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Jack's last tweet in this thread: >paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may no
by moltensodium 7y ago
Jack's last tweet in this thread:
>paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle
Ignoring the technology aspects of this for a minute: he's basically arguing directly against the Supreme Court's Citizen's United ruling, which I find interesting. If we're going to argue that money is too corrupting in online political advertising then it really doesn't have anything to do with being online.
- goodluckchuck 7y agoThat is the popular understanding of Citizens United ("CU"), but "money is speech" had been the law for a long time before that. People have the right to "assemble and petition for redress." CU just said ~"given that people speak with their wallets, and people have a right to assemble, do people have the right to assemble and speak with their wallets at the same time?" So the Court said yeah. Really very innocuous. It's the side-issues that people are foisting onto CU. Like, wealth disparity. Maybe the problem isn't that people can buy MAGA hats and radio spots, but that a small group have such a large percentage of the money they can easily buy "all" the ads. The way to fix that isn't to restrict how people speak and use their wealth, but to address the wealth disparity itself. Then the other huge but undecided side-issue is the fact that corporate law allows companies to keep most all their info secret, money, members, etc. So when you combine CU-money with the "dark"-laws regarding corporate governance you get dark money. Again, the way to fix that is to address corporate disclosures.