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Restricting the categories for political advertising is certainly a move in the right direction. It will reduce the power of digital advertising to that of trad

Restricting the categories for political advertising is certainly a move in the right direction. It will reduce the power of digital advertising to that of traditional media. It may not be a welcome move by some political parties but overall it could allow for good ideas from rival parties to have a wider reach rather than 'preaching to the choir' as it were. The dissemination of good ideas might become more democratic. However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to censorship in the future. The list of what's considered false will inevitably grow over time and put a lot of power in the hands of whoever is deciding the 'truthiness' of claims. It isn't difficult to imagine this being applied inconsistently in countries further away from Western politcal norms. This does give Google a lot of power in shaping political discourse and influence outside of US and EU territories. We know from how they've handled disputes on YouTube, disabled Gmail and developer accounts that this process unlikely have any better transparency than we've seen to date. I'd argue that political advertising would require greater transparency and I'm not convinced that Google has the capability or the motivation to provide it.

gwbas1c 7y ago
> However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to censorship in the future Looks like what they're calling 'false claims' is extremely narrow and based on simple objective facts: > For example, Google would remove ads that falsely claimed that a candidate had died or that gave the wrong date for an election. > However, it would not ban claims that you cannot trust a rival party, for instance, which would be viewed as being a matter of opinion. IMO, I think the better approach to handle truthiness issues is to give the other party/candidate/candidates a chance to post a rebuttal.
- munificent 7y ago
  > I think the better approach to handle truthiness issues is to give the other party/candidate/candidates a chance to post a rebuttal. I disagree. That's effectively how modern journalism works where the news is "objective" by letting each side say its piece. The end result is that the media is easy exploitable. The fundamental problem is that manufacturing lies takes less effort than explaining the truth. The latter is hampered by requiring research, evidence, and consistency. The former has no such restrictions. That means Party A can spend five minutes saying "Party B eats kittens!" Now Party A has to spend a week providing evidence that no, they do not in fact eat kittens. Meanwhile, Party A has already put out five more press releases about how Party B drinks the blood of infants, was responsible for Firefly being canceled, and wants to raise your taxes to buy bombs to drop on wildlife preserves. The consequence is that whoever has the least respect for the truth has the greatest ability to control the narrative. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
  - gwbas1c 7y ago
    What happens is that, if you lie, the other party now has a platform to advertise on your dime. Party A: "Party B eats kittens" Party B: "We're going to lower taxes and fix climate change." See how it works? Party A pays money into the system, Party B just gets to ignore the silly claim and gets free advertising.
    - dwiel 7y ago
      What about parties C through Z?
      - bhauer 7y ago
        That's such an important point. The two party system caused by plurality voting is so strong it even influences how we imagine policy debates. We imagine there would only ever be two points of view on any policy matter because no one wants to split the vote for the good guys.
      - gwbas1c 7y ago
        Depends on the issue / election, because it's only hotly contested elections that have many candidates. (Assuming you're in the US, most elected offices only have a handful of people running, and other ballot questions are yes/no.) In general, if you have many candidates / parties, there are some ways to handle the situation. For example, you can limit it to the top parties in polls for that office, or only parties that get a certain percentage or higher in polls. (IE, top 5 candidates, or only candidates who, from polling, have 20% or higher.) Or, if you have no limits, it just means that you're basically eliminating targeted political advertising. Whenever you advertise to a voter, everyone else gets to advertise, and whenever everyone advertises, so do you. BTW, if you ever get to see a voter's guide in CA, take a look. I used to rely on them almost exclusively for voting, because they had statements (and rebuttals) from all the candidates.
  - pytester 7y ago
    >I disagree. That's effectively how modern journalism works where the news is "objective" by letting each side say its piece. Even that level of objectivity is rarely met these days. One advantage of this is that it's easy to mandate and enforce. Honestly, this would probably kill off most false advertising, though. Who would run an advert saying that a candidate had died when on the same advert you could see a response on the same advert from the candidate that he's alive and well? Even subtle lies would be easily countered by giving right of reply. >The fundamental problem is that manufacturing lies takes less effort than explaining the truth. This isn't a new problem and never was. The Spanish didn't destroy the USS Maine. There were no WMDs in Iraq.
- dmix 7y ago
  It always gets justified with some ideal examples then within a year or two the original rationale is forgotten and it’s being used broadly under pressure from various special interest groups inside and outside the organization. This sort of thing needs to be black/white which is impossible leaving it full of grey areas where abuse and false positives without due process is a worse trade off than the original intention.
notatoad 7y ago
>However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to censorship in the future you might be right, but the reality is that the world has a large problem with disinformation and false claims right now that's causing real negative consequences for real people. Stopping the spread of false information is a good thing that should be done. Letting blatant lies control our political processes now just to prevent future potential censorship in the future is not a good compromise.
- atomi 7y ago
  Personally, I'm conflicted. Your argument rests upon the idea that people's minds can be "poisoned" with false information. And I understand that. But at some point you have to hold people responsible for believing stuff that is blatantly false. There was a time that, if you believed in Bat Boy [1], most people rightly thought you were a bozo. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character)
  - notatoad 7y ago
    Yes, it would be nice to say the responsibility lies with the people who believe that stuff, but their believing it has real consequences that impact people beside themselves. This is a problem that needs to be solved now, not a problem to be dismissed because you don't like the problem. It's all well and good to dismiss the people who believe widespread disinformation campaigns as idiots, but that doesn't do anything to prevent the next guy who shoots up a pizza parlour because he believes that the basement is home to a leftist pedophile ring and it doesn't do anything to stop the very real climate crisis that some news sources would have you believe doesn't exist.
    - dmix 7y ago
      The guy didn’t shoot up a pizza parlour, he shot a single bullet into the roof, was promptly arrested, and even admitted he was wrong. The world didn’t end, there’s a million worse examples of similar human stupidity that have nothing to do with politics and won’t be solved by letting tech companies choose what is true and what isn’t. This is wishful thinking in response to an overreaction. This sort of thing isn’t worth sacrificing speech over, largely because it won’t work (for ex: Infowars is still extremely popular even without social media accounts) and the costs of false positives will out weigh the returns.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
Google is a private company and they should be able eliminate such things though. No government forced them to. If the political powers that be wouldn't have been so ham fisted they might have been able to keep their "things". Now they can't. good on Google (for once). eliminating targeting of the audience by political affiliation is a good thing.
dillondoyle 7y ago
I don't think it's true to say that 'traditional media' is less powerful or less 'individually' targetable. Addressable cable, mail, phones, doors are central to politics and each individually targetable (at small sizes too).
dionian 7y ago
The premise that 'traditional media' is not part of the problem is a terrible one. Censorship is not a good solution to bad ideas. Open marketplace of ideas is.

gwbas1c 7y ago

> However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to censorship in the future Looks like what they're calling 'false claims' is extremely narrow and based on simple objective facts: > For example, Google would remove ads that falsely claimed that a candidate had died or that gave the wrong date for an election. > However, it would not ban claims that you cannot trust a rival party, for instance, which would be viewed as being a matter of opinion. IMO, I think the better approach to handle truthiness issues is to give the other party/candidate/candidates a chance to post a rebuttal.

munificent 7y ago
> I think the better approach to handle truthiness issues is to give the other party/candidate/candidates a chance to post a rebuttal. I disagree. That's effectively how modern journalism works where the news is "objective" by letting each side say its piece. The end result is that the media is easy exploitable. The fundamental problem is that manufacturing lies takes less effort than explaining the truth. The latter is hampered by requiring research, evidence, and consistency. The former has no such restrictions. That means Party A can spend five minutes saying "Party B eats kittens!" Now Party A has to spend a week providing evidence that no, they do not in fact eat kittens. Meanwhile, Party A has already put out five more press releases about how Party B drinks the blood of infants, was responsible for Firefly being canceled, and wants to raise your taxes to buy bombs to drop on wildlife preserves. The consequence is that whoever has the least respect for the truth has the greatest ability to control the narrative. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  What happens is that, if you lie, the other party now has a platform to advertise on your dime. Party A: "Party B eats kittens" Party B: "We're going to lower taxes and fix climate change." See how it works? Party A pays money into the system, Party B just gets to ignore the silly claim and gets free advertising.
  - dwiel 7y ago
    What about parties C through Z?
    - bhauer 7y ago
      That's such an important point. The two party system caused by plurality voting is so strong it even influences how we imagine policy debates. We imagine there would only ever be two points of view on any policy matter because no one wants to split the vote for the good guys.
    - gwbas1c 7y ago
      Depends on the issue / election, because it's only hotly contested elections that have many candidates. (Assuming you're in the US, most elected offices only have a handful of people running, and other ballot questions are yes/no.) In general, if you have many candidates / parties, there are some ways to handle the situation. For example, you can limit it to the top parties in polls for that office, or only parties that get a certain percentage or higher in polls. (IE, top 5 candidates, or only candidates who, from polling, have 20% or higher.) Or, if you have no limits, it just means that you're basically eliminating targeted political advertising. Whenever you advertise to a voter, everyone else gets to advertise, and whenever everyone advertises, so do you. BTW, if you ever get to see a voter's guide in CA, take a look. I used to rely on them almost exclusively for voting, because they had statements (and rebuttals) from all the candidates.
- pytester 7y ago
  >I disagree. That's effectively how modern journalism works where the news is "objective" by letting each side say its piece. Even that level of objectivity is rarely met these days. One advantage of this is that it's easy to mandate and enforce. Honestly, this would probably kill off most false advertising, though. Who would run an advert saying that a candidate had died when on the same advert you could see a response on the same advert from the candidate that he's alive and well? Even subtle lies would be easily countered by giving right of reply. >The fundamental problem is that manufacturing lies takes less effort than explaining the truth. This isn't a new problem and never was. The Spanish didn't destroy the USS Maine. There were no WMDs in Iraq.
dmix 7y ago
It always gets justified with some ideal examples then within a year or two the original rationale is forgotten and it’s being used broadly under pressure from various special interest groups inside and outside the organization. This sort of thing needs to be black/white which is impossible leaving it full of grey areas where abuse and false positives without due process is a worse trade off than the original intention.

notatoad 7y ago

>However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to censorship in the future you might be right, but the reality is that the world has a large problem with disinformation and false claims right now that's causing real negative consequences for real people. Stopping the spread of false information is a good thing that should be done. Letting blatant lies control our political processes now just to prevent future potential censorship in the future is not a good compromise.

atomi 7y ago
Personally, I'm conflicted. Your argument rests upon the idea that people's minds can be "poisoned" with false information. And I understand that. But at some point you have to hold people responsible for believing stuff that is blatantly false. There was a time that, if you believed in Bat Boy [1], most people rightly thought you were a bozo. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character)
- notatoad 7y ago
  Yes, it would be nice to say the responsibility lies with the people who believe that stuff, but their believing it has real consequences that impact people beside themselves. This is a problem that needs to be solved now, not a problem to be dismissed because you don't like the problem. It's all well and good to dismiss the people who believe widespread disinformation campaigns as idiots, but that doesn't do anything to prevent the next guy who shoots up a pizza parlour because he believes that the basement is home to a leftist pedophile ring and it doesn't do anything to stop the very real climate crisis that some news sources would have you believe doesn't exist.
  - dmix 7y ago
    The guy didn’t shoot up a pizza parlour, he shot a single bullet into the roof, was promptly arrested, and even admitted he was wrong. The world didn’t end, there’s a million worse examples of similar human stupidity that have nothing to do with politics and won’t be solved by letting tech companies choose what is true and what isn’t. This is wishful thinking in response to an overreaction. This sort of thing isn’t worth sacrificing speech over, largely because it won’t work (for ex: Infowars is still extremely popular even without social media accounts) and the costs of false positives will out weigh the returns.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

Google is a private company and they should be able eliminate such things though. No government forced them to. If the political powers that be wouldn't have been so ham fisted they might have been able to keep their "things". Now they can't. good on Google (for once). eliminating targeting of the audience by political affiliation is a good thing.

dillondoyle 7y ago

I don't think it's true to say that 'traditional media' is less powerful or less 'individually' targetable. Addressable cable, mail, phones, doors are central to politics and each individually targetable (at small sizes too).

dionian 7y ago

The premise that 'traditional media' is not part of the problem is a terrible one. Censorship is not a good solution to bad ideas. Open marketplace of ideas is.