y ago
I think companies who have largely recruited and built their brand as virtue-signaling "lifestyle" are getting exactly what they deserved. If your company constantly touts values, thought leadership, big ambitious ideas, etc, you can't respond with surprise when employees do the same.
- nathanlied 7y ago
  I fully agree with you. Back when Google was doing it, I also thought it was a really dumb idea - you're essentially signalling "If you have these ideals, we want you working for us", which locks your company into a vision of the world that you can't change easily - and worse, it comes with other viewpoints that you may not necessarily want for your company, but your employees will bring. For instance, if your company visibly and heavily promotes LGBT causes, civil rights, etc., and goes so far as to seek employees who are actively involved in such fights, don't be surprised if they turn around and form unions, or advocate for a more left-friendly workplace hierarchy. When you get a politically-motivated workforce, you can't pick and choose which parts of their politics they'll bring to the workplace.
megous 7y ago
Company = company of people. Why should management have all the say and others should just shut up and do the work or leave? Why not have some shades of gray in between.
- throw_m239339 7y ago
  > Why should management have all the say Because being an employee means you are expected to have a subordinate relationship with your employer in exchange for a money. Even in countries with strong worker protections, questioning management decisions that are completely unrelated to work conditions or legal matters is 100% ground for getting legally fired. Now if it was the "culture" encouraged by management then I'm all for it, if it is done with the employer's blessing there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In some businesses it's perfect acceptable to discuss partisan politics at work, wedge issues, and employees can voice their opinions as to who the business should have as a client or not...
  - megous 7y ago
    What's the law against questioning a management decisions by sending a letter with objections?
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
The conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is that you want employees who are willing to think about and talk about what the company should do. Sometimes that means conversations management would prefer not to have, but conversations aren’t that expensive.

andonisus 7y ago

Why don't they just ban political ads altogether?

TuringNYC 7y ago
because Revenue
davidcbc 7y ago
Because political ads are like printing money
- rock_hard 7y ago
  Political ads make the company very little money actually
  - aquaticsunset 7y ago
    Source?
    - nathanlied 7y ago
      https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-isnt-taking-political-ads-for-the-money-coo-sheryl-sandberg-says/ https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-isnt-taking-political-ads... This is the first thing I found; take-out is, the flak they get over the whole political ads controversy isn't worth how much they make on them, comparatively. I'm inclined to believe them.
- netsharc 7y ago
  At a certain point in 2008, Obama was certain to be the Dem primary winner against Hillary. But CNN was still framing it as a tight contest. I wondered how much of that editorial decision was based on making sure eyeballs stay glued to CNN, so they can tell their advertisers "A 30 second slot costs this much at the moment...".
jMyles 7y ago

dominotw 7y ago

0.7% of Facebook’s staff ?

TooCreative 7y ago

Why does this come up in 2019 for the first time? How did Newspapers, Radio and then TV handle this for the past 1200 years?

tvelichkov 7y ago
I guess because on Newspapers, Radio and TV you cannot target a specific group of people. Yes, someone can argue that you can target a specific Newspaper, Radio or TV which may have a specific group of people, but I think its not the same.
throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
They were regulated.
nathanlied 7y ago
I don't know if you're posing a rhetorical question, but I'd genuinely like to know this. Lying in politics isn't new, and political ads are also not new. Is lying in political ads a new thing? If not, why is it a problem now? Is it because of how many people they can reach? Are the lies somehow worse? Or is this somewhat of an overreaction to the 2016 election, which was a confluence of factors, only one of which was social media (and ad) manipulation?
- uneekname 7y ago
  I think this comment gets at something that has been bugging me about the Facebook advertising problem: I still don't see it as a problem. Yes, I disagree with dishonest political ads, and wish they didn't run on Facebook. But I don't see the need to change Facebook. As long as their terms of service are honest, I think they should be allowed to do whatever they want. If people don't like it, they can leave.
  - nathanlied 7y ago
    I think the argument around it reeks of dishonesty, really. People arguing against political ads or speech on Facebook are often skirting around the main elephantine problem of democracy: most people are disinterested or maliciously misinformed (as in, when presented with facts, they'll double down on their misinformation). In order to solve this whole kerfuffle, we'll have to tackle that head-on. That people are misinformed, disinterested, and downright apathetic. You can ban political ads on Facebook tomorrow, and it won't solve those fundamental problems. It's just kicking the can down the road.

cal5k 7y ago

Activism-driven policy is generally not a great governance model - you might satisfy the 250 employees who signed the letter, but disgruntle 5000 silent others who strongly believe it's not Facebook's job to fact-check political ads.

foolrush 7y ago
You realize that women’s right to vote, African American right to vote, LGBTQ marriage laws, minimum wage, and the rest of your progressive legislation was based on activism based policy?
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  I think they're saying that it's bad for business, regardless of whether it brings real-world improvements. Not that that's any better. Kind of worse, actually.
- dijit 7y ago
  It's nice to think of policies I agree with when considering activism, but lets take a look at some I don't. Banning pork[0] for all meals being one of them, or maybe something like being forced to wear a burqa[1]? I mean, if there was a pro-trump activism rally in your workplace and seemingly the majority of workers were pro-trump, would you be silent? I would. (FWIW I'm playing devils advocate, suggesting that not all activism promotes social justice or advancement of society) [0]: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3936/denmark-bans-meatballs https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3936/denmark-bans-meatbal... [1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10323303/I-was-forced-to-wear-the-veil-and-I-wish-no-other-woman-had-to-suffer-it.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10323303/I-was-for...
  - foolrush 7y ago
    I wasn’t suggesting that all activism promotes progressive societal values. That is an ethical and epistemological question. I was suggesting that a good number of things that happen are a byproduct of activism. All that said, it cracks me up that HN does a vote down on such basic sociological things. What a culture.

oh_sigh 7y ago

250/35000 staff signed the letter. I guess "Less than 1% of FB employees demand Zuckerberg limit lies in political ads" doesn't have the same ring to it. I guarantee you can find more FB employees who believe the earth is flat, or are 9/11 truthers than the percent that signed this letter.

DevX101 7y ago

I don't think Facebook is really pushing back on this because it's a free speech issue. They're pushing back because it's technically and financially challenging to do. If claims in political ads were easily falsifiable, they probably would have done this a long time ago.

nickthegreek 7y ago
They are banning ads by political groups with lies, just not from candidates. So that theory doesn't hold up.
rchaud 7y ago
Given that they are one of the richest companies in the world, and can manage and scale a platform w/ 2bn users, excuses like these don't wash. Election-related ads are a cash cow for their ad department, and attack ads get far more engagement and shares than milquetoast "I'm ___ and I believe in ___, vote for me". Metrics for those ads look terrible and will drive away future customers.
jakelazaroff 7y ago
If it's important that political ads be fact checked, but it's not technically or financially feasible for Facebook to do so, maybe they just shouldn't run political ads?
- mc32 7y ago
  What politician runs a campaign on telling the truth? Virtually none. Those that try get buried fast. If we don’t demand candidates themselves tell the truth, how can we ask ads to be truthful from those same campaigns. In any case it’d be tilting at windmills.
  - tenpies 7y ago
    Exactly. In 2016 you could fill a book with each of the two candidate's lies. For 2020 the Democrats don't even have a candidate yet and they have all lied. Honesty is a virtue for a reason: it is exceedingly rare and hard to find in a world that refuses to deal with truth.

ratsmack 7y ago

This is coming from 250 of Facebook's 35,000 employees which equates to about .7% of their employees. You will always have a small group within that number of people that will be vocal about something, so this is definitely not an uprising.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jakelazaroff 7y ago
Are you against newspapers, radio and TV refusing to run blatantly false ads from politicians? Why should Internet companies be exempt from those restrictions?
- bloody-crow 7y ago
  Because radio has multiple stations you can choose from that prioritize certain lies over others. Same with TV. Fox news says one thing, when CNN says something completely different. There's lies and manipulation on both ends and you can pick and choose. Facebook is a lot closer to public infrastructure than both radio and TV currently. There's no other facebook you can go to when you don't like how this one is curating your content. When you force facebook to tell what is lies and what isn't, you're giving it way too much power.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    There are plenty of other social networks: Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. But even given all that, if we still think Facebook has so much power that we're afraid of it fact-checking political ads, we should just break it up.
    - bloody-crow 7y ago
      All those other social networks fill other niches than facebook. You can't fully replace facebook with twitter or youtube, because they are intended for different use cases. It's like saying that if the electric company is refusing to provide service at your home address, you should just use gas instead. Not the same. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      - jakelazaroff 7y ago
        I don’t buy it. Electricity and gas are two clearly distinct things; the lines between the social networks are much more nebulous. Can you enumerate the various social network “niches”?

wtmt 7y ago

Already discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21380227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21380227

dvt 7y ago

Per usual, nerdy engineers think they know it all. For example: "free speech and paid speech are not the same thing" -- this is literally what Citizens United v. FEC decided. It's the same thing. Read the damn law. Ought it be the same thing? Who knows. Maybe, maybe not. Don't agree with the status quo? Get out there, hit the streets, knock on doors, and get the law changed. SCOTUS doesn't make laws, and Facebook sure as hell doesn't make laws. But internet outrage and strongly-worded letters are a lot easier than actually organizing grassroots campaigns and getting people elected to Congress.

thieving_magpie 7y ago
I think it's obvious they were not asserting a professional legal opinion when they say "free speech and paid speech are not the same thing". It's disingenuous of you to tell them to "hit the streets", I think that's basically what they're doing at their place of employment that has a significant impact on our elections. I'm not sure what more you want from them.
anotherman554 7y ago
Your post misunderstands the fact that the Supreme Court's interpretation was brand new case law. They did in fact "make it up" when they claimed the constitution said something many, if not most Americans, would state it does not. But more importantly your post misunderstands the fact that "free speech" for purposes of the constitution has nothing to do with free speech for purposes of running a social media site or free speech for any other purpose.
kstrauser 7y ago
> Get out there, hit the streets, knock on doors, and get the law changed. Isn't that exactly what these employees did? They organized and are trying to get the internal law (aka company policy) changed.
neplus 7y ago
This is exactly right. Although your suggestion that a congressional law would overturn Citizens United is not necessarily true. It's a difficult question given the basis of the original decision. With that said, I'm rather surprised at how poorly constructed this letter is. If you're going to trot out trivial platitudes, you might as well go full bore and craft a persuasive polemic. Instead this letter reads to me as a mealy-mouthed, mushy argument crafted by people who self-evidently favor paternalistic oversight when their letter does little to persuade me these are the people who should have any oversight over anything at all. Ironically, if a politician of a favourable political persuasion linked to this letter in an ad I'm not sure how it could not be labeled as "misleading". It posits things that directly render many of the underlying "solutions" moot. The argument is broken almost immediately after it begins. The best treatment of Citizens United I've seen is by Laurence Tribe - who no one of any merit would consider an apologist for Republicans or a textualist - in his book "Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution". The actual decision itself reads well and is worth everyone's time. If memory serves, Laurence talks about his thinking on the case with Charlie Rose here: https://charlierose.com/videos/10259 https://charlierose.com/videos/10259 EDIT: Now we see the parent comment being the most downvoted in this thread; with no one engaging with the content of the comment. Quite a sad state.

khc 7y ago

Is "I will do x/y/z" a lie? Given how often politicians actually keep their promises you can say most candidates knew their promises were lies

jahaja 7y ago

What's wrong with employees trying to influence what they're working with?

FillardMillmore 7y ago

If FB starts fact-checking political ads, that to me would be one step closer to Facebook being a 'publisher' rather a 'platform', which would open Facebook up to a world of litigation when something nefarious or disagreeable slips through the cracks to the public. And of course, after political ads, what's next? Should they limit certain dietary advice if the purported results are not sufficiently substantiated? Another question would be - how are the 'lies' to be limited? Are the posts hidden, or marked with a "fake news" indicator? What if 80% of the content in an ad is true but the other 20% is unsubstantiated? Does that get tagged as well? "Partial fake news"? If Facebook implemented something like this, would they be open and transparent about how their site goes about verifying claims in ads so that the users can go straight to the source(s)? With all of Facebook's missteps and mistakes in the past, who really wants them to be the arbiter of truth? Would people even trust them to be the arbiter of truth? Or would Facebook's efforts to mitigate or limit certain ads embolden the political side represented by that ad? (Not to generalize, but there are certainly some out there who are immediately dismissive of claims of truth when they come from Fox News/CNN, depending on their political persuasion). It would seem more logical to me for Facebook to fund and coordinate some kind of 'awareness' campaign on the site in which it guides its users as to the level of skepticism to maintain when seeing political ads and how to go about verifying the veracity of claims in political ads they might see.

iron0013 7y ago
Hi, if you could stop spreading the lie that there is some magical distinction between a 'publisher' and a 'platform' that somehow limits what a business is legally allowed to do, I would really appreciate it, and I know a lot of other folks would too! Thanks! https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190613/03172142391/once-more-with-feeling-there-is-no-legal-distinction-between-platform-publisher.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190613/03172142391/once-...

mc32 7y ago

Might as well ask Zuck to hsve FB observe “business hours”. No service between 11PM and 5AM local times to protect users from over use and engagement. Set a limit on ads per hour per user. I’m sure he’ll see why they are great ideas.

matt_s 7y ago

The decision that solves a lot of problems is for social media sites to just not allow political ads of any kind. How much of their revenue is based on political ads?