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From what I recall Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez questioned Zuckerberg, she questioned along the anecdote of: If I purchase ads on Facebook saying Republicans su

• CobrastanJorji 7y ago
  I completely agree with what you're saying about the difficulty of cleanly separating political vs nonpolitical speech, but for specifically the case of U.S. political issues, one could imagine a hack of defining political ads as "anything that would need to be reported to the FEC as an expenditure."
  • vonmoltke 7y ago
    > one could imagine a hack of defining political ads as "anything that would need to be reported to the FEC as an expenditure." That misses a whole bunch of political advertising. Most of it, I'd wager.
    • briandear 7y ago
      A sympathetic news outlet is often treading on the edge of political advertising as well. Some TV station airing a favorable or unfavorable documentary on a candidate during election season when executives of those stations have publicly supported (or not supported) a candidate or party seems no different than a PAC buying an ad on that same station.
      • wbl 7y ago
        Imagine if we applied this standard to a story of significant presidential malfeasance in October. Something so terrible no one would ever vote for the person. Should we?
    • criddell 7y ago
      You have to start somewhere.
      • nyczomg 7y ago
        While I agree with you, the most vocal of Twitter users likely won’t. Some will be furious if NRA ads are allowed, and others furious if ACLU ads are allowed. And for some reason those are the people society has decided to listen to.
      • ianamartin 7y ago
        No. You actually don't have to start somewhere. Starting somewhere bad without a plan is actively bad. Here's the thing, people. FB and Twitter are pretty much garbage. That's fine, and we all mostly agree about that. Here's the worst part of social media in general: it's uniting the absolute shittiest of the Republicans with the absolute shittiest of the Democrats and encouraging them both to get together and form a government agency that defines "truth" and then forces private entities to enforce that truth. There is literally nothing Twitter or Facebook or any other social media website could do that would be this actually bad.
        • pengstrom 7y ago
          While I can imagine what you mean by "shittiest Republicans", could you give me examples of the "shittiest Democrats"?
          • fastball 7y ago
            You don't think there are better and worse Democrats?
        • criddell 7y ago
          It's real hard to find a reason to be upset with a blanket ban on political ads on Twitter. You can still say what you want to say, but Twitter isn't going to accept money to help you promote your message. Good for them.
      • 7y ago
    • Townley 7y ago
      Independent political action committees (both PACs and Super PACs) need to report their spending to the FEC, tied to the candidate their independent expenditure is in favor of/support. That covers most political spending on the national level. Political spending for state offices (which dont have to report to the FEC) is a whole other story.
  • ljm 7y ago
    The difficulty is that we once used propaganda in war time, because we needed it. The problem now is that you don’t know who is doing it, and for what. And propaganda back then wasn’t so clear cut. We were allied with Russia and at the end their population was truly decimated.
    • zobzu 7y ago
      nowadays most of us have no idea what is propaganda and what isn't. heck sometimes you eventually research it and realize stuff you believed was true for decades because you were just told so by some authoritative source (like "TV" or what not really), turn out, is between misleading to flat out wrong. Note that I'm not even thinking about this in terms of politics. It seems to be the case for so many different things, sometimes due to ignorance, sometimes malice.
      • CobrastanJorji 7y ago
        My favorite example is "eating carrots improves your vision." Came from WW2 propaganda trying to hide the existence of radar.
• buboard 7y ago
  Obviously such questions were manipulative grandstanding. The only way to win the political rhetoric game is not to play. That's what twitter is doing.
  • munk-a 7y ago
    I generally comprehend "grandstanding" in the common language to not only be seeking attention but to misrepresent false or unimportant information for the sake of gaining that attention. Does my definition mesh with yours or how would you find that quote to be misrepresenting a problem in society? While her question could seem to be reductive, I think it's accurately reducing the question to a point where the answer is easily approachable to most people and, while often time the actual advertisements less obvious lies in practice, a lot of facebook advertisements are knowingly spreading falsehoods and that is hurting the political dialog.
    • buboard 7y ago
      oh her questions were more reasonable than others, like for example the question about the sexual orientations of Libra association member boards. Still, her question about what constitutes a political lie is not representative of 99% of political lies , which are usually more subtle and subject to debate. Also, his response "we should let the people see for themselves the lies and judge politicians accordingly" was not really countered at all.
      • pubutil 7y ago
        >“. . . was not really countered at all” That was probably the only point Zuckerberg made that I agree with, though I don’t doubt that we think that way for different reasons. If I know social networks are deleting ads or posts that are deemed untruthful then 1) how do I see who determines the truthfulness of the network’s content and 2) how can I trust that nothing else is being removed at will? It’s a classic argument. Personally, I trust myself to filter through information and make informed decisions; more so than Facebook or Twitter. I think that many people prefer not to make informed political decisions on their own for a variety of reasons. Be it a lack of time, ambition, or research knowledge, it harms us as a whole when we allow ourselves to be told what political opinions to hold.
• diogenescynic 7y ago
  There's a difference between opinion and facts/lies. Opinion is fine, but when someone is spreading an objective lie (the earth is flat!)... that's where it seems like this is a cop out for Facebook to pretend they can't get involved due to "free speech". Sure, let people share opinions, but not lies and misinformation.
  • xkjkls 7y ago
    Who should adjudicate what is an is not a lie? Twitter’s response is basically “we don’t want to be the ones to do that”
    • diogenescynic 7y ago
      Same way it works for newspapers and tv and radio.
• Maxious 7y ago
  Someone tried to put up that ad and Facebook took it down. But wasn't it "just" deceptive clickbait advertising for a political position against Facebook? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-facebook/facebook-takes-down-false-ad-from-pac-on-republican-graham-idUSKBN1X50IZ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-facebook/fac...
  • cpeterso 7y ago
    Here is the full video of the "Conservatives for a Green New Deal" ad by the Really Online Lefty League PAC: https://youtu.be/cvRbZJXTE5E https://youtu.be/cvRbZJXTE5E
• octonion 7y ago
  Are political propaganda and deliberate lies the type of speech the Founding Fathers were trying to protect?
  • harryh 7y ago
    The issue is who gets to be the arbiter of what counts as "political propaganda and deliberate lies"? The founding fathers thought that if government was given such power it would be abused to stifle speech that fell outside of those categories so the only way to protect speech was to protect it all. I tend to think that if this is true for government, it's probably true for large corporations as well.
    • erikpukinskis 7y ago
      That restriction on governments was made alongside the granting of many exclusive rights which corporations do not have.
    • rapind 7y ago
      I think the issue is whether it still qualifies as free speech when it's paid advertisement. Inevitably the companies with the largest coffers and most to gain get a megaphone and you end up with tiers of free speech (pay to be heard).
      • 131012 7y ago
        And they are not banning political tweets...
    • ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      We have rules against slander, defamation, libel, blackmail and leaking secrets, technically they are speech. Yet we usually manage to distinguish them. I don't think this is an intractable problem.
      • throw_m239339 7y ago
• Frondo 7y ago
  One of the better questions she asked was, "should a political party be allowed to run targeted ads at members of the opposing party, giving false information about the election date?" Zuck's response was, "well, I think it's BAD if you LIE. Telling lies is bad." but wouldn't say that Facebook would moderate that kind of content. I personally don't see a legitimate free speech claim saying that political parties should be allowed to target opponents with plain, simple falsehoods like that (which already happen through the mail system, mind), but I'm open to hear. I ask because speech is already restricted when it comes to advertising; companies are compelled to put up disclaimers, the FTC will come down on misleading ads, etc. So, if society's surviving okay with those restrictions, is there a reason that political chicanery shouldn't be held to some standard also? What is the free speech argument for not drawing a line at that?
  • criddell 7y ago
    > "should a political party be allowed to run targeted ads at members of the opposing party, giving false information about the election date?" Would that actually be legal? Are you allowed to try to suppress the vote like that?
    • mandevil 7y ago
      It is 100% legal to send mailers or put up billboards (which are not as regulated as shared spectrum for TV/radio) with the wrong election date to people, and this happens a couple of times every election cycle. Sometimes its government agencies, sometimes its a campaign (first example that popped up when googling: https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/spin-cycle/zeldin-gershon-mailer-1.22304894 https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/spin-cycle/zeld...). I don't think any of them has been investigated by the FEC.
      • _AzMoo 7y ago
        It's funny that I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the comments to reach a discussion that I think really highlights the crux of the problem. We know that social media platforms will take down content that is illegal. The issue is that it's legal for political parties (or anybody) to post false or misleading statements for the purposes of political propaganda. AOC's hypothetical ad shouldn't be policed by Facebook, it should be policed by the police, or at the very least be an example of criminal defamation that is handled in the court system. I Am Clearly Not A Lawyer but I am surprised by looking at the existing legislation on criminal defamation that it's not.
• adamsea 7y ago
  > Determining the periphery of political speech,as a result, would be inherently political. And, choosing not to determine the peripherey of political speech, is also political. Inaction is a choice, which by its nature supports the status quo. I am not saying inaction, or the status quo, is necessarily good or bad, although I don't agree with the implication in the parent post that Facebook shouldn't do something. What should be done is delicate and will always require constant negotiation, and be in flux. I am a proponent of free speech. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, is, of course, a classic example of a "surpression" of speech, and, the history of the US court system in ruling that books which were banned are legal to publish, etc, is a good example that our legal system has tools to negotiate these issues and can do so.
  • natechols 7y ago
    For the record, the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" example came from one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time, which sent a man to jail for distributing anti-draft literature during WWI. The parent comment isn't necessarily guilty of this, but I've noticed that the people who approvingly quote Oliver Wendell Holmes as a justification for restrictions on free speech almost invariably have no clue about the historical context.
    • mattrp 7y ago
      If I could give all the upvotes I ever had, I would assign them to this post right here. It truly saddens me that this one comment represents the exception to this entire thread rather than the majority. Doesn’t it occur to anyone that Twitter is just like any other big corporation out there and this “principled stand” is nothing more than a corporatist trampling of our basic rights? Twitter ceased to be useful to me years ago but this latest action just affirms to me that they really have no clue what freedom is.
• robbrown451 7y ago
  What I saw was that AOC very effectively got him to admit that they already will do it in certain cases. He admitted that if someone tried to place an ad that contributed to voter suppression (by misreporting the date of the election), that would be banned.
• kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  "The Green New Deal. Who really supports it? Click here to find out more." Just move the propaganda two hops away.
  • Barrin92 7y ago
    would already greatly diminish the effect. Two hops away is a magnitude or two less of exposure. When Spain changed organ donations from opt-in to opt-out the rate increased from 30% to 9x%. That's one tick of a box. I see these comments a lot and I don't know if people purposefully try to downplay the role of smart design because they pursue an agenda or if people seriously don't recognise how significant small changes in design can be. If we'd manage to hide false information behind two clicks we'd have done the world a great service.
    • ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      Likewise, I always see these statements and they come across very disingenuous.
• IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
  Many trees constitute a forest. A single tree does not. At some point, a group of trees becomes large enough to be considered a forest. There is no way to provide any non-arbitrary rule where that point is. Does this render the concept of a "forest" meaningless?
  • humanrebar 7y ago
    If you promise to chop down all forests but are fine with trees, yes.
    • notafraudster 7y ago
      Does this follow? I run a site. I want to get rid of all fraudulent spam but allow legitimate commercial product advertisements. I train a model to tell the difference (or maybe I just make a human judgment call). It is better than guessing but worse than perfect: false positives and false negatives exist and expose me to criticism from interested parties. Your position is that this renders the concept of spam meaningless because I promised to get rid of spam and allow non-spam content.
      • humanrebar 7y ago
        If you're tying ribbons to trees in forests but not to other trees, you (or other interested folks) can correct any errors. And, if you actually wanted to be fair, you'd fix your mistakes yourself (or with your own resources) instead of expecting everyone else to clean up after you. If you have robots chopping down forests, there's not much to do when they're wrong except apologize and explain that algorithms are hard.
  • philipov 7y ago
    This exact topic is covered in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and the answer is that the concept of forest is not defined by such a condition. It is a basket of examples of forests and identifying a new example in the basket is done by means of analogy to the existing examples. It is therefore possible for a concept to grow to include contradictory examples, at which point people will typically split the basket into two distinct concepts, like a forest vs a grove. The point at which that happens is somewhat arbitrary, but it also doesn't exist a priori. Someone has to try to use the word ambiguously. Words don't have meanings until they are used by people to mean. It is even possible for a distinction to not be made, and for someone to experience cognitive dissonance when two contradictory examples remain in the same basket.
• baddox 7y ago
  Okay, you can point out one extreme side of the continuum. What about the other extreme, where every political ad contains blatant lies because anyone who doesn't do that cannot possibly get elected? > I worry though: often the truthfulness of real world statements are difficult to determine. Even when truth is easy to determine, there are few arbiters of information that everyone alongside the aisle trust. This is true, of course, but why is this such a serious or novel concern? All criminal trials, for instance, require making a judgement on the truth about reality. Of course some cases are very hard, and sometimes we get the wrong outcome. But what else do you suggest? That no one ever attempt to determine anything about reality?
  • pmart123 7y ago
    The cream should eventually rise to the top. Political ads are now archived for anyone to scrutinize. If a politician kept releasing ridiculous ads, voters and the general public would likely know about the existence at least. Censoring ads opens up a much larger can of worms IMO. "Republicans back the green deal" could mean: a. Congressional Republican majority b. Some elected Republicans c. A group of Republican voters If AOC ran that ad, it very well would be truthful for B and C, but should Facebook interpret the ad as describing A? There's way too much nuance to be the single arbitrator.
    • cartoonworld 7y ago
      You mention that political ads are archived for anyone to scrutinize. I am not aware of this and my belief is that this is both not the case, and in fact very difficult to execute due to the ephemeral nature of internet advertising. For example, imagine my TIMECUBE PAC ponies up for 2500 targeted facebook micro-campaigns with very slight variations depending on the target demo with an ad spend of $20, $50K cost. Would it be actually possible for anybody to get Facebook to tell them who I was advertising at, or what those ads were?
      • vmlinuz 7y ago
        Do you mean something like this? It doesn't go into exact details, but it does exist... https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=political_and_issue_ads&country=US&impression_search_field=has_impressions_lifetime&q=green%20new%20deal https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...
• Rapzid 7y ago
  One persons "suppression of speech" is another persons right to not publish and spread that persons bullshit. This is why people always bring up that the "Free speech" is a concept that applies to governments(never-mind the historical origins in ancient Athens which was largely around protecting political discourse and dissent from prosecution..). Like many restrictions placed on the government it falls apart and becomes contradictory when applied to the individual.
  • a_tractor 7y ago
    The principles which make up the Bill of Rights are derived from natural law, which itself derives from the nature of man and the world, just as physical law derives from space, time, and matter. Just as Newton didn't create the law of gravity, no man or government created the right to freedom of expression. That there are certain rights which exist as prerequisites necessary for the formation of a peaceful society of civilized humans was not created, it was discovered. Aristotle and others argued that each kind of animal has a mental nature that is appropriate to its physical nature. All animals know or can discover what they need to do in order to lead the life that they are physically fitted to live. Thus humans are naturally capable of knowing how to live together and do business with each other without killing each other. In England the theory of natural law led to the Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution, the declaration of right, and the English Enlightenment. It was the basis for the US revolution and the US bill of rights. The fact that society runs smoothly when natural law is applied has been proven over and over again. Over and over and over again throughout the ages tyrants and social engineers have tested these natural laws, the end result of such disrespect has always led and always will lead to one thing and one thing only: violence. That people no longer understand this, and that corporations and powerful pseudo-rulers do not respect this, is nothing new, but only shows how much we are regressing as a society in terms of our basic respect for our fellow man. Deflecting from that by pretending that only the government is responsible for respecting this truth is... well... ignorant and recklessly defiant not only of the lessons of history, but of human nature itself. What the Constitution formally acknowledges and attempts to respect, which should apply to everybody operating within the social contract, is that any ruler, or anyone who places themselves in the position of a ruler, who violates natural law is illegitimate. He has no right to be obeyed, and his commands are mere force and coercion. Rulers who act lawlessly, whose laws are unlawful, are mere criminals, and should be dealt with in accordance with natural law, as applied in a state of nature, in other words they and their servants should be killed as the opportunity presents, like the dangerous animals that they are, the common enemies of all mankind. What I am saying has provided the moral and legal basis for many great revolutions, and many governments.
• jlmorton 7y ago
  > I often see these clean, easily provable anecdotes from those who support some kind of suppression of speech. I had a bit of a different take. I actually think even this simple statement is incredibly difficult to verify. First, we have to define what the Green New Deal even is. I don't mean this to be snarky, but even that is difficult. Then we have to define what support means. Does it mean positive comments in the press? Do we need to go lookup in Lexis-Nexis every statement the candidate has made about the Green New Deal? Even if we limit it to actual votes, it's still problematic. Did the candidate vote for the markup in committee? Did they vote to move it to the floor? In the Senate, did they vote for cloture, but vote against it on the floor? Did they vote for the bill out of conference? Some might recall, we spent a good portion of the 2004 campaign arguing over whether John Kerry voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it. This stuff is extremely subjective. It's probably something like a day's work for a seasoned reporter to accurately fact check a claim like this, and even then it's open to interpretation, which is easy enough to express in a fact check, but pretty hard in a binary judgement of truth.
  • siosonel 7y ago
    "binary judgement of truth" I think people should be more comfortable with non-binary truth, based on the likelihood that something is a lie or not based on historical record. I would put more trust in a statement from someone with a record of telling unbiased truth versus someone with a record of frequently spewing lies or having ingrained bias. Otherwise, if you don't make these types of initial simplifications, it becomes too complicated to start evaluating the truth of any statement, including scientific ones. And it's okay to be make a mistaken evaluation, just reevaluate and adjust the simplified "truth" assessment model based on more recent data. There is a danger in deferring a "truth" assessment: a community loses a sense of shared truth leading to polarization, doubt, confusion. And a so-called "neutral" person is, by not taking action, implicitly supporting the dominant narrative, which may be a lie after all.
    • anon73044 7y ago
      >comfortable with non-binary truth Careful, getting a bit too postmodernists in here. If you look at it too hard all "truths" become false eventually, and that can pave the way to apathy. >And it's okay to be make a mistaken evaluation, just reevaluate and adjust the simplified "truth" assessment model based on more recent data. And how many politicians on both sides of the aisle double-down on an issue just to remain consistent to their base? Or worse, change their position thanks to millions of dollars worth of lobbying or the promise of a high-up position once they're out of office? >And a so-called "neutral" person is, by not taking action, implicitly supporting the dominant narrative, which may be a lie after all. Maybe the Stoics were on to something. If the masses believe the lie, doesn't it become the truth?
• xkjkls 7y ago
  There will never be a successful community without some level of moderation. It is better for us to define the levels of moderation than have a organization start adjudicating truth.
  • blotter_paper 7y ago
    That depends on what we mean by "successful." The early chans were very moderation free -- 4chan initially didn't censor, then they started censoring furry content but not pedo content, then the furry ban got removed, then the pedo ban finally kicked in, and they've had more censorship since... but the initial seed was practically not moderated, and most of the moderation that has been put in place since seems like a result of legal fears (the brief furry ban being an obvious exception). The bitmessage chans are still moderation free, and will be as long as the bitmessage network has nodes, but of course that can't scale (for anyone unfamiliar, every bitmessage node tries to decrypt every message -- this means that there is no need for metadata concerning where a message was sent to, and since packets are forwarded across the network you'd have to be running multiple nodes to even guess where a message is coming from, but there's no way that everybody could recieve and try to decrypt everybody else's messages if the whole world used such a system). I'm not arguing that I want a system without moderation, just that such communities have existed, have grown, and do exist. My ideal would be a community with opt-in/opt-out moderation, but I also don't wish every community to reflect my ideals.
• monkeywork 7y ago
  So is it not better to take the twitter approach here and just say - political advertising = banned? Take the decision out of what is true / not true out of it and just remove the political advertisements all together.
  • dnautics 7y ago
    It's still not easy. Suppose I write a bot that flags all of my competitors ads a political?
    • rapind 7y ago
      At least then Twitter would have a pretty clear incentive to combat your bot as it and its ilk could have a substantial effect on their revenue. No doubt this will happen. You could already be doing this on youtube to flag a competitor's content as copyright infringement.
    • robbrown451 7y ago
      Well, Google has figured out how to make it really hard to make a link farm that gets your web page to the top of the listings. Very similar problem. I would expect that they would keep track of who is doing the flagging and whether their flagging is consistent with other flaggers, and various other tests for "naturalness" and lack of bias and so on. Then weight things appropriately.
  • fzeroracer 7y ago
    All advertising is incredibly political, because companies operate in a politicized world. Under this guidance for example, Shell could advertise all they want on twitter, but running an ad against Shell about how they pollute the environment or contribute to global warming would be banned. So then your options are to ban all advertising, or be selective in what advertising you allow. Which is inherently a political position.
    • ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      I am not buying this, in the narrow definition, politics is relevant to politicians and elections. Shell is just a private company, so is fair game. Secondly, suppose you could not advertise about shell so what? You can advertise for Greenpeace and related causes.
• samirillian 7y ago
  I agree with your general points, but I'll argue against their relative priority. You're saying that all speech is somehow political. I agree. Yet you must admit that on an advertising platform, there are some forms of political speech (e.g., the type allowed by ad buys) that, in lieu of some external regulation, will be _inherently_ biased. That is, the economic arrangement can only pit one group against another. The only _true_ solution to this problem is a platform where the stakeholders (users) also govern all parts of the platform like a common pooled resource. But we know this cannot happen because, well, capitalism. So I do not discount your claim that all goings-on in public fora are inherently political, I'll just pit two concrete facts against your abstract observation: 1) limiting political ad buys will be less bad than not limiting political ad buys and 2 we can only start really reasoning about your abstract concept of relative existential truths after we fundamentally fix a fundamentally broken economic and technical arrangement.
• nickbauman 7y ago
  This point of view is kinda incoherent. These platforms are not open. They're owned. And the owners can decide what you can and cannot say on it. In the end, if they think that some kinds of expression are not good for them, they not only have the right, but from a corporate perspective, a responsibility to their enterprise to end that expression on their platform. Pressure from lawmakers and the public alike can change their policies. And we can always vote with our feet.
• andrei_says_ 7y ago
  She also asked if it’d be OK to advertise the wrong date for Election Day in a predominantly black zip code for example which I can totally see as a possibility.
• ctdonath 7y ago
  How about ... freedom of speech? Quit trying to micro manage everyone. Accept payment to publish messages on a competitive platform - and let readers, being mostly competent adults, figure content out themselves.
  • 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
    I’d take it a step further and limit who is allowed to vote. You mention competent adults; an adult in 1800 was probably competent around 16 years of age. An adult today is similarly competent at a later age. Regardless of competency, there should be some eligibility requirements to vote. Holding a job should be one. Proof of citizenship should be another.
    • tjr225 7y ago
      I very rarely downvote comments here as a matter of principle but yours here is almost comically absurd. 1. Do you have any evidence that people were more competent at a younger age in 1800? In fact I would think that the opposite is probably true - but again this seems impossible to prove so I'm simply asking you if you have any reason to believe what you're saying is true other than your feelings. 2. People without jobs have just as many rights as those with jobs. Do you also think people without land should not vote? Perhaps not women? Maybe black votes should have less of an impact? I'm curious if you're not American- maybe this would explain a cultural difference I am missing?
    • ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      At least be consistent with the despicable point you are making! How does flipping burgers qualify you to have a say in how to run a country? Take away votes from the uneducated, the criminal, the insane, people with low IQ, and the tax dodging millionaires.
  • api_dolla 7y ago
    The entire point is that more money doesn’t lead to disproportionately more speech. And if readers were ‘mostly competent’, and able to decipher the truth, we wouldn’t even be having this convo
• annadane 7y ago
  That's what confuses me, a bit. Consider just as a hypothetical that Facebook is the single most unethical company on earth. Just as an example, whether you agree with it or not. I still wouldn't necessarily agree with what's being asked of them, to actively disallow political ads with lies. I think there's a good case to be made for just not having political ads (because of all the reasons you'd expect)... but I can understand having them, too, and it's a bit weird to me as someone who doesn't like a lot of what FB does to see the politicians die on the hill of "you must fact check everything"
  • ninth_ant 7y ago
    It’s not weird at all, it’s a power grab. The politicians want to use social media as an excuse to become arbiters of the truth. It’s repulsive and short-sighted, it appears to me they have forgotten or disregarded the old adage to not claim a new power you wouldn’t trust your opponents with.
    • smt88 7y ago
      They were asking Facebook to arbitrate the truth. That’s not a power grab.
      • ninth_ant 7y ago
        “The truth” as applied to the realm of politics is very often something of substantial controversy and disagreement. Asking a corporation to be in charge of arbitrating those disagreements doesn’t seem like the end game these politicians are actually pursuing here. Instead my interpretation of their motivation is to silence their opposition. They are trying to setup a system where they are gatekeepers of these political disagreements, ignoring the fact that the same system will almost certainly be weaponized against them. For what it’s worth I’m on the same “side” as these politicians for many issues, I just feel like they are playing a dangerous game here.
        • modriano 7y ago
• tmaly 7y ago
  after reading Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World by Bruce Schneier I have come to realize that trust is a really difficult thing to implement online. Look at how hard it is for Amazon to police counterfeit items or fake reviews.
• m1sta_ 7y ago
  It's not the suppression of speech. It's the regulation of speech amplification, especially paid amplification. The concept of fraud and libel are related too. It is fraudulent to claim you are someone that you are not.
  • Nasrudith 7y ago
    Although a popular meme like the platform/publisher duality it isn't a valid concept legally - at least in the US conception. Not any more than being able to get away with specific death threats as "a promise". That sort of "marginal loophole" is frowned upon in the jurisprudence period. The prevailing form of restrictions that have survived are specific and tailored invalidations of forms of speech protection - threats, fraud, and libel. Not to say that special pleading for abridging rights hasn't embedded itself via ex-nilho doctrines turned precedent.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• TomMckenny 7y ago
  No need to even think of controlling speech. But certainly ban political advertising which amounts to bribery both in theory and practice. No one could genuinely believe that probating de-facto bribery is indistinguishable from censorship. Indeed it's very telling that banning _all_ political ads is objected to as being allegedly "biased".
  • erichocean 7y ago
    > Indeed it's very telling that banning _all_ political ads is objected to as being allegedly "biased" Easy solution that should make everyone happy: a complete ban on all forms of advertising, on all platforms, in all mediums, without any carve outs for any group, cause, or creed. Or we can just continue to let some people mind-hack the public so that other people can get rich.
• austinshea 7y ago
  But the laws associated political advertising on TV aren’t really up for debate in the US. They worked, and then came attempts to avoid campaign finance laws. Choosing not to take money for potential political advertisements is good business for the owners of a public forum. If it’s easy to verify, it’ll be good for anyone that cares about knowing what true public opinion looks like.
• netcan 7y ago
  I agree. In terms of twitter's decision though.... This could either support their decision or the opposite. Being the arbitar of truth is both an unavoidable demand and an impossible task for Twitter. Being a "public square" where politics is decided/discussed makes the implications of this problem especially acute. Fairness, whatever that means, is doubly important in democratic media. Their detractors (and would-be regulators) will ultimately demand a "corporate policy" and judge them by their inconsistency... Why is this banned and not that? That is, a set of rules applied in all circumstances. Clear legible rules applied consistently is where cracks in theories like "truth and lies are easily discernable" inevitably appear. It's an impossibly hard line to police. "This is a political ad," OTOH, is an easier judgement to make. Contraversial decisions would be tolerable too, deeming one and political but not another. East is probably an overstatement, but political/not-political is easier than truth/lies