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Just ban them completely or don't bother, I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims as it's perfectly possible to make an add which is 100%

Just ban them completely or don't bother, I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims as it's perfectly possible to make an add which is 100% made up of technically correct statements but presents a misleading narrative. Then it comes to the question is there is such thing as a true narrative to begin with as narratives are subjective in nature, this is a can of worms that Google shouldn't open. So yeah a full ban sure but not this, if they want some sort of a partial ban they should probably have an interface that allows local electoral commissions to vet advertisement and the most important thing I think Google must do is to disable targeted political ads if they continue to allow them in any shape or form.

acollins1331 7y ago
But full ban costs Google money.
- ovi256 7y ago
  Even this restriction costs them money, as the advertisers have either worse targeting, so lower ROI, so they'll spend less, or they'll have to do the targeting work themselves, which removes part of the value chain from Google, so they'll pay less.
- mc32 7y ago
  I’m not sure if that: if ads are less effective (generalized, less targeted) advertisers (campaigns) will have to spend more money to have the same impact.
justin66 7y ago
> I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims as it's perfectly possible to make an add which is 100% made up of technically correct statements but presents a misleading narrative. What do you find objectionable about a low-pass filter that simply removes obvious lies?
- zajd 7y ago
  > simply removes obvious lies Good luck!
- noman-land 7y ago
  I think you mean high-pass filter?
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    I guess that just depends on the axis orientation... But there is nothing inherently wrong about removing pure garbage ads. Of course, one might object that it would give more visibility to harder-to-discern bad ads, and make the consumer less wary of ads if they are less used to see them with obviously wrong information. Double edged sword as always, and I would certainly ban them. Or every ad, for that matter. But that's google, it is their business model, so what are you expecting?
  - justin66 7y ago
    Quite right.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  The fact that I don't trust Google (or any other large corporation, for that matter) to judge what is and is not an "obvious lie" given the right political incentives. In this case, outright banning would be better and remove any ambiguity or opportunity for shenanigans.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    You shouldn't trust any large _institution_ to prevent "obvious lies" from spreading. Institutions are just collections of people, and there's barely a single one out there that's managed to completdly avoid the fact that people are, generally speaking, dishonest and dumb.
    - x220 7y ago
      I trust The Economist newspaper and the Congressional Budget Office
elicash 7y ago
To be clear, you're in FAVOR of their policy that doesn't allow a rouge actor to, say, run ads targeted to a specific community that tell them Election Day is Wednesday, rather than Tuesday, right? You're just opposed to the extra measure of removing ads that are based on their fact-checks of political issues? I favor removing on the basis of both, but I do think these are VERY different categories.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  If they were an "[azure] actor who ran ads targeted to a specific community", should we suddenly be neutral? What difference does the color of the actor make?
  - ShteiLoups 7y ago
    I believe the poster above you meant "rogue", as in malicious but not strictly associated with a specific party. In any case, it is almost impossible for someone to be truly neutral, especially in US politics. Having a company decide that they are the arbiter of this is dangerous. Especially google, which tends to come off as leaning towards one side of the debate.
  - elicash 7y ago
    I had no idea what you comment meant, then I realized I misspelled "rogue." I can't tell if you were joking or actually thought I was referring to cosmetics, but either way, oops my bad.
cabaalis 7y ago
Banning them would just further extend the isolation/echo chambers created by social media. If you have a political message, it makes sense to force you to tailor that message on very broad terms. Hearing something you might disagree with is part of life and very important to critical thinking. This is not intended to be an opinion on false statements in political advertising.
- jmcqk6 7y ago
  > Hearing something you might disagree with is part of life and very important to critical thinking. I believe this is 100% true. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do not have the skills to handle this. Look at the anger that appears on this site when certain topics are brought up. So people have a hard time dealing with ideas they disagree with, but I doubt that forced interaction with those ideas will improve the situation. We can see empirically that the most common reaction is to double down on your own ideas, get defensive, and generally react in a very self-centered and egotistical manner. That's the current situation. Would banning political ads make this problem worse? I think I can see the logic here - people will only seek out what they agree with. But it's not like political ads are the only way that they might be forced to see something they disagree with. The only way to do that these days would be to be completely off grid somewhere and never to see anyone else. It's also the case that political ads probably provide the worse kind of perspective of views you disagree with. The solution to the problem is to find a way to get people to break out of their ego-based thinking. A lot of magical things can happen when people are honestly committed to finding the truth, instead of protecting what they think the truth is.
  - WaitWaitWha 7y ago
    > Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do not have the skills to handle this. I would suggest that this is change, not a norm in the last few decades. So, unfortunately, the vast majority of people no longer have the skills to handle this. > ... double down on your own ideas, get defensive, and generally react in a very self-centered and egotistical manner. > ... find a way to get people to break out of their ego-based thinking Yes. I think at least in western society (and I start to see this in Asia too) the self-importance crept in, replacing self-reliance. How did we get here, and how do we "break out"?
Swizec 7y ago
Then there’s also the concept of truth that is factually incorrect. Like authors and comedians using made up/constructed anecdotes to convey a deep truth about society. A great example is the lady scientist character from the Chernobyl series. She herself was a fabrication, but represented the factual voices of opinions of hundreds of USSR scientists. Because you can’t write a story with 200 main characters.
sdenton4 7y ago
/"the most important thing I think Google must do is to disable targeted political ads if they continue to allow them in any shape or form."/ ...uh, isn't that exactly the policy announced here?
- throwaway35784 7y ago
  No. They are restricting just one type of targeting. >Google is extending a ban on political campaigns targeting advertising at people based on their supposed political leanings. >It said political groups would soon only be able to target ads based on "general categories" such as age, gender and rough location.
  - damq 7y ago
    Not true. Please read the blog post. They're only allowing political ads to be targeted based on age, gender, or location. All other forms of targeting are now disallowed.
supercanuck 7y ago
> Then it comes to the question is there is such thing as a true narrative to begin with as narratives No there isn’t. There is truth and then there is people too lazy to do the investigation that uncovers the truth because it takes real work, real people, time and energy and unfortunately is not profitable.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  All the investigative journalism I know about exists mostly in dirty "lefty" or "Centrist lefty" orgs like NYT, WaPo, Reuters, etc. All the "righty" or "conservative" orgs i know about are mostly opinion pieces.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    Beware filter bubbles. If you're in the Blue Tribe bubble then you'll see conservative sources, but only when they're saying something contentious if not blatantly false (and so you'll also only see the Red Tribe sources who say such things), because that's what causes fellow Blue Tribe members to bring them to your attention.
    - throwaway2048 7y ago
      I openly admit im fairly left wing, But I also can not think of a single serious major investigative right-leaning news org. I'd love counter examples, This is not about filter bubbles. EDIT: on Further consideration, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist might qualify, but they typically don't seem to do expose pieces.
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        Reason, Cato (especially worthwhile: https://www.cato.org/people/julian-sanchez https://www.cato.org/people/julian-sanchez), The American Conservative, they exist. Even Fox News does some actual investigative reporting, notwithstanding that most of their airtime is spent on opinion and propaganda.
miguelmota 7y ago
> Just ban them completely or don't bother Wait, you mean ban all ads completely and make Google lose 100 billion dollars of revenue and make advertisers waste more money on non-targeted ads increasing costs of products and make users pay subscription fees for currently ad funded services like Google Search? Otherwise I don't see how your statement makes any practical sense
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  100 Billion is a vast overstatement.
  - brycesbeard 7y ago
    In 2018, google sold 118 billion worth of ads. Parent was saying (I think) that all ads present misleading narratives so google would have to ban all ads.
  - miguelmota 7y ago
    Is it though? > A staggering $24.1 billion of Google's $27.77 billion revenue for Q3 2018 was from advertising – roughly a 22% increase from $19.8 billion in Q3 2017. source: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/business-google.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busin...
  - ddingus 7y ago
    Over a decade, from politics, that amount is high, but not unreasonable. Phrased in terms of opportunity cost, it's appropriate, again if a bit high. Media gets YUGE dollars from politics. That flow of money in politics is one of the biggest problems in the US. Many want to fix it. That risk, in terms of the financial opportunity assessment under discussion right now, would reasonably ratchet that number down further.
- DataWorker 7y ago
  Right. All ads are political by definition. So it’s really a ban on opposing ideology, and on overtly ideological ads which are really not so much of a problem. I think it’s a non-change from the current system, mostly a pr move.
guelo 7y ago
The truth is knowable.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Here here, this attitude that somehow the truth is impossible to know, and that there is no difference between insane conspiracy theories, and researched, documented facts is a pile of horse pucky.
12xo 7y ago
First you have to define what is an ad and what isnt. I a not being flippant, but with the web, anything published can be an advertisement and frankly, most content seen by people these days could be defined as a form of advertising...
baddox 7y ago
Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that claims you have a problem with your bank account and links you to a fake bank login page that steals your credentials? Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that falsely claims that a certain candidate has dropped out of the race, or that the election date has been changed? Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that falsely attributes words or actions to a certain candidate? (e.g. imagine an ad that falsely claims "Candidate X has changed her position on issue A.") If you have different answers for some of these questions, then your view is more complicated than "I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims."
- dogma1138 7y ago
  I don't think it's correct, the first one is facilitates a defined criminal activity the 2 others are not necessarily criminal (they might be in certain jurisdictions). There is a huge difference between an "ad" that is designed to compromise a bank account through phishing and a ad that is designed to sway political opinion even if it's untruthful. In fact out of those 3 the former isn't even an advertisement necessarily despite the fact that it might be presented to the user through "google ads".
  - baddox 7y ago
    Whether an ad is illegal is something that Google would need to determine.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

acollins1331 7y ago

But full ban costs Google money.

ovi256 7y ago
Even this restriction costs them money, as the advertisers have either worse targeting, so lower ROI, so they'll spend less, or they'll have to do the targeting work themselves, which removes part of the value chain from Google, so they'll pay less.
mc32 7y ago
I’m not sure if that: if ads are less effective (generalized, less targeted) advertisers (campaigns) will have to spend more money to have the same impact.

justin66 7y ago

> I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims as it's perfectly possible to make an add which is 100% made up of technically correct statements but presents a misleading narrative. What do you find objectionable about a low-pass filter that simply removes obvious lies?

zajd 7y ago
> simply removes obvious lies Good luck!
noman-land 7y ago
I think you mean high-pass filter?
- MayeulC 7y ago
  I guess that just depends on the axis orientation... But there is nothing inherently wrong about removing pure garbage ads. Of course, one might object that it would give more visibility to harder-to-discern bad ads, and make the consumer less wary of ads if they are less used to see them with obviously wrong information. Double edged sword as always, and I would certainly ban them. Or every ad, for that matter. But that's google, it is their business model, so what are you expecting?
- justin66 7y ago
  Quite right.
Karunamon 7y ago
The fact that I don't trust Google (or any other large corporation, for that matter) to judge what is and is not an "obvious lie" given the right political incentives. In this case, outright banning would be better and remove any ambiguity or opportunity for shenanigans.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  You shouldn't trust any large _institution_ to prevent "obvious lies" from spreading. Institutions are just collections of people, and there's barely a single one out there that's managed to completdly avoid the fact that people are, generally speaking, dishonest and dumb.
  - x220 7y ago
    I trust The Economist newspaper and the Congressional Budget Office

elicash 7y ago

To be clear, you're in FAVOR of their policy that doesn't allow a rouge actor to, say, run ads targeted to a specific community that tell them Election Day is Wednesday, rather than Tuesday, right? You're just opposed to the extra measure of removing ads that are based on their fact-checks of political issues? I favor removing on the basis of both, but I do think these are VERY different categories.

squiggleblaz 7y ago
If they were an "[azure] actor who ran ads targeted to a specific community", should we suddenly be neutral? What difference does the color of the actor make?
- ShteiLoups 7y ago
  I believe the poster above you meant "rogue", as in malicious but not strictly associated with a specific party. In any case, it is almost impossible for someone to be truly neutral, especially in US politics. Having a company decide that they are the arbiter of this is dangerous. Especially google, which tends to come off as leaning towards one side of the debate.
- elicash 7y ago
  I had no idea what you comment meant, then I realized I misspelled "rogue." I can't tell if you were joking or actually thought I was referring to cosmetics, but either way, oops my bad.

cabaalis 7y ago

Banning them would just further extend the isolation/echo chambers created by social media. If you have a political message, it makes sense to force you to tailor that message on very broad terms. Hearing something you might disagree with is part of life and very important to critical thinking. This is not intended to be an opinion on false statements in political advertising.

jmcqk6 7y ago
> Hearing something you might disagree with is part of life and very important to critical thinking. I believe this is 100% true. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do not have the skills to handle this. Look at the anger that appears on this site when certain topics are brought up. So people have a hard time dealing with ideas they disagree with, but I doubt that forced interaction with those ideas will improve the situation. We can see empirically that the most common reaction is to double down on your own ideas, get defensive, and generally react in a very self-centered and egotistical manner. That's the current situation. Would banning political ads make this problem worse? I think I can see the logic here - people will only seek out what they agree with. But it's not like political ads are the only way that they might be forced to see something they disagree with. The only way to do that these days would be to be completely off grid somewhere and never to see anyone else. It's also the case that political ads probably provide the worse kind of perspective of views you disagree with. The solution to the problem is to find a way to get people to break out of their ego-based thinking. A lot of magical things can happen when people are honestly committed to finding the truth, instead of protecting what they think the truth is.
- WaitWaitWha 7y ago
  > Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do not have the skills to handle this. I would suggest that this is change, not a norm in the last few decades. So, unfortunately, the vast majority of people no longer have the skills to handle this. > ... double down on your own ideas, get defensive, and generally react in a very self-centered and egotistical manner. > ... find a way to get people to break out of their ego-based thinking Yes. I think at least in western society (and I start to see this in Asia too) the self-importance crept in, replacing self-reliance. How did we get here, and how do we "break out"?

Swizec 7y ago

Then there’s also the concept of truth that is factually incorrect. Like authors and comedians using made up/constructed anecdotes to convey a deep truth about society. A great example is the lady scientist character from the Chernobyl series. She herself was a fabrication, but represented the factual voices of opinions of hundreds of USSR scientists. Because you can’t write a story with 200 main characters.

sdenton4 7y ago

/"the most important thing I think Google must do is to disable targeted political ads if they continue to allow them in any shape or form."/ ...uh, isn't that exactly the policy announced here?

throwaway35784 7y ago
No. They are restricting just one type of targeting. >Google is extending a ban on political campaigns targeting advertising at people based on their supposed political leanings. >It said political groups would soon only be able to target ads based on "general categories" such as age, gender and rough location.
- damq 7y ago
  Not true. Please read the blog post. They're only allowing political ads to be targeted based on age, gender, or location. All other forms of targeting are now disallowed.

supercanuck 7y ago

> Then it comes to the question is there is such thing as a true narrative to begin with as narratives No there isn’t. There is truth and then there is people too lazy to do the investigation that uncovers the truth because it takes real work, real people, time and energy and unfortunately is not profitable.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
All the investigative journalism I know about exists mostly in dirty "lefty" or "Centrist lefty" orgs like NYT, WaPo, Reuters, etc. All the "righty" or "conservative" orgs i know about are mostly opinion pieces.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  Beware filter bubbles. If you're in the Blue Tribe bubble then you'll see conservative sources, but only when they're saying something contentious if not blatantly false (and so you'll also only see the Red Tribe sources who say such things), because that's what causes fellow Blue Tribe members to bring them to your attention.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    I openly admit im fairly left wing, But I also can not think of a single serious major investigative right-leaning news org. I'd love counter examples, This is not about filter bubbles. EDIT: on Further consideration, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist might qualify, but they typically don't seem to do expose pieces.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      Reason, Cato (especially worthwhile: https://www.cato.org/people/julian-sanchez https://www.cato.org/people/julian-sanchez), The American Conservative, they exist. Even Fox News does some actual investigative reporting, notwithstanding that most of their airtime is spent on opinion and propaganda.

miguelmota 7y ago

> Just ban them completely or don't bother Wait, you mean ban all ads completely and make Google lose 100 billion dollars of revenue and make advertisers waste more money on non-targeted ads increasing costs of products and make users pay subscription fees for currently ad funded services like Google Search? Otherwise I don't see how your statement makes any practical sense

throwaway2048 7y ago
100 Billion is a vast overstatement.
- brycesbeard 7y ago
  In 2018, google sold 118 billion worth of ads. Parent was saying (I think) that all ads present misleading narratives so google would have to ban all ads.
- miguelmota 7y ago
  Is it though? > A staggering $24.1 billion of Google's $27.77 billion revenue for Q3 2018 was from advertising – roughly a 22% increase from $19.8 billion in Q3 2017. source: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/business-google.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busin...
- ddingus 7y ago
  Over a decade, from politics, that amount is high, but not unreasonable. Phrased in terms of opportunity cost, it's appropriate, again if a bit high. Media gets YUGE dollars from politics. That flow of money in politics is one of the biggest problems in the US. Many want to fix it. That risk, in terms of the financial opportunity assessment under discussion right now, would reasonably ratchet that number down further.
DataWorker 7y ago
Right. All ads are political by definition. So it’s really a ban on opposing ideology, and on overtly ideological ads which are really not so much of a problem. I think it’s a non-change from the current system, mostly a pr move.

guelo 7y ago

The truth is knowable.

throwaway2048 7y ago
Here here, this attitude that somehow the truth is impossible to know, and that there is no difference between insane conspiracy theories, and researched, documented facts is a pile of horse pucky.

12xo 7y ago

First you have to define what is an ad and what isnt. I a not being flippant, but with the web, anything published can be an advertisement and frankly, most content seen by people these days could be defined as a form of advertising...

baddox 7y ago

Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that claims you have a problem with your bank account and links you to a fake bank login page that steals your credentials? Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that falsely claims that a certain candidate has dropped out of the race, or that the election date has been changed? Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that falsely attributes words or actions to a certain candidate? (e.g. imagine an ad that falsely claims "Candidate X has changed her position on issue A.") If you have different answers for some of these questions, then your view is more complicated than "I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims."

dogma1138 7y ago
I don't think it's correct, the first one is facilitates a defined criminal activity the 2 others are not necessarily criminal (they might be in certain jurisdictions). There is a huge difference between an "ad" that is designed to compromise a bank account through phishing and a ad that is designed to sway political opinion even if it's untruthful. In fact out of those 3 the former isn't even an advertisement necessarily despite the fact that it might be presented to the user through "google ads".
- baddox 7y ago
  Whether an ad is illegal is something that Google would need to determine.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]