6 ms·

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 challengi

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.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    That's avoiding the question. Is it important that entities taking money to distribute political messages try to prevent false advertising, or isn't it? If it's not important, then Facebook is fine — and newspapers, TV and radio can relax their fact checkers as well. If it is important, then the fact that it's allegedly infeasible for Facebook is not a defense.
    - mc32 7y ago
      You or I can buy ads. I have no affiliation. I’m not even registered for any party. I’ve voted for a cross section of candidates. Are they going to vet all these ads? What if I’m in Mexico, can I place an ad to target US likely voters with a pro-USMCA candidate? What if I belong to a Union and buy pro union ads but don’t bring up a candidate but my union endorses some candidate? Do we put a minimum on ad buys so that there are fewer to vet? Maybe the minimum is $20,000? Does that sound democratic?
      - jakelazaroff 7y ago
        Most of these questions needn’t be hypothetical, since there are already regulations regarding political ads: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making-disbursements/advertising/ https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making-di...
yoav 7y ago
If that were the case then there is no truth in society and/or the facts are so hard to find that there effectively isn’t a democracy. Given that last election they took large sums of foreign currency for political ads, had representatives in cambridge analitica’s HQ / war room, happen to profit astronomically from increased engagement due to division and disinformation, and their own employees with insider knowledge are also calling the stance out. It seems wildly strange in that context, when Facebook could easily take the stance that it’s hard and they might not get it right but will try anyway, instead of bogus misinterpretation of free speech that is Zuck’s current stated position.
- michaelmarion 7y ago
  If that were the case then there is no truth in society and/or the facts are so hard to find that there effectively isn’t a democracy. Now you're getting it!
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >It seems wildly strange in that context, when Facebook could easily take the stance that it’s hard and they might not get it right but will try anyway, instead of bogus misinterpretation of free speech that is Zuck’s current stated position. Because not getting it right can actually be worse for society, because at that point Facebook is picking and choosing who gets to run political ads. This should be terrifying considering that some of these tech companies have so many oopsies when it comes to certain political leanings. What do you think the calls will be like about Facebook when it turns out that one side in politics tends to not get to run their ads on Facebook while the other side can?
  - yoav 7y ago
    Not running ads with blatant lies is not partisan. Having a policy of allowing all lies and providing tools for sale to microtarget users so that people can’t validate truth only favors politicians pushing lies and not people viewing them. Facebook not removing ads with blatant lies is bad enough, but their product is now positioned as a disinformation tool. Instead of using targeting to match people who need products with those product ads, they’re openly announcing their product as a tool for corrupt politicians to target voters with disinformation. You don’t need a cambridge analytica to steal Facebook data for targeting when Facebook is offering that same service directly
rexpop 7y ago
It's worth it to us, as a society, to cut into Facebook's development velocity for this. Of course they're pushing back for cost reasons–That's "the bottom line"–but I doubt if it were easy they'd have done it "for free." Businesses, in my experience and observation, won't lift a finger they don't have to. The "right thing" doesn't merit a mention, let alone an allocation, unless it's coerced by the public, or by employees.
kstrauser 7y ago
It's technically easy to do. You hire a roomful of people to vet advertising, similar to how every media company did it until 2010 or so. It's financially challenging, but that's the price of admission to the grownup table. That they're hugely profitable right now[1] so I frankly couldn't care less if they had to spend some of that to become legitimately good at what they claim they want to be good at. I mean, suppose they offered a 100% automated health clinic that misdiagnosed and killed 10% of the patients: "We'd like to hire actual doctors, but that would cost more than we'd wanted to spend, so there's literally nothing we can do to fix this problem. Sorry!" That wouldn't fly. Well, neither does this. Facebook today absolutely sucks at advertising. They're good at the cashing the checks part of the process, but horrendous at the actual implementation. [1] 27.26% margin, according to https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FB/facebook/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FB/facebook/profit...
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >It's technically easy to do. You hire a roomful of people to vet advertising, similar to how every media company did it until 2010 or so. But it's not a room full of people. Facebook doesn't only exist in the US and I doubt that people from the US will be good at vetting political ads in Poland. What's even worse is that at that point you're asking Facebook to censor political ads based on what Facebook thinks is right. Do you really think that Facebook wouldn't be labeled biased and there wouldn't be even further demands from them? This is easy to do in the example of a health clinic, because there is a right and wrong answer, but in politics that's not the case.
  - kstrauser 7y ago
    I think it's entirely reasonable that they have at least one review department per market that they want to serve. Again, that's the way the ad business worked until very, very recently. It's not like some onerous idea made up just for them. You're drawing a false dichotomy about censorship. There's a normal, accepted middle ground between oppressive censorship and anarchy, often referred to as "ad checking" or "editorial review". Right now I can use an automated system to buy an ad saying "Trump Eats Babies" or "Obama Isn't a Citizen" or other flat-out lies. This is wrong. There should be a human in the mix who does at least minimal verification.
Vysero 7y ago
How would it be technically challenging to sell the internet equivalent of campaign buttons? Limit their advertising capabilities to something as simple as that, I like that idea.
onion2k 7y ago
Facebook and Google expressly asked to be exempt from FEC regulation of political adverts in the 2016 election[1]. That would have been a matter of making sure adverts had disclaimers attached; every other advertiser does this from big newspapers and TV channels to little local outfits. It's not technically hard. This is entirely about the fact Facebook and Google make a ton of money from running political ads, so they want to run them even if they might harm the democratic process. [1] https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/vt-hfa062419.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/vt-hfa062419...

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.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  That's avoiding the question. Is it important that entities taking money to distribute political messages try to prevent false advertising, or isn't it? If it's not important, then Facebook is fine — and newspapers, TV and radio can relax their fact checkers as well. If it is important, then the fact that it's allegedly infeasible for Facebook is not a defense.
  - mc32 7y ago
    You or I can buy ads. I have no affiliation. I’m not even registered for any party. I’ve voted for a cross section of candidates. Are they going to vet all these ads? What if I’m in Mexico, can I place an ad to target US likely voters with a pro-USMCA candidate? What if I belong to a Union and buy pro union ads but don’t bring up a candidate but my union endorses some candidate? Do we put a minimum on ad buys so that there are fewer to vet? Maybe the minimum is $20,000? Does that sound democratic?
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      Most of these questions needn’t be hypothetical, since there are already regulations regarding political ads: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making-disbursements/advertising/ https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making-di...

yoav 7y ago

If that were the case then there is no truth in society and/or the facts are so hard to find that there effectively isn’t a democracy. Given that last election they took large sums of foreign currency for political ads, had representatives in cambridge analitica’s HQ / war room, happen to profit astronomically from increased engagement due to division and disinformation, and their own employees with insider knowledge are also calling the stance out. It seems wildly strange in that context, when Facebook could easily take the stance that it’s hard and they might not get it right but will try anyway, instead of bogus misinterpretation of free speech that is Zuck’s current stated position.

michaelmarion 7y ago
If that were the case then there is no truth in society and/or the facts are so hard to find that there effectively isn’t a democracy. Now you're getting it!
Mirioron 7y ago
>It seems wildly strange in that context, when Facebook could easily take the stance that it’s hard and they might not get it right but will try anyway, instead of bogus misinterpretation of free speech that is Zuck’s current stated position. Because not getting it right can actually be worse for society, because at that point Facebook is picking and choosing who gets to run political ads. This should be terrifying considering that some of these tech companies have so many oopsies when it comes to certain political leanings. What do you think the calls will be like about Facebook when it turns out that one side in politics tends to not get to run their ads on Facebook while the other side can?
- yoav 7y ago
  Not running ads with blatant lies is not partisan. Having a policy of allowing all lies and providing tools for sale to microtarget users so that people can’t validate truth only favors politicians pushing lies and not people viewing them. Facebook not removing ads with blatant lies is bad enough, but their product is now positioned as a disinformation tool. Instead of using targeting to match people who need products with those product ads, they’re openly announcing their product as a tool for corrupt politicians to target voters with disinformation. You don’t need a cambridge analytica to steal Facebook data for targeting when Facebook is offering that same service directly

rexpop 7y ago

It's worth it to us, as a society, to cut into Facebook's development velocity for this. Of course they're pushing back for cost reasons–That's "the bottom line"–but I doubt if it were easy they'd have done it "for free." Businesses, in my experience and observation, won't lift a finger they don't have to. The "right thing" doesn't merit a mention, let alone an allocation, unless it's coerced by the public, or by employees.

kstrauser 7y ago

It's technically easy to do. You hire a roomful of people to vet advertising, similar to how every media company did it until 2010 or so. It's financially challenging, but that's the price of admission to the grownup table. That they're hugely profitable right now[1] so I frankly couldn't care less if they had to spend some of that to become legitimately good at what they claim they want to be good at. I mean, suppose they offered a 100% automated health clinic that misdiagnosed and killed 10% of the patients: "We'd like to hire actual doctors, but that would cost more than we'd wanted to spend, so there's literally nothing we can do to fix this problem. Sorry!" That wouldn't fly. Well, neither does this. Facebook today absolutely sucks at advertising. They're good at the cashing the checks part of the process, but horrendous at the actual implementation. [1] 27.26% margin, according to https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FB/facebook/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FB/facebook/profit...

Mirioron 7y ago
>It's technically easy to do. You hire a roomful of people to vet advertising, similar to how every media company did it until 2010 or so. But it's not a room full of people. Facebook doesn't only exist in the US and I doubt that people from the US will be good at vetting political ads in Poland. What's even worse is that at that point you're asking Facebook to censor political ads based on what Facebook thinks is right. Do you really think that Facebook wouldn't be labeled biased and there wouldn't be even further demands from them? This is easy to do in the example of a health clinic, because there is a right and wrong answer, but in politics that's not the case.
- kstrauser 7y ago
  I think it's entirely reasonable that they have at least one review department per market that they want to serve. Again, that's the way the ad business worked until very, very recently. It's not like some onerous idea made up just for them. You're drawing a false dichotomy about censorship. There's a normal, accepted middle ground between oppressive censorship and anarchy, often referred to as "ad checking" or "editorial review". Right now I can use an automated system to buy an ad saying "Trump Eats Babies" or "Obama Isn't a Citizen" or other flat-out lies. This is wrong. There should be a human in the mix who does at least minimal verification.

Vysero 7y ago

How would it be technically challenging to sell the internet equivalent of campaign buttons? Limit their advertising capabilities to something as simple as that, I like that idea.

onion2k 7y ago

Facebook and Google expressly asked to be exempt from FEC regulation of political adverts in the 2016 election[1]. That would have been a matter of making sure adverts had disclaimers attached; every other advertiser does this from big newspapers and TV channels to little local outfits. It's not technically hard. This is entirely about the fact Facebook and Google make a ton of money from running political ads, so they want to run them even if they might harm the democratic process. [1] https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/vt-hfa062419.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/vt-hfa062419...