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>Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into de

>Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisements. To put it another way, if advertising on Facebook is part of my free speech, surely Zuck must run my adverts despite the fact I have no money to pay him for them.

philliphaydon 7y ago
Is this a troll comment or are you being serious?
- Derek_MK 7y ago
  Neither really, it's demonstrating that it's kind of dumb to consider a paid advertisement "speech" for the purposes of "free speech", considering there's inherently a restriction there on how much "speech" you get, because you have to pay for the ability to "speak".
  - wan23 7y ago
    Free speech isn't free in the same way that free beer is. The idea is to avoid restricting what messages are allowed as much as possible. It's not about giving any particular individual a platform so much as making sure that the platform is open to a variety of ideas.
    - sjwright 7y ago
      A system without restrictions favours the rich, it favours the dishonest, and it favours those who wield the best weaponized psychology. (And it favours most those with all three.) Your passing reference to platforms being open to a "variety of ideas" is—and I'm sorry in advance for the snark—but it's just adorable.
      - ls612 7y ago
        And a system with restrictions like you want favors the authoritarians, those with the best real world bullying/harassment operations, and those who are well connected. I’m sorry but liberal democracy isn’t the best form of government because the people are smart (they never have been), it’s the best form of government because the alternative is recurring political violence.
        sjwright 7y ago
        I'm sorry but liberal democracy doesn't infer a strict libertarian view on political campaign messaging. I don't want to assume you're American, but your fatalistic view of government sure does point towards that. I suggest you spend some time looking at how other liberal democracies handle this challenge. Online political advertising remains a challenge everywhere but usually the same legal and ethical frameworks apply—even if the frameworks still fail at the margins. And to be clear, my objection isn't to all online advertising but specifically to Zuckerberg defending Facebook's stance by appealing to free speech. I don't think any Government should force Facebook's hand; I think they should seek to protect their social license and act independently as Jack Dorsey recently did.
        ls612 7y ago
        So far as I can tell most other liberal democracies either handle the issue much the same way as the US does or they just flat out ban political parties that are too “fringe”. I wouldn’t trust anyone who wanted to be the censor to be the censor.
        sjwright 7y ago
        Few countries are like the USA if you’re willing to look close enough. The differences are there even if they don’t scream out at you.
      - darkarmani 7y ago
        That's part of the point of being rich. Most systems favor people with more money and smarter messaging.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      There is always a restriction. The platform isn’t open to a variety of ideas but to the biggest spender. Separately, while some politics revolves around untestable statements of preference (e.g. Purple team “freedom is more important than equality” vs. Teal team “equality is the best foundation upon which freedom can be built”), there are also statements of fact and it is dangerous to allow demonstrably false claims to spread (Antivaxxers are probably the least controversial example of a dangerously wrong meme on this forum, but others exist all the way back to ancient Greek democracy). Democracy isn’t Magic: If Antivaxxers got 99.9% of the votes they would still be wrong, the only difference is they would cause more harm.
    - joejerryronnie 7y ago
      I am staunchly opposed to all the “free” offerings of our more progressive presidential candidates - free healthcare, free college, etc - but free beer could sway my vote.
    - yifanl 7y ago
      That implicitly means it's biased towards the status quo.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    "Free" as in "from prior restraint by the government". It's not a coherent comment in the context of the US 1st amendment.
    - DavidSJ 7y ago
      Free speech, as a value, is a broader concept than mere lack of government restraint on speech. It can also pertain to the exchange of ideas in certain private forums. And by the way, the First Amendment disallows not only prior restraint, but many other government restraints on speech as well. It's just that prior restraint is considered the most egregious and hence subject to the greatest judicial scrutiny.
- sjwright 7y ago
  It is self-evidently a reductio ad absurdum, and a well written one at that. It demonstrates the logical flaw in Zuckerberg's argument with one short paragraph.
- k__ 7y ago
  Why should this be trolling?
fennecfoxen 7y ago
"Mr. Paine! I submit that your pamphlet, _Common Sense_, is not free speech! If it was part of your free speech, surely your printers must print my pamphlets despite the fact that I have no money to pay for them." — some colonial judge in the service of the Crown, probably
- fennecfoxen 7y ago
  Postscript: Hey, if you liked this one, but need a more recent example, you should try getting together with a bunch of people, setting up a little not-for-profit organization[1], soliciting donations, and using that money to make a documentary about your political opponents, decrying them as unfit for public office -- then get in a court case with the FEC telling you that you can't show the movie, because there's going to be an election. [1] Not a 501(c)(3) charity, mind you; donations aren't tax-deductible. Just a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit.
- hindsightbias 7y ago
  Your subsidized access to freedom is ovah: https://coloradosun.com/2019/02/11/cable-franchise-fee-limit-public-access-channels/ https://coloradosun.com/2019/02/11/cable-franchise-fee-limit...
dominotw 7y ago
he didn't say that because of "free speech" , he gave a specific reason for why he thinks they should be allowed. He didn't say its because anyone should be able to say anything. If his argument was "free speech" he wouldn't have had to support it with "so they can get their message into debates". Why would "free speech" require supporting evidence. Looks like you are the one doing the conflation :D .
Lazare 7y ago
I notice you don't address his actual point though. If, let's say, a group advocating for the abolishment of asset forfeiture wants to communicate their message, and the media is not covering it, it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to put ads are on social media, since that's where the eyeballs are (cf, the collapse of the news media). If social media bans those ads then while the group clearly still has free speech, they will have little way to meaningfully exercise it. You might say - and I'd certainly agree - that the real problem is a world where everyone is on Twitter and Facebook to the exclusion of all else, and thus a world where 3-4 CEOs can unilaterally decide that nobody needs to hear anything about asset forfeiture (or whatever). And yet, that's the world we're in. (You also don't seem to understand what "free speech" is. By your logic, a law banning the purchase television ads for Democratic candidates - but allowing the purchase of television ads for Republicans - would be okay, because after all, those ads cost money, so it's not restricting the Democratic candidates right to free speech. That's absurd, no?)
- Angostura 7y ago
  I humbly disagree > it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to put ads are on social media It would be natural to them to post to their Facebook page because that's what social media is for and then for their committed network of supporters to repost etc. Remember - that's the advantage of social media - you can quickly get the work out to your supporters without having to go through intermediaries, or having to pay for advertising.
  - Lazare 7y ago
    That's not how social media works. Feeds are highly curated. > you can quickly get the work out to your supporters without having to go through intermediaries, or having to pay for advertising. How do you think Facebook makes money? And as a followup, why do you think people pay money to run ads on Facebook? Like, I 100% agree with you that this is how it should work, and it's how we all thought it would work 15 years ago, but it feels oddly disconnected from the world we live in.
krsdcbl 7y ago
I think the comparison is lacking, but you do have a point. It is really more than awkward to use "free speech" to advocate for something that is, inherently, not free.
bhupy 7y ago
How is paid speech not free speech? The paid aspect is just a means to an end. Money itself should not be seen as speech, but speech that costs money is still speech. On a basic level, any self publishing on any form of media has a nonzero cost and you buy some service from some third party eventually. If free speech applied to you but not the person who supplied you a platform, then that freedom only exists in theory and is effectively useless as you can be gagged by way of action against who supplied you your megaphone. The freedom of advocacy is inseparable from the freedom of speech. It costs money to print pamphlets, buy air time, pay people to stand on the corner, conduct opinion polls, etc. Say that you or I have a novel political idea that we want to advocate for. How do you propose that we do so? We'd probably form a non-profit, spend money contacting potential allies, convince them on the merits of our case and to donate to us, then spend that money on pamphlets, TV, radio ads, etc. That's freedom at work. If paid advertisements are not free speech, then the concept of free speech would cease to exist beyond street corner rants.
- Traster 7y ago
  We're talking here about free speech versus compelled speech. There are no restrictions on your right to speech, but we also don't compel anyone to sell you an advertising platform. Anyone is free to choose to sell you a megaphone or not. In this case Zuck gets criticism for choosing to sell megaphones to people he knows are going to use those megaphones to lie. The case Zuck wants to make is that he should be free from the consequences of choosing to take money to distribute lies. He wants to do so by claiming its his obligation to give free speech to politicians but this is clearly rubbish - it's a protection no other megaphone vendor has. Take CNN for example, they can and do refuse to broadcast some political adverts because they have an obligation. An obligation that Zuckerberg contents shouldn't exist. What he is advocating for is a fundamental re-definition of what free speech in the US means.
  - bhupy 7y ago
    I think you might be confusing the First Amendment with the principle of Free Speech. Per the First Amendment, Zuck can do whatever he likes with his platform. He can refuse to broadcast whatever he wants, just like CNN and other news networks. But just as important, he is free to NOT refuse to broadcast whatever he pleases. There are no legal consequences for that (outside of the narrow exceptions in Brandenburg v Ohio). The argument that he is making is that he wants Facebook to be a platform that upholds the ideal of free speech. Whether or not Facebook follows through and actually practices this philosophy equally, remains to be seen.
mattnewton 7y ago
Free != gratis Free means legally unrestricted by the state here, not free of payment or of private guidelines.
snarf21 7y ago
I think Facebook is evil but it isn't like TV and radio advertising is held to some high level of fact checking or truth. The one minor thing FB might be able to do is to target smaller groups better than tv channels or radio stations.
Bostonian 7y ago
"It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisements." My free speech rights include the right to pay for an advertisement to get across my message or to join with others to do so. Progressives dominate the media and academia and want to shut down other outlets.
- wavefunction 7y ago
  >Progressives dominate the media Don't y'all have Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting?
  - gwright 7y ago
    So you agree that all other media is dominated by progressives and everyone else should just settle Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting?
    - wavefunction 7y ago
      No I don't agree. I am just pointing out that you have outlets available to you. From what I can tell the media is mostly about middle-of-the-road inoffensive capitalism.
tmaly 7y ago
Yes there are dangers of people and companies with big pockets drowning out your voice. Its natural for Zuck to make his case as that is a huge revenue stream for him. But the same holds true of the general use of public airwaves. If they are owned or controlled by a select group of people who sit on the boards, their voice and preferences are going to be a lot more powerful than your average joe on the street.
rayiner 7y ago
While Facebook is obviously not bound by the first amendment, the fact that something is paid doesn’t undermine its nature as free speech. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” which sparked the American Revolution, was published and sold for profit. https://www.printmag.com/editors-picks/power-of-print-common-sense-1776 https://www.printmag.com/editors-picks/power-of-print-common.... (Though Paine donated his share to the Continental Army.) Paine got his message out by contracting with for-profit publishers to disseminate his book. Facebook is just the new version of that.
- harryh 7y ago
  I think there is a pretty clear difference between publishers which sell speech to people that want to buy it and advertisers that take money in return for putting speech in front of people automatically. Maybe both forms of money entangled speech are worthy of the same protections. But they are two different things.
  - shawndrost 7y ago
    As I understand the function of a publisher, it is predominantly about marketing and distribution, and putting a book in front of people who otherwise wouldn't have heard of it or bought it.
    - harryh 7y ago
      Yes, but publishers just give people the opportunity to buy something. Advertisers put the speech in front of people whether they want to buy it or not.
tanilama 7y ago
What he is saying is that Money needs to find a way to speak. Nothing new, just some sugar coating of 'We Need That Ads Money, are you kidding me?'
schainks 7y ago
"You can be unethical and still be legal that's the way I run my life haha." — Mark Zuckerberg https://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-secret-ims-from-college-2012-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-s...
OkGoDoIt 7y ago
Maybe we’re conflating the meaning of the word free here. Advertising is not free as in beer, but maybe it should still be free as in speech? (ironically labeled in this case)
gojomo 7y ago
Paid advertisements are in fact speech covered by US free speech rights. Courts have accepted some limits in purely commercial speech, but political ads tend to receive the same protection as any other utterance, compensated or not.
jeffdavis 7y ago
Free speech is not about the cost. A lot of kinds of speech require some outlay. Censorship is when you are willing to pay the cost, but it's still banned due to content. Yes, I know we are discussing private censorship which is more acceptable than government censorship. But if FB wants to be considered a general platform, they have to be careful filtering content, including ads.
HugoDaniel 7y ago
Lets start an advocacy group that advocates that ads should not be used to spread a political message. We can start by creating a facebook page and buying some ads.
anm89 7y ago
None of this is a free speech issue. Facebook get's to choose whether you can openly speak there specifically because it is outside the realm of free speech and inside the realm of a private business. Free speech at least in the US is protected by the constitution so if this was a free speech issue it wouldn't be on the table because the answer would be: you can't restrict it. They want the speech which is best for their business. What else are they, a corporation, supposed to want?
perseusprime11 7y ago
It feels like he thinks political advertising on Facebook is the only way to stop Elizabeth Warren.

philliphaydon 7y ago

Is this a troll comment or are you being serious?

Derek_MK 7y ago
Neither really, it's demonstrating that it's kind of dumb to consider a paid advertisement "speech" for the purposes of "free speech", considering there's inherently a restriction there on how much "speech" you get, because you have to pay for the ability to "speak".
- wan23 7y ago
  Free speech isn't free in the same way that free beer is. The idea is to avoid restricting what messages are allowed as much as possible. It's not about giving any particular individual a platform so much as making sure that the platform is open to a variety of ideas.
  - sjwright 7y ago
    A system without restrictions favours the rich, it favours the dishonest, and it favours those who wield the best weaponized psychology. (And it favours most those with all three.) Your passing reference to platforms being open to a "variety of ideas" is—and I'm sorry in advance for the snark—but it's just adorable.
    - ls612 7y ago
      And a system with restrictions like you want favors the authoritarians, those with the best real world bullying/harassment operations, and those who are well connected. I’m sorry but liberal democracy isn’t the best form of government because the people are smart (they never have been), it’s the best form of government because the alternative is recurring political violence.
      - sjwright 7y ago
        I'm sorry but liberal democracy doesn't infer a strict libertarian view on political campaign messaging. I don't want to assume you're American, but your fatalistic view of government sure does point towards that. I suggest you spend some time looking at how other liberal democracies handle this challenge. Online political advertising remains a challenge everywhere but usually the same legal and ethical frameworks apply—even if the frameworks still fail at the margins. And to be clear, my objection isn't to all online advertising but specifically to Zuckerberg defending Facebook's stance by appealing to free speech. I don't think any Government should force Facebook's hand; I think they should seek to protect their social license and act independently as Jack Dorsey recently did.
        ls612 7y ago
        So far as I can tell most other liberal democracies either handle the issue much the same way as the US does or they just flat out ban political parties that are too “fringe”. I wouldn’t trust anyone who wanted to be the censor to be the censor.
        sjwright 7y ago
        Few countries are like the USA if you’re willing to look close enough. The differences are there even if they don’t scream out at you.
    - darkarmani 7y ago
      That's part of the point of being rich. Most systems favor people with more money and smarter messaging.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    There is always a restriction. The platform isn’t open to a variety of ideas but to the biggest spender. Separately, while some politics revolves around untestable statements of preference (e.g. Purple team “freedom is more important than equality” vs. Teal team “equality is the best foundation upon which freedom can be built”), there are also statements of fact and it is dangerous to allow demonstrably false claims to spread (Antivaxxers are probably the least controversial example of a dangerously wrong meme on this forum, but others exist all the way back to ancient Greek democracy). Democracy isn’t Magic: If Antivaxxers got 99.9% of the votes they would still be wrong, the only difference is they would cause more harm.
  - joejerryronnie 7y ago
    I am staunchly opposed to all the “free” offerings of our more progressive presidential candidates - free healthcare, free college, etc - but free beer could sway my vote.
  - yifanl 7y ago
    That implicitly means it's biased towards the status quo.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  "Free" as in "from prior restraint by the government". It's not a coherent comment in the context of the US 1st amendment.
  - DavidSJ 7y ago
    Free speech, as a value, is a broader concept than mere lack of government restraint on speech. It can also pertain to the exchange of ideas in certain private forums. And by the way, the First Amendment disallows not only prior restraint, but many other government restraints on speech as well. It's just that prior restraint is considered the most egregious and hence subject to the greatest judicial scrutiny.
sjwright 7y ago
It is self-evidently a reductio ad absurdum, and a well written one at that. It demonstrates the logical flaw in Zuckerberg's argument with one short paragraph.
k__ 7y ago
Why should this be trolling?

fennecfoxen 7y ago

"Mr. Paine! I submit that your pamphlet, _Common Sense_, is not free speech! If it was part of your free speech, surely your printers must print my pamphlets despite the fact that I have no money to pay for them." — some colonial judge in the service of the Crown, probably

fennecfoxen 7y ago
Postscript: Hey, if you liked this one, but need a more recent example, you should try getting together with a bunch of people, setting up a little not-for-profit organization[1], soliciting donations, and using that money to make a documentary about your political opponents, decrying them as unfit for public office -- then get in a court case with the FEC telling you that you can't show the movie, because there's going to be an election. [1] Not a 501(c)(3) charity, mind you; donations aren't tax-deductible. Just a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit.
hindsightbias 7y ago
Your subsidized access to freedom is ovah: https://coloradosun.com/2019/02/11/cable-franchise-fee-limit-public-access-channels/ https://coloradosun.com/2019/02/11/cable-franchise-fee-limit...

dominotw 7y ago

he didn't say that because of "free speech" , he gave a specific reason for why he thinks they should be allowed. He didn't say its because anyone should be able to say anything. If his argument was "free speech" he wouldn't have had to support it with "so they can get their message into debates". Why would "free speech" require supporting evidence. Looks like you are the one doing the conflation :D .

Lazare 7y ago

I notice you don't address his actual point though. If, let's say, a group advocating for the abolishment of asset forfeiture wants to communicate their message, and the media is not covering it, it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to put ads are on social media, since that's where the eyeballs are (cf, the collapse of the news media). If social media bans those ads then while the group clearly still has free speech, they will have little way to meaningfully exercise it. You might say - and I'd certainly agree - that the real problem is a world where everyone is on Twitter and Facebook to the exclusion of all else, and thus a world where 3-4 CEOs can unilaterally decide that nobody needs to hear anything about asset forfeiture (or whatever). And yet, that's the world we're in. (You also don't seem to understand what "free speech" is. By your logic, a law banning the purchase television ads for Democratic candidates - but allowing the purchase of television ads for Republicans - would be okay, because after all, those ads cost money, so it's not restricting the Democratic candidates right to free speech. That's absurd, no?)

Angostura 7y ago
I humbly disagree > it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to put ads are on social media It would be natural to them to post to their Facebook page because that's what social media is for and then for their committed network of supporters to repost etc. Remember - that's the advantage of social media - you can quickly get the work out to your supporters without having to go through intermediaries, or having to pay for advertising.
- Lazare 7y ago
  That's not how social media works. Feeds are highly curated. > you can quickly get the work out to your supporters without having to go through intermediaries, or having to pay for advertising. How do you think Facebook makes money? And as a followup, why do you think people pay money to run ads on Facebook? Like, I 100% agree with you that this is how it should work, and it's how we all thought it would work 15 years ago, but it feels oddly disconnected from the world we live in.

krsdcbl 7y ago

I think the comparison is lacking, but you do have a point. It is really more than awkward to use "free speech" to advocate for something that is, inherently, not free.

bhupy 7y ago

How is paid speech not free speech? The paid aspect is just a means to an end. Money itself should not be seen as speech, but speech that costs money is still speech. On a basic level, any self publishing on any form of media has a nonzero cost and you buy some service from some third party eventually. If free speech applied to you but not the person who supplied you a platform, then that freedom only exists in theory and is effectively useless as you can be gagged by way of action against who supplied you your megaphone. The freedom of advocacy is inseparable from the freedom of speech. It costs money to print pamphlets, buy air time, pay people to stand on the corner, conduct opinion polls, etc. Say that you or I have a novel political idea that we want to advocate for. How do you propose that we do so? We'd probably form a non-profit, spend money contacting potential allies, convince them on the merits of our case and to donate to us, then spend that money on pamphlets, TV, radio ads, etc. That's freedom at work. If paid advertisements are not free speech, then the concept of free speech would cease to exist beyond street corner rants.

Traster 7y ago
We're talking here about free speech versus compelled speech. There are no restrictions on your right to speech, but we also don't compel anyone to sell you an advertising platform. Anyone is free to choose to sell you a megaphone or not. In this case Zuck gets criticism for choosing to sell megaphones to people he knows are going to use those megaphones to lie. The case Zuck wants to make is that he should be free from the consequences of choosing to take money to distribute lies. He wants to do so by claiming its his obligation to give free speech to politicians but this is clearly rubbish - it's a protection no other megaphone vendor has. Take CNN for example, they can and do refuse to broadcast some political adverts because they have an obligation. An obligation that Zuckerberg contents shouldn't exist. What he is advocating for is a fundamental re-definition of what free speech in the US means.
- bhupy 7y ago
  I think you might be confusing the First Amendment with the principle of Free Speech. Per the First Amendment, Zuck can do whatever he likes with his platform. He can refuse to broadcast whatever he wants, just like CNN and other news networks. But just as important, he is free to NOT refuse to broadcast whatever he pleases. There are no legal consequences for that (outside of the narrow exceptions in Brandenburg v Ohio). The argument that he is making is that he wants Facebook to be a platform that upholds the ideal of free speech. Whether or not Facebook follows through and actually practices this philosophy equally, remains to be seen.

mattnewton 7y ago

Free != gratis Free means legally unrestricted by the state here, not free of payment or of private guidelines.

snarf21 7y ago

I think Facebook is evil but it isn't like TV and radio advertising is held to some high level of fact checking or truth. The one minor thing FB might be able to do is to target smaller groups better than tv channels or radio stations.

Bostonian 7y ago

"It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisements." My free speech rights include the right to pay for an advertisement to get across my message or to join with others to do so. Progressives dominate the media and academia and want to shut down other outlets.

wavefunction 7y ago
>Progressives dominate the media Don't y'all have Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting?
- gwright 7y ago
  So you agree that all other media is dominated by progressives and everyone else should just settle Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting?
  - wavefunction 7y ago
    No I don't agree. I am just pointing out that you have outlets available to you. From what I can tell the media is mostly about middle-of-the-road inoffensive capitalism.

tmaly 7y ago

Yes there are dangers of people and companies with big pockets drowning out your voice. Its natural for Zuck to make his case as that is a huge revenue stream for him. But the same holds true of the general use of public airwaves. If they are owned or controlled by a select group of people who sit on the boards, their voice and preferences are going to be a lot more powerful than your average joe on the street.

rayiner 7y ago

While Facebook is obviously not bound by the first amendment, the fact that something is paid doesn’t undermine its nature as free speech. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” which sparked the American Revolution, was published and sold for profit. https://www.printmag.com/editors-picks/power-of-print-common-sense-1776 https://www.printmag.com/editors-picks/power-of-print-common.... (Though Paine donated his share to the Continental Army.) Paine got his message out by contracting with for-profit publishers to disseminate his book. Facebook is just the new version of that.

harryh 7y ago
I think there is a pretty clear difference between publishers which sell speech to people that want to buy it and advertisers that take money in return for putting speech in front of people automatically. Maybe both forms of money entangled speech are worthy of the same protections. But they are two different things.
- shawndrost 7y ago
  As I understand the function of a publisher, it is predominantly about marketing and distribution, and putting a book in front of people who otherwise wouldn't have heard of it or bought it.
  - harryh 7y ago
    Yes, but publishers just give people the opportunity to buy something. Advertisers put the speech in front of people whether they want to buy it or not.

tanilama 7y ago

What he is saying is that Money needs to find a way to speak. Nothing new, just some sugar coating of 'We Need That Ads Money, are you kidding me?'

schainks 7y ago

"You can be unethical and still be legal that's the way I run my life haha." — Mark Zuckerberg https://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-secret-ims-from-college-2012-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-s...

OkGoDoIt 7y ago

Maybe we’re conflating the meaning of the word free here. Advertising is not free as in beer, but maybe it should still be free as in speech? (ironically labeled in this case)

gojomo 7y ago

Paid advertisements are in fact speech covered by US free speech rights. Courts have accepted some limits in purely commercial speech, but political ads tend to receive the same protection as any other utterance, compensated or not.

jeffdavis 7y ago

Free speech is not about the cost. A lot of kinds of speech require some outlay. Censorship is when you are willing to pay the cost, but it's still banned due to content. Yes, I know we are discussing private censorship which is more acceptable than government censorship. But if FB wants to be considered a general platform, they have to be careful filtering content, including ads.

HugoDaniel 7y ago

Lets start an advocacy group that advocates that ads should not be used to spread a political message. We can start by creating a facebook page and buying some ads.

anm89 7y ago

None of this is a free speech issue. Facebook get's to choose whether you can openly speak there specifically because it is outside the realm of free speech and inside the realm of a private business. Free speech at least in the US is protected by the constitution so if this was a free speech issue it wouldn't be on the table because the answer would be: you can't restrict it. They want the speech which is best for their business. What else are they, a corporation, supposed to want?

perseusprime11 7y ago

It feels like he thinks political advertising on Facebook is the only way to stop Elizabeth Warren.