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It's crazy to me that we allow politicians to run targeted ad campaigns. I randomly looked up Andrew Yang on good a few days ago on my phone and had ads from t

by m_ke 7y ago

It's crazy to me that we allow politicians to run targeted ad campaigns. I randomly looked up Andrew Yang on good a few days ago on my phone and had ads from two billionaires take up my whole screen. https://imgur.com/a/Ke3aWBH https://imgur.com/a/Ke3aWBH Without campaign finance regulation majority of the billions donated to campaigns is going directly into pockets of Google, Facebook and cable monopolies. We're letting billionaires buy the election. > What has Bloomberg been spending on? Per the Federal Elections Commission data through the end of 2019, the two biggest costs have been television advertising ($132 million) and digital outreach ($20 million). Some of the costs reflect a late entry to the campaign—buying lists of voters to contact ($3.2 million), hiring people to gather signatures to get his name on the ballot ($373,441), and hiring recruiters to bring onboard staff ($107,000). https://qz.com/1802367/detailing-mike-bloombergs-unprecedented-2020-campaign-spending/ https://qz.com/1802367/detailing-mike-bloombergs-unprecedent... How are we supposed to trust the media when they're on track to get a billion dollars from a single candidate?

coldpie 7y ago
Consider installing an ad blocker.
- m_ke 7y ago
  I've always used one on my desktop so was actually surprised to see those ads when I did the search on my phone. Those were the first political ads that I've seen because I don't watch TV and don't use social networks.
  - oefrha 7y ago
    I see political ads a hell lot when I use the YouTube iOS client. No need to watch TV or use social networks.
    - m_ke 7y ago
      YouTube premium has no ads, which comes with a paid YouTube music plan.
      - oefrha 7y ago
        Well, I don’t watch enough YouTube these days to justify a subscription, and I already have a separate music streaming subscription.
      - scohesc 7y ago
        Is it against the rules here to recommend anybody with an android phone to get ahold of Youtube Vanced? Someone took the youtube APK, and gutted out all the ads and unlocked youtube premium features for free if you're willing to sideload it.
        usui 7y ago
        I will second this. Vanced is a great tweaked YouTube app that I am grateful people put the time to make. Getting it to act like the normal YouTube app required tinkering. I noticed that web links used the default app even after setting Vanced as the default. To fix this, I had to remove the original YouTube app and stop it from auto-updating.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    Firefox for android has addons including ublock origin. There ARE adblockers that work on the system level and block ads in apps but - You can't selectively turn it off for a certain page - You have to root the phone - It's easier just to never install apps with in app ads.
    - taborj 7y ago
      > You have to root the phone Allow me to introduce you to Blokada: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.blokada.alarm/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.blokada.alarm/
      - Zenbit_UX 7y ago
        Allow me to introduce you to nextdns.io. Simple DNS level blocking on any device... (not affiliated, just a fan)
        taborj 7y ago
        Yup. My point is, you don't need to have a rooted phone to get ad blocking.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
    Use lockdown on your iPhone... and uBlock on Firefox on Android.
- organsnyder 7y ago
  The ad blockers on my devices don't prevent my in-laws, grandparents, etc. from seeing all of the misleading political ads that are out there (and I'm not about to take on sysadmin responsibilities for them, either). My mother-in-law was shocked to learn that the Facebook ads she sees are different than the ones we see. She got us this mop for Christmas and couldn't understand how we had never heard of the brand before.
GaryNumanVevo 7y ago
A first big step would be to severely limit campaign spending on advertisement, including SuperPAC money. If you mention your candidate's name, that ad will count towards a hard cap on ad spending.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
  You would need to also ban all mentions of the candidate's name in media. Otherwise, a billionaire could get around this by buying a newspaper or tv or radiostation and run programs praising the candidate and maligning the opposition.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - rchaud 7y ago
    It's already happening. The Bezos-owned Washington Post's Opinions section has been, shall we say, skeptical of the Democratic front-runner in the two primaries/caucuses so far, resulting in this humorous juxtaposition of two stories written by the same columnist: https://i.redd.it/028hqkitate41.jpg https://i.redd.it/028hqkitate41.jpg
  - munk-a 7y ago
    A billionaire would need to direct the newspaper to carry out such actions - if they were directing the newspaper in such a manner it would be a campaign donation, giving a candidate a ferrari counts as a donation since you're giving them something of value, even if the campaign didn't actively solicit the donation - in theory these sorts of media tricks already fall under unrecorded campaign donations that the FEC should be going after, in practice the FEC has no teeth.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  My prediction is that you'd see ads for "Universal Basic Income", "2 cent tax on $50 millionaires", "a Senator who can't be bought", or "an experienced White House operator", or whatever else was 1 inch inside the boundary and could fairly clearly be linked to the preferred candidate without "counting".
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
It'd be pretty weird to have a rule that Mike Bloomberg can't spend a billion dollars telling you why he should be president, when Coca-Cola is allowed to spend a billion dollars every year sending you the much less important message to drink Coke.
- inetknght 7y ago
  > Coca-Cola is allowed to spend a billion dollars every year sending you the much less important message to drink Coke Perhaps Coca-Cola shouldn't be permitted to spend so much money on advertising an unhealthy product...
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I'd certainly prefer if they didn't. But I can't be in favor of a rule reducing to "you've gotta jump through hoops if you want to publish an unpopular message".
  - three_seagrass 7y ago
    Advertising restrictions are put on pharmaceuticals, tobacco, and alcohol at least. A more innocuous example would be Proctor & Gamble promoting soap.
heartbeats 7y ago
Why shouldn't it be allowed? Either people are capable of independent thought, in which case this doesn't matter. Or they are too stupid to form their own decisions, in which case democracy is a sham anyway. It's like the people claiming the Brexit vote was illegitimate because people didn't know what they were voting for. If that's the case, why not put Elizabeth in charge and save on admin?
- beepboopbeep 7y ago
  The world does not exist as a series of binary choices.
  - heartbeats 7y ago
    So why don't we make it illegal for politicians to lie? It seems much fairer. After all, corporations aren't allowed to put out misleading ads, so why should politicians? It's a smaller harm if I buy diet products that don't work than if I vote for a politician who does the exact opposite of what he promised. Yet only the former is illegal. Here we have Donald Trump's 'Contract with the American Voter': https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102316-Contractv02.pdf https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102.... How much of this did he accomplish?
    - ianleeclark 7y ago
      > So why don't we make it illegal for politicians to lie? Lying, especially when Politicians do it, isn't a binary. There are varying degrees of truth, deliberate omissions, and a difficult to discern intent. So it would be incredibly difficult to enforce.
      - heartbeats 7y ago
        So your only qualm is that it would be difficult to enforce? After all, this does not seem to be a problem with false marketing.
dcolkitt 7y ago
* Free speech * Private property * Preventing small interest groups from having outsized influence Choose two. Or maybe 2.5 at the most. But the problem is there's no clear delineation between "money" and "speech". At some point you either impose restrictions on free speech, prevent the unlimited accumulation of wealth, or accept that billionaires are just always going to have more political influence than Joe Sixpack. For as much as people like to shit on it, very few people have actually read the body of Citizens United. If you haven't, I highly suggest doing so. Because it really brings up deep paradoxes that suggest that the First Amendment is fundamentally incompatible with campaign finance restrictions. European countries manage to keep money out of politics, simply by not sharing America's Constitutional guarantee of absolute free speech. There's no logically consistent way to regulate "money in politics" in a way that doesn't also restrict "speech in politics". Consider all of the below scenarios and tell me at what point "money" ends and "speech" begins: * A wealthy person makes huge campaign donations to his favored candidate. * A wealthy person runs for office, and uses his personal wealth to buy campaign ads. * A wealthy person buys a media conglomerate, and uses his editorial control to favor his preferred positions. * A wealthy person buys a media conglomerate, doesn't exert direct editorial control, but only hires journalists who share his opinion. * A wealthy person uses his money to fund movies with no political message. However he becomes famous from starring in his own subsidized movies. He uses his fame to spread his message without directly buying access. * A wealthy person hires people to attend protests in favor of his position. * A wealthy person finds people who genuinely wants to attend his protests, but subsidizes their transportation, signs, organization, etc. * A wealthy person buys nice clothes and speaking lessons for people that share his positions so they become more persuasive. * A wealthy person buys a chain of sports bars and makes sure that the TVs only play his preferred cable news channel. * A wealthy person biases hiring to favor like-minded people. On net that raises the status and influence of people like him. * A wealthy person biases his firm to doing business with firms run by ideologically like-minded CEOs. That makes people who share his views wealthier, and hence gives them more influence. * A wealthy person is unbiased when hiring, but locates all his offices in areas that share his views so that hiring naturally biases towards like-minded people. * A wealthy person uses his money to attract a very famous and attractive movie star. Once married he influences her to his political positions, then that movie star uses her famous and status to influence her fans. * A wealthy person uses his money to throw big, fancy parties. He invites anyone regardless of views. However at the beginning of the party, when people are enjoying the free cocktails and hours d'oevrues his always gives a toast that gently nudges the partygoers in favor of his views.
wolco 7y ago
You are not suppose to trust the media. We only think we should because they tell us to. Logically why do we think they have our best interest at heart. Why do we think they are neutral and what they say is a fact? Why do we divide them into news and fake news (the labels change based on the view as to who is who)?
- m_ke 7y ago
  I don't
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  You're entering into a bit of circular logic, there. Why should someone trust you in this case? How would anyone know you have their best interests at heart? Journalists have more accountability than a hardline online BB commenter. Where's the line?
  - wernercd 7y ago
    "Journalists have more accountability" Recent history shows otherwise. All you have to do is look at the many hoaxes and lies that have been allowed to dominate the airwaves on... any... major news site. CNN? Check. Smollett, Covington, etc. Fox? Check. tons of examples exists there. You brag of accountability when, if you pick a news source, we can find more than a handful of examples of bias, lies and misinformation.
    - threeseed 7y ago
      Journalists are human. They will make mistakes. They will by default trust people e.g. Smollett who may then turn out to be liars. But as a profession they do seek to be accountable e.g. multiple sources and ethical e.g. protecting sources at all cost. Should we also not trust doctors, pilots, engineers, programmers etc because they also are infallible. What exactly do you want here ?
      - manfredo 7y ago
        The problem is when journalist make "mistakes" and are subsequently promoted. When Bloomberg made one of the biggest hacking accusations of the decade and failed to even remotely substantiate their claim that Apple and others were victims of a supply chain hack the journalists who wrote this story didn't get fired or disciplined. In fact one of the co-authors, Michael Riley, was promoted to be in charge of all of Bloomberg's technology security reporting.
throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
Agreed. Democracy doesn’t work when you can send different messages to different people, and pretend that your platform is specialized to each case. Big data targeting helps them do this, but even regional targeting is probably fine. I should know if you’re telling ____ he can have X before I vote for you to represent me. That being said, so many people are adverse to critical thinking (on both sides of the American political split) that this feels like a non issue to begin with. So whatever.
Reedx 7y ago
Andrew Yang was getting pushed out and ignored the whole time. There are many egregious examples of how he was being excluded: https://vocal.media/theSwamp/a-visual-history-of-the-yang-media-blackout https://vocal.media/theSwamp/a-visual-history-of-the-yang-me... We couldn't trust the media already, Bloomberg will just be another example making this clearer.
- filoleg 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing this article. I had a gut feeling that Yang was blacked out pretty badly, but I wrote it off as just me being biased and upset that my first choice candidate isn't getting as much screen time as I would have liked. After seeing this article with all the clear-cut examples, I don't think that it was just me being biased anymore.
- bustadjustme 7y ago
  While this does kinda suck, note that Marianne Williamson is excluded from many (if not all) of these same examples, while having announced her candidacy well before (and even making it into the televised debates as well). Politics aside, my guess is this is more than anything else a symptom of not knowing what to do with candidates who don't already hold an elected position.
  - AlexCoventry 7y ago
    Marianne Williamson seems like a lovely person, but she's not even close to being a serious candidate. I can't blame people for not being interested in her campaign.
    - minikites 7y ago
      What criteria makes Andrew Yang a serious candidate compared to Marianne Williamson?
      - arthurcolle 7y ago
        I mean, these tweets are just nuts: https://theweek.com/articles/850004/marianne-williamsons-25-wildest-tweets https://theweek.com/articles/850004/marianne-williamsons-25-...
m0zg 7y ago
>> How are we supposed to trust the media You aren't supposed to trust it. You are supposed to learn to read between the lines like we read Pravda in the Soviet Union. Most of the "free" press in this country is owned by 5 billionaires. Most of it is also losing money hand over fist, so they have other motivations for keeping it around. It's just that this time these motivations are becoming obvious even to the democrats - the beneficiaries of the media bias. The reason for this are independent channels the "free" press can't control. If there was no FB or Twitter, you wouldn't even know Yang existed. Now imagine what Republicans, and Trump supporters especially think of this propaganda machine and how little trust they have in it. The press in this country (or in any other country, really) exists for one reason only: to manufacture consent for whatever the ruling class wants to shove down your throat next. FB and Twitter get in the way of that in a pretty fatal way, if they aren't controlled by the same cabal.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  >Now imagine what Republicans, and Trump supporters especially think of this propaganda machine and how little trust they have in it I'm really not sure this statement holds. They don't trust certain parts of the media propaganda machine, but they place unwavering faith in other propaganda outlets which are arguably far worse in pushing conspiracy. FB and Twitter are both far from free channels and the fact that people think they're somehow better than another propaganda machine just means you agree with that bias, not that they're somehow more trustworthy. A healthy dose of skepticism is always a good thing, but when you go too far you fall prey to things that slip between the cracks of skepticism to feed fears.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    I don't think they place much trust in any of it. Which is the way media should be consumed. The blatant bias and lack of integrity of media was pretty stark in the runup to the 2016 election, and has only become worse after it. Litmus test for you: do you believe that "both sides" comment by Trump was referring to neo-nazis? If you do, you've been lied to, and you need to read the full transcript. If you read it, you will see that he was referring to people for and against taking down the statues, and condemned the nazis immediately thereafter. To this day the articles have not been retracted, and are routinely used by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden to attack the president. They know full well it's a lie, but keep using it anyway. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1110531572275396609.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1110531572275396609.html And this is just one example. You wouldn't believe how quickly Yang would become a depraved maniac and literally Hitler if he had any chance of winning the nomination, instead of the "preferred" candidate. Don't believe me? Watch some interviews with Trump before he ran - they're still on YouTube. Beloved public persona, national icon, can do no wrong.
taurath 7y ago
> How are we supposed to trust the media when they're on track to get a billion dollars from a single candidate? We're not, but unfortunately there are extremely few reliable sources or institutions to accurately frame this problem for people. The Trumpites were CORRECT in that there's an inherent bias in the media. They're just incorrect in what that bias is, which is the status quo/pro corporate/pro "stability" line. Bernie Sander's supporters are sitting watching MSNBC wondering what the hell all of their anchors and commentators are doing - he, like Trump (at least when Trump was running for election), is a true anti-corporate candidate in the race. That we have several full on billionaires literally buying their way to 2nd place in a primary is the largest example of the wealth inequality gap being used in full force of the public. Its going to be quite a show.
eej71 7y ago
Billionaires aren't buying any election. Bloomberg will spend a considerable amount of money, but will not get very far. It's a lot of money to burn. But it won't net him anything. Trump, to the extent that one can consider him a billionaire, did not spend his way into winning. Like it or not, he crafted a message that resonated with many voters while also receiving a substantial amount of of free air time in the form of endless ridicule from national pundits.
- olivermarks 7y ago
  Trump's team's genius was and is their brilliant tabloid headline and subhead style Twitter flow. It circumvents the corporate media and targets voters while alienating and enraging their opposition, further defining his appeal. It's essentially real time tabloid and is in full effect again right now as he lampoons Bloomberg (MiniMike has to stand on a box to see over the podium is vintage Murdoch tabloid - the Sun, NY Post etc). Meanwhile Trump is spending even more time on the golf course than Obama did. I've often wondered how large his highly tactical Twitter team is...
quotemstr 7y ago
> It's crazy to me that we allow politicians to run targeted ad campaigns. No more so than anyone else running targeted ad campaigns. How can you argue that targeted ads for a politician are evil but not think the same way about targeted ads for, say, highly addictive junk food, optimizing ad spend for those most likely to overeat? Either you approve of targeting or you don't. I've never seen any argument for treating political ads specially. > Without campaign finance regulation majority of the billions donated to campaigns is going directly into pockets of Google, Facebook and cable monopolies. We're letting billionaires buy the election. People made the same arguments decades ago, except without the "Google" and "Facebook" parts. The world didn't end. Why would it now?
cmurf 7y ago
Supreme Court has ruled money is free speech. It will take a constitutional amendment to change this. And the two party system is one of the most effective money machines, they have only ever proposed mitigations for the most heinous activities. On what mitigation could they possibly agree on that doesn't run afoul of Buckley v. Valeo, et al? It takes money to broadcast, print, and distribute anything, so if you believe in free speech you'd necessarily have to agree there should be no limit on distribution, as well as no public subsidy of it. And therefore no limit on the private expenditure that enables its distribution.
- stevehawk 7y ago
  Technically, the Supreme Court ruled that a law that the legislative branch voted for and executive branch did not veto was not unconstitutional, thus causing the "Supreme Court says money is speech" situation. All we have to do is update the law or pass a constitutional amendment but no one is ever going to do that.
- baddox 7y ago
  > Supreme Court has ruled money is free speech. It will take a constitutional amendment to change this. It's clearly not that simple, because there are a lot of laws about campaign finance in the United States. The court ruling that money is speech obviously doesn't mean that there are no restrictions on how money can be used in campaigns, and it doesn't mean those restrictions can't be changed with laws.
- manfredo 7y ago
  > Supreme Court has ruled money is free speech. It will take a constitutional amendment to change this. This is a massive oversimplification. There are still set limits on donating money to candidates, and to political parties. The "money is free speech" phrase comes from Citizens United, which removed limits on spending unrelated to electioneering. So you can't just go donate a million dollars to your favored candidate or political party. You can, however, run ads broadly advocating e.g. for or against gun control, climate change, etc.
humanrebar 7y ago
> Without campaign finance regulation... Bloomberg is self funding. There is no "campaign finance" involved. It's personal finance.
- baddox 7y ago
  It's not at all crazy to imagine laws that simply limit the total amount of money spent on a campaign, regardless of where it comes from.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    What if he just makes a feature film about himself and gives out free tickets? I don't see that there is such a clear distinction between a campaign and other speech.
    - baddox 7y ago
      Well, answering those questions is precisely the goal of campaign finance regulation.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  For a candidate, I can only donate $2800 towards primary election efforts, and $2800 towards a general election effort. Bloomberg, any candidate, should be prohibited from spending any more than that on their own campaign, billionaire or not.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    What counts as a campaign expense? If he buys a new suit for an event he just committed a felony?
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      No. But if he pays for an entire tech team in Manhattan to run his campaign, he should (under campaign finance regulations). I did a phone interview as a potential candidate with someone on that team because I was curious about their capabilities. Such a team should not exist for a self-funded candidate.
root_axis 7y ago
Are campaign finance laws really the answer? Seems to me like they are regularly ignored without consequence.
- SmirkingRevenge 7y ago
  The only campaign finance reform we're ever likely to get except in the rare case, is reform that gives advantage to those currently holding office.
downerending 7y ago
I'll take paid ads over "Correct The Record" scheming (i.e., paid astroturfing) any day of the week.
- catalogia 7y ago
  I expect we'll all be subjected to both.
zaidf 7y ago
“We're letting billionaires buy the election“ If anything, I think Bloomberg may prove you can’t literally buy an election.
- aportela 7y ago
  hi! apologies for this comment which is completely unrelated to your post - was just trying to figure out a way to get in touch with you. I just moved to Durham from NYC for work, and was looking through HN to see if there were any ongoing meetups, etc. in the area. Saw your comment about an RTP meetup (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512702) here, so figured you might still be in the area. Would love any tips you might have for meeting new people / getting involved in the tech community around here. Or even meeting up in person just to chat!
Eric_WVGG 7y ago
I see Bloomberg there, who was the second billionaire?

by m_ke 7y ago

coldpie 7y ago

Consider installing an ad blocker.

m_ke 7y ago
I've always used one on my desktop so was actually surprised to see those ads when I did the search on my phone. Those were the first political ads that I've seen because I don't watch TV and don't use social networks.
- oefrha 7y ago
  I see political ads a hell lot when I use the YouTube iOS client. No need to watch TV or use social networks.
  - m_ke 7y ago
    YouTube premium has no ads, which comes with a paid YouTube music plan.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      Well, I don’t watch enough YouTube these days to justify a subscription, and I already have a separate music streaming subscription.
    - scohesc 7y ago
      Is it against the rules here to recommend anybody with an android phone to get ahold of Youtube Vanced? Someone took the youtube APK, and gutted out all the ads and unlocked youtube premium features for free if you're willing to sideload it.
      - usui 7y ago
        I will second this. Vanced is a great tweaked YouTube app that I am grateful people put the time to make. Getting it to act like the normal YouTube app required tinkering. I noticed that web links used the default app even after setting Vanced as the default. To fix this, I had to remove the original YouTube app and stop it from auto-updating.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  Firefox for android has addons including ublock origin. There ARE adblockers that work on the system level and block ads in apps but - You can't selectively turn it off for a certain page - You have to root the phone - It's easier just to never install apps with in app ads.
  - taborj 7y ago
    > You have to root the phone Allow me to introduce you to Blokada: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.blokada.alarm/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.blokada.alarm/
    - Zenbit_UX 7y ago
      Allow me to introduce you to nextdns.io. Simple DNS level blocking on any device... (not affiliated, just a fan)
      - taborj 7y ago
        Yup. My point is, you don't need to have a rooted phone to get ad blocking.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  Use lockdown on your iPhone... and uBlock on Firefox on Android.
organsnyder 7y ago
The ad blockers on my devices don't prevent my in-laws, grandparents, etc. from seeing all of the misleading political ads that are out there (and I'm not about to take on sysadmin responsibilities for them, either). My mother-in-law was shocked to learn that the Facebook ads she sees are different than the ones we see. She got us this mop for Christmas and couldn't understand how we had never heard of the brand before.

GaryNumanVevo 7y ago

A first big step would be to severely limit campaign spending on advertisement, including SuperPAC money. If you mention your candidate's name, that ad will count towards a hard cap on ad spending.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
You would need to also ban all mentions of the candidate's name in media. Otherwise, a billionaire could get around this by buying a newspaper or tv or radiostation and run programs praising the candidate and maligning the opposition.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rchaud 7y ago
  It's already happening. The Bezos-owned Washington Post's Opinions section has been, shall we say, skeptical of the Democratic front-runner in the two primaries/caucuses so far, resulting in this humorous juxtaposition of two stories written by the same columnist: https://i.redd.it/028hqkitate41.jpg https://i.redd.it/028hqkitate41.jpg
- munk-a 7y ago
  A billionaire would need to direct the newspaper to carry out such actions - if they were directing the newspaper in such a manner it would be a campaign donation, giving a candidate a ferrari counts as a donation since you're giving them something of value, even if the campaign didn't actively solicit the donation - in theory these sorts of media tricks already fall under unrecorded campaign donations that the FEC should be going after, in practice the FEC has no teeth.
sokoloff 7y ago
My prediction is that you'd see ads for "Universal Basic Income", "2 cent tax on $50 millionaires", "a Senator who can't be bought", or "an experienced White House operator", or whatever else was 1 inch inside the boundary and could fairly clearly be linked to the preferred candidate without "counting".

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

It'd be pretty weird to have a rule that Mike Bloomberg can't spend a billion dollars telling you why he should be president, when Coca-Cola is allowed to spend a billion dollars every year sending you the much less important message to drink Coke.

inetknght 7y ago
> Coca-Cola is allowed to spend a billion dollars every year sending you the much less important message to drink Coke Perhaps Coca-Cola shouldn't be permitted to spend so much money on advertising an unhealthy product...
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  I'd certainly prefer if they didn't. But I can't be in favor of a rule reducing to "you've gotta jump through hoops if you want to publish an unpopular message".
- three_seagrass 7y ago
  Advertising restrictions are put on pharmaceuticals, tobacco, and alcohol at least. A more innocuous example would be Proctor & Gamble promoting soap.

heartbeats 7y ago

Why shouldn't it be allowed? Either people are capable of independent thought, in which case this doesn't matter. Or they are too stupid to form their own decisions, in which case democracy is a sham anyway. It's like the people claiming the Brexit vote was illegitimate because people didn't know what they were voting for. If that's the case, why not put Elizabeth in charge and save on admin?

beepboopbeep 7y ago
The world does not exist as a series of binary choices.
- heartbeats 7y ago
  So why don't we make it illegal for politicians to lie? It seems much fairer. After all, corporations aren't allowed to put out misleading ads, so why should politicians? It's a smaller harm if I buy diet products that don't work than if I vote for a politician who does the exact opposite of what he promised. Yet only the former is illegal. Here we have Donald Trump's 'Contract with the American Voter': https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102316-Contractv02.pdf https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102.... How much of this did he accomplish?
  - ianleeclark 7y ago
    > So why don't we make it illegal for politicians to lie? Lying, especially when Politicians do it, isn't a binary. There are varying degrees of truth, deliberate omissions, and a difficult to discern intent. So it would be incredibly difficult to enforce.
    - heartbeats 7y ago
      So your only qualm is that it would be difficult to enforce? After all, this does not seem to be a problem with false marketing.

dcolkitt 7y ago

* Free speech * Private property * Preventing small interest groups from having outsized influence Choose two. Or maybe 2.5 at the most. But the problem is there's no clear delineation between "money" and "speech". At some point you either impose restrictions on free speech, prevent the unlimited accumulation of wealth, or accept that billionaires are just always going to have more political influence than Joe Sixpack. For as much as people like to shit on it, very few people have actually read the body of Citizens United. If you haven't, I highly suggest doing so. Because it really brings up deep paradoxes that suggest that the First Amendment is fundamentally incompatible with campaign finance restrictions. European countries manage to keep money out of politics, simply by not sharing America's Constitutional guarantee of absolute free speech. There's no logically consistent way to regulate "money in politics" in a way that doesn't also restrict "speech in politics". Consider all of the below scenarios and tell me at what point "money" ends and "speech" begins: * A wealthy person makes huge campaign donations to his favored candidate. * A wealthy person runs for office, and uses his personal wealth to buy campaign ads. * A wealthy person buys a media conglomerate, and uses his editorial control to favor his preferred positions. * A wealthy person buys a media conglomerate, doesn't exert direct editorial control, but only hires journalists who share his opinion. * A wealthy person uses his money to fund movies with no political message. However he becomes famous from starring in his own subsidized movies. He uses his fame to spread his message without directly buying access. * A wealthy person hires people to attend protests in favor of his position. * A wealthy person finds people who genuinely wants to attend his protests, but subsidizes their transportation, signs, organization, etc. * A wealthy person buys nice clothes and speaking lessons for people that share his positions so they become more persuasive. * A wealthy person buys a chain of sports bars and makes sure that the TVs only play his preferred cable news channel. * A wealthy person biases hiring to favor like-minded people. On net that raises the status and influence of people like him. * A wealthy person biases his firm to doing business with firms run by ideologically like-minded CEOs. That makes people who share his views wealthier, and hence gives them more influence. * A wealthy person is unbiased when hiring, but locates all his offices in areas that share his views so that hiring naturally biases towards like-minded people. * A wealthy person uses his money to attract a very famous and attractive movie star. Once married he influences her to his political positions, then that movie star uses her famous and status to influence her fans. * A wealthy person uses his money to throw big, fancy parties. He invites anyone regardless of views. However at the beginning of the party, when people are enjoying the free cocktails and hours d'oevrues his always gives a toast that gently nudges the partygoers in favor of his views.

wolco 7y ago

You are not suppose to trust the media. We only think we should because they tell us to. Logically why do we think they have our best interest at heart. Why do we think they are neutral and what they say is a fact? Why do we divide them into news and fake news (the labels change based on the view as to who is who)?

m_ke 7y ago
I don't
52-6F-62 7y ago
You're entering into a bit of circular logic, there. Why should someone trust you in this case? How would anyone know you have their best interests at heart? Journalists have more accountability than a hardline online BB commenter. Where's the line?
- wernercd 7y ago
  "Journalists have more accountability" Recent history shows otherwise. All you have to do is look at the many hoaxes and lies that have been allowed to dominate the airwaves on... any... major news site. CNN? Check. Smollett, Covington, etc. Fox? Check. tons of examples exists there. You brag of accountability when, if you pick a news source, we can find more than a handful of examples of bias, lies and misinformation.
  - threeseed 7y ago
    Journalists are human. They will make mistakes. They will by default trust people e.g. Smollett who may then turn out to be liars. But as a profession they do seek to be accountable e.g. multiple sources and ethical e.g. protecting sources at all cost. Should we also not trust doctors, pilots, engineers, programmers etc because they also are infallible. What exactly do you want here ?
    - manfredo 7y ago
      The problem is when journalist make "mistakes" and are subsequently promoted. When Bloomberg made one of the biggest hacking accusations of the decade and failed to even remotely substantiate their claim that Apple and others were victims of a supply chain hack the journalists who wrote this story didn't get fired or disciplined. In fact one of the co-authors, Michael Riley, was promoted to be in charge of all of Bloomberg's technology security reporting.

throwawayhhakdl 7y ago

Agreed. Democracy doesn’t work when you can send different messages to different people, and pretend that your platform is specialized to each case. Big data targeting helps them do this, but even regional targeting is probably fine. I should know if you’re telling ____ he can have X before I vote for you to represent me. That being said, so many people are adverse to critical thinking (on both sides of the American political split) that this feels like a non issue to begin with. So whatever.

Reedx 7y ago

Andrew Yang was getting pushed out and ignored the whole time. There are many egregious examples of how he was being excluded: https://vocal.media/theSwamp/a-visual-history-of-the-yang-media-blackout https://vocal.media/theSwamp/a-visual-history-of-the-yang-me... We couldn't trust the media already, Bloomberg will just be another example making this clearer.

filoleg 7y ago
Thanks for sharing this article. I had a gut feeling that Yang was blacked out pretty badly, but I wrote it off as just me being biased and upset that my first choice candidate isn't getting as much screen time as I would have liked. After seeing this article with all the clear-cut examples, I don't think that it was just me being biased anymore.
bustadjustme 7y ago
While this does kinda suck, note that Marianne Williamson is excluded from many (if not all) of these same examples, while having announced her candidacy well before (and even making it into the televised debates as well). Politics aside, my guess is this is more than anything else a symptom of not knowing what to do with candidates who don't already hold an elected position.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  Marianne Williamson seems like a lovely person, but she's not even close to being a serious candidate. I can't blame people for not being interested in her campaign.
  - minikites 7y ago
    What criteria makes Andrew Yang a serious candidate compared to Marianne Williamson?
    - arthurcolle 7y ago
      I mean, these tweets are just nuts: https://theweek.com/articles/850004/marianne-williamsons-25-wildest-tweets https://theweek.com/articles/850004/marianne-williamsons-25-...

m0zg 7y ago

>> How are we supposed to trust the media You aren't supposed to trust it. You are supposed to learn to read between the lines like we read Pravda in the Soviet Union. Most of the "free" press in this country is owned by 5 billionaires. Most of it is also losing money hand over fist, so they have other motivations for keeping it around. It's just that this time these motivations are becoming obvious even to the democrats - the beneficiaries of the media bias. The reason for this are independent channels the "free" press can't control. If there was no FB or Twitter, you wouldn't even know Yang existed. Now imagine what Republicans, and Trump supporters especially think of this propaganda machine and how little trust they have in it. The press in this country (or in any other country, really) exists for one reason only: to manufacture consent for whatever the ruling class wants to shove down your throat next. FB and Twitter get in the way of that in a pretty fatal way, if they aren't controlled by the same cabal.

fzeroracer 7y ago
>Now imagine what Republicans, and Trump supporters especially think of this propaganda machine and how little trust they have in it I'm really not sure this statement holds. They don't trust certain parts of the media propaganda machine, but they place unwavering faith in other propaganda outlets which are arguably far worse in pushing conspiracy. FB and Twitter are both far from free channels and the fact that people think they're somehow better than another propaganda machine just means you agree with that bias, not that they're somehow more trustworthy. A healthy dose of skepticism is always a good thing, but when you go too far you fall prey to things that slip between the cracks of skepticism to feed fears.
- m0zg 7y ago
  I don't think they place much trust in any of it. Which is the way media should be consumed. The blatant bias and lack of integrity of media was pretty stark in the runup to the 2016 election, and has only become worse after it. Litmus test for you: do you believe that "both sides" comment by Trump was referring to neo-nazis? If you do, you've been lied to, and you need to read the full transcript. If you read it, you will see that he was referring to people for and against taking down the statues, and condemned the nazis immediately thereafter. To this day the articles have not been retracted, and are routinely used by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden to attack the president. They know full well it's a lie, but keep using it anyway. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1110531572275396609.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1110531572275396609.html And this is just one example. You wouldn't believe how quickly Yang would become a depraved maniac and literally Hitler if he had any chance of winning the nomination, instead of the "preferred" candidate. Don't believe me? Watch some interviews with Trump before he ran - they're still on YouTube. Beloved public persona, national icon, can do no wrong.

taurath 7y ago

> How are we supposed to trust the media when they're on track to get a billion dollars from a single candidate? We're not, but unfortunately there are extremely few reliable sources or institutions to accurately frame this problem for people. The Trumpites were CORRECT in that there's an inherent bias in the media. They're just incorrect in what that bias is, which is the status quo/pro corporate/pro "stability" line. Bernie Sander's supporters are sitting watching MSNBC wondering what the hell all of their anchors and commentators are doing - he, like Trump (at least when Trump was running for election), is a true anti-corporate candidate in the race. That we have several full on billionaires literally buying their way to 2nd place in a primary is the largest example of the wealth inequality gap being used in full force of the public. Its going to be quite a show.

eej71 7y ago

Billionaires aren't buying any election. Bloomberg will spend a considerable amount of money, but will not get very far. It's a lot of money to burn. But it won't net him anything. Trump, to the extent that one can consider him a billionaire, did not spend his way into winning. Like it or not, he crafted a message that resonated with many voters while also receiving a substantial amount of of free air time in the form of endless ridicule from national pundits.

olivermarks 7y ago
Trump's team's genius was and is their brilliant tabloid headline and subhead style Twitter flow. It circumvents the corporate media and targets voters while alienating and enraging their opposition, further defining his appeal. It's essentially real time tabloid and is in full effect again right now as he lampoons Bloomberg (MiniMike has to stand on a box to see over the podium is vintage Murdoch tabloid - the Sun, NY Post etc). Meanwhile Trump is spending even more time on the golf course than Obama did. I've often wondered how large his highly tactical Twitter team is...

quotemstr 7y ago

> It's crazy to me that we allow politicians to run targeted ad campaigns. No more so than anyone else running targeted ad campaigns. How can you argue that targeted ads for a politician are evil but not think the same way about targeted ads for, say, highly addictive junk food, optimizing ad spend for those most likely to overeat? Either you approve of targeting or you don't. I've never seen any argument for treating political ads specially. > Without campaign finance regulation majority of the billions donated to campaigns is going directly into pockets of Google, Facebook and cable monopolies. We're letting billionaires buy the election. People made the same arguments decades ago, except without the "Google" and "Facebook" parts. The world didn't end. Why would it now?

cmurf 7y ago

Supreme Court has ruled money is free speech. It will take a constitutional amendment to change this. And the two party system is one of the most effective money machines, they have only ever proposed mitigations for the most heinous activities. On what mitigation could they possibly agree on that doesn't run afoul of Buckley v. Valeo, et al? It takes money to broadcast, print, and distribute anything, so if you believe in free speech you'd necessarily have to agree there should be no limit on distribution, as well as no public subsidy of it. And therefore no limit on the private expenditure that enables its distribution.

stevehawk 7y ago
Technically, the Supreme Court ruled that a law that the legislative branch voted for and executive branch did not veto was not unconstitutional, thus causing the "Supreme Court says money is speech" situation. All we have to do is update the law or pass a constitutional amendment but no one is ever going to do that.
baddox 7y ago
> Supreme Court has ruled money is free speech. It will take a constitutional amendment to change this. It's clearly not that simple, because there are a lot of laws about campaign finance in the United States. The court ruling that money is speech obviously doesn't mean that there are no restrictions on how money can be used in campaigns, and it doesn't mean those restrictions can't be changed with laws.
manfredo 7y ago
> Supreme Court has ruled money is free speech. It will take a constitutional amendment to change this. This is a massive oversimplification. There are still set limits on donating money to candidates, and to political parties. The "money is free speech" phrase comes from Citizens United, which removed limits on spending unrelated to electioneering. So you can't just go donate a million dollars to your favored candidate or political party. You can, however, run ads broadly advocating e.g. for or against gun control, climate change, etc.

humanrebar 7y ago

> Without campaign finance regulation... Bloomberg is self funding. There is no "campaign finance" involved. It's personal finance.

baddox 7y ago
It's not at all crazy to imagine laws that simply limit the total amount of money spent on a campaign, regardless of where it comes from.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  What if he just makes a feature film about himself and gives out free tickets? I don't see that there is such a clear distinction between a campaign and other speech.
  - baddox 7y ago
    Well, answering those questions is precisely the goal of campaign finance regulation.
toomuchtodo 7y ago
For a candidate, I can only donate $2800 towards primary election efforts, and $2800 towards a general election effort. Bloomberg, any candidate, should be prohibited from spending any more than that on their own campaign, billionaire or not.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  What counts as a campaign expense? If he buys a new suit for an event he just committed a felony?
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    No. But if he pays for an entire tech team in Manhattan to run his campaign, he should (under campaign finance regulations). I did a phone interview as a potential candidate with someone on that team because I was curious about their capabilities. Such a team should not exist for a self-funded candidate.

root_axis 7y ago

Are campaign finance laws really the answer? Seems to me like they are regularly ignored without consequence.

SmirkingRevenge 7y ago
The only campaign finance reform we're ever likely to get except in the rare case, is reform that gives advantage to those currently holding office.

downerending 7y ago

I'll take paid ads over "Correct The Record" scheming (i.e., paid astroturfing) any day of the week.

catalogia 7y ago
I expect we'll all be subjected to both.

zaidf 7y ago

“We're letting billionaires buy the election“ If anything, I think Bloomberg may prove you can’t literally buy an election.

aportela 7y ago
hi! apologies for this comment which is completely unrelated to your post - was just trying to figure out a way to get in touch with you. I just moved to Durham from NYC for work, and was looking through HN to see if there were any ongoing meetups, etc. in the area. Saw your comment about an RTP meetup (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512702) here, so figured you might still be in the area. Would love any tips you might have for meeting new people / getting involved in the tech community around here. Or even meeting up in person just to chat!

Eric_WVGG 7y ago

I see Bloomberg there, who was the second billionaire?