31 ms·

Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

543 points by blopeur 6y ago

jibal 6y ago
That obviously doesn't address the problem.
baq 6y ago
i'd also want to turn off political wall posts.
- catalogia 6y ago
  In fact, I think facebook would be much better if I could turn off every last feature facebook has.
simion314 6y ago
I am not from US, I hate FB during electoral campagins not because of paid ads but because of people sharing tons of political crap, I would like to hide all political post and shares of my friends and ads.
- ManlyBread 6y ago
  Hopefully at some point someone notices that politics are a huge turn-off for many people. I live in Poland and EA decided they need me to see a statement for BLM in one of their games. What's the value of that? I have zero influence over the things happening in US and it's not like the topic is not all over the internet anyway. If it weren't for the fact that I play that game with friends I would just uninstall it completely.
  - IngoBlechschmid 6y ago
    A couple of days ago, I noticed that my favorite science fiction author Greg Egan has published a new book. He listed several distributors which are equally good for him. When I saw that one them displayed a huge BLM banner, my decision where where to buy was set. I also don't live in the US, but similar issues exist in many countries, including mine, and I appreciate any company publically showing their support for this cause (and other causes important to me). Of course some companies support those causes only for publicity reasons. But it's still positive signaling.
  - foldr 6y ago
    >What's the value of that? I have zero influence over the things happening in US BLM isn't only relevant to the US. It's not as if Poland doesn't have any issues with racism. I actually think this has been one of the positive effects of the high profile of BLM. Too many European countries have been content to tell themselves that racism is an American problem which they don't have.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Poland is extremely .. traditional about this kind of thing; racism is hardly mentioned because Poland was never a colonial power and has in the modern era been a country that people emigrate from rather than immigrate to. So the non-white population of Poland is tiny. More relevant to Poland is the conservative consolidation of power and rollback of LGBT rights. (And if you want to start a really uncomfortable discussion about racism in Poland, the Holocaust will definitely do that)
      - foldr 6y ago
        As you mention yourself, anti-Semitic racism is a serious problem in Poland. And other forms of racism are still a problem, even if the number of non-white people is small.
    - raxxorrax 6y ago
      BLM has organizations directly tied to US democrats. People giving money might not have realized this. BLM has no monopoly on fighting racism. EAs claims to be interested in fighting racism is an insult to many people. I think a lot of members of BLM are racists.
      - foldr 6y ago
        >BLM has organizations directly tied to US democrats Most large political organizations in the US have "ties" of some kind or another to one or both of the major political parties. But BLM isn't a single monolithic organization.
    - tester34 6y ago
- chippy 6y ago
  This is the problem with reddit also and twitter - indeed all social media. The main problem is that US political elections "season" runs for 2 years! So out of every 4 years, half of the time is campaigning season so it means that the rest of the worlds social media is polluted with "tons of political crap" 50% of the time. For US folks: look at how other western democracies run their electoral campaigns to help understand this. They tend to be much much shorter in duration. For international users - remember that for Americans, it's normal to be swamped in political campaigning pollution for half of their time.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    Well, that the US presidential voting system is weird, is out of the question. But simply having a shorter campaign before election is no magic bullet either. Here we have the saying, that politicians only listen to people during the election. So shorten that time, shortens the window to get through with something. But from a rational and idealistic point of view, none of this makes much sense. Campaigning is a huge waste of everyones attention and energy.
    - simion314 6y ago
      >Well, that the US presidential voting system is weird, is out of the question. But simply having a shorter campaign before election is no magic bullet either. I disagree, before the election start here the politicians won't even be sure who will be candidate, then the flyers, walking trough the streets will not happen, there will be no debates on TV. When campaign starts soem peolpe get activated and they will try to promote their favorite party/ person - I am OK with that I would like an option to not see those posts, or an option to hide all posts from this person for the campagin duration. I think this persons think they are doing the right thing and informing people etc I just don't care and when I open FB once a week to see if there is some message for me I would like to see only relevant stuff. Anyway, here in Romania I do not see many political posts outside electoral campaigns or when the government is doing some shity stuff and people are calling them out , or when some politician says a stupid thing and memes are created about their idiocy(now thinking about it if you have politicians that say a lot of idiotic things often you get a ton of political memes/satire ).
- sshagent 6y ago
  tell me about it. On my browser its quite nice as i have the "F.B. Purity" addon, that lets me choose words to filter entire posts by. So i add both common political part words ( tories, labour, conservative etc ) and my feed is a lot nicer. Its just a shame when i use fb on my phone i get to read that stuff. Muting people for 30 days is a reasonable start i guess, but i'd much rather filter by content
  - bronco21016 6y ago
    I tried muting people during the 2016 cycle. It worked for sure, my feed was less political garbage. It turns out my feed was also mostly empty. I quit and have been off ever since.
    - sshagent 6y ago
      Yeah, sounds very familiar. Muting all the annoying posts just left pictures of peoples food
- sneak 6y ago
  Unfollow your friends that post boring partisan nonsense. Alternately, just delete your Facebook account, and stop donating content and ad revenue to a censorship platform.
  - simion314 6y ago
    I done that for some persons, and for people that post religious stuff daily. I hide all from them. But there could be a solution, like say I am a honest person that I want to get elected in a possition in my little village, can I post things and somehow mention to show it only for people that are in the same village as me, so my friends in other locations don't have to see the local stuff. I am not a big FB user, but FB is the only way I can keep in touch with some of my colleagues from school/university , sadly soem of them are not on FB and the old phone numbers are not valid so they are just gone, no idea if they are still alive
    - sneak 6y ago
      You have to have an email account to sign up for Facebook; if you wish to keep in touch with your old colleagues you can simply ask them for their email addresses. This is what I did when I quit Instagram.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Funny, I only go on facebook to try and pierce my friends’ open political apathy.
LatteLazy 6y ago
Top feature of 2020 right there.
- rvz 6y ago
  Good move for the users. Solves the issue of having political ads promoted on your feed and gives users the option as: If you don't like it, disable these political ads altogether.
nyanpasu64 6y ago
I want the ability to turn off political non-advertisement posts.
- lvs 6y ago
  I already have the ability to turn off facebook, and I exercised it years ago.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  This and turning off adverts would be a nice combination.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  I'm surprised we don't get more control over our "feeds" on some platforms - it would be useful signal for advertisers I'd imagine, so there's a win-win aspect. On Reddit I'd like to filter out (ie remove) all posts with animal pictures. I keep coming back to Slashdot's model of democratised curation.
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    The FB algorithm of feeding you unchronoligal crap instead of what your friends write seems to get more ad views since you scroll more. It is really user hostile and are depleting there user pool in the long term.
  - zo1 6y ago
    It's the same reason Google doesn't let you have more control over the search results. If they give out granular-enough permissions / tooling, then plugins and other tools would be somehow able to make your FB/Google experience akin to a completely different site, with very little control on their part. As a bit of an analogy: They want to be the television that you look at your content through as well as the content provider/curator, but they also don't want to be forced into being just the radio-broadcasting infrastructure provider which is all that they really are if you drill down far enough. Oh and ads, of course.
- azernik 6y ago
john___matrix 6y ago
I wonder if it'll be a obscurely named toggle hidden away in a settings sub page somewhere just so they can say they've offered the option. Unlikely of course but it would be nice if they were turned off by default and they offered users the option to turn them on with a disclaimer about how inaccurate and shady many of them are.
- blocked_again 6y ago
  > Unlikely of course but it would be nice if they were turned off by default This means the revenue KPI of the ads team would go down right? So will never happen.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    It's probably worth noting that if you were running an online ads platform, revenue probably wouldn't be what you'd optimise for. You'd be better off optimising for an event that advertisers will pay you for.
- buybackoff 6y ago
  Not only hidden away, but one will have to set this option every time the page refreshes, as with time ordering of timeline. That latter behavior nullified FB usability for me, not using for 2+ years and happy. Every time when come back just run away scary of the political trash bin it has become.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    There are browser extensions for that
- CyanBird 6y ago
  They would not even need to hide it, the fact that it is an optin feature already means that most people won't ever turn it off and therefore be exposed to said political messaging even when the idea is for them to not be
- 6y ago
Legogris 6y ago
Next trend: subliminal political propaganda in what looks like product ads.
seven4 6y ago
Facebook wants to be seen to address its perceived interference in politics. Particularly ahead of the upcoming election cycle. It wants to do this without hamstringing its ad-revenue. Let's look at what the measures are - -an opt-out option for political ads: "The feature, which will start rolling out on Wednesday, allows users to turn off political, electoral and social issue adverts from candidates and other organisations that have the "Paid for" political disclaimer." -encouraging voter enfranchisement: "Mr Zuckerberg went on to encourage people who aren't signed up as voters to register in time for the US election in November." By implementing these Facebook could reasonably make the claim (i.e. at a congressional hearing) that it has consistently and passionately worked to deliver fairness on its platform and protected against manipulation. You can't design against every crisis...but you can design to say you took "reasonable measures" to prevent a crisis. I think that's exactly what these measures are aimed at doing. Someone pointed out in an earlier thread that it's the people who don't think to opt-out that are most in need of "protecting".
- prepend 6y ago
  This seems to be more than print, radio, and television are doing? I wish there was a way to turn this off for tv or youtube.
Traster 6y ago
Here is his full Op-Ed: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/06/17/facebook-voter-campaign-strengthen-democracy-mark-zuckerberg-column/3191152001/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/06/17/facebook-vo... Isn't it bizarre that Facebook has decided it's going to censor exactly 1 type of political view. If you want to discourage someone from voting - a perfectly legitimate position (not necessarily one I whole heartedly agree with, but I think arguments can be made, for example by Russell Brand in 2015[1]). It just seems like pure unadulterated hypocrisy to me. [1]:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24648651/russell-brand-i-ve-never-voted-never-will https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24648651/russell-brand-i-ve...
- MatekCopatek 6y ago
  Exactly! And to add to your argument - their encouragement isn't entirely neutral, it will cause a potential turnout increase in the population that uses Facebook. If anyone is bothered by priests in church telling believers to go vote - this is the same thing applied to a different focus group.
quijoteuniv 6y ago
It would be fine if they allow to turn ALL the adverts :) I barely use FB anymore is just adverts. It was nice when it started, just friends posts, now most of my good friends left or do not use it anymore.
- GuB-42 6y ago
  And a lot of friends posts are also adverts. There are: - Official Facebook sponsored posts - Viral ads, the most obvious being "share this and get a chance to win..." - Friends or promoting their own, their friends or some other business they want to promote - Friends trying to sell their stuff Just because it comes from someone close doesn't make it less of an ad. And for some reason Facebook algorithms seem to put the least interesting post forwards. Personal ads, pseudo-profound bullshit and viral "opinion" pieces, etc... My friends in real life are people I find interesting, I mean, why would I want them as friends otherwise? But looking at my Facebook feed, I don't recognize the people I enjoy spending time with.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
What if someone were to develop an app, browser extension, etc. that automatically disabled political ads in Facebook. Why not disable political ads by default and if users want them, then they can enable them. Otherwise this is nothing more than the old "opt-out" trick, as used for email spam and now ubiquitous in internet marketing. The choice should not be to "opt-out", it should be to "opt-in".
- martin-adams 6y ago
  I suspect the political parties would start screaming that Facebook are limiting access to freedom of speech.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  I don't use facebook, so I am confused, but aren't there apps/browser extension that block all ads, called addblockers? (or are they blocked by facebook?) Why on earth would I choose to view normal advertisement, but not political?
  - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
    To be honest I am not an expert in this area either. I know there are ways to avoid ads on Facebook (even without using an adblocker) but these would only be known by more technical users. I also believe Facebook tries to subvert ad blockers. What I am referring to is the idea of an app/extension for non-technical users. Make it so easy that it's "frictionless".
Raed667 6y ago
Here Facebook is making a stand on what is political and what is not? Is climate change political? Are immigration policies political? etc..
- martin-adams 6y ago
  You need to be authorised to run ads about politics, so this is simple way for them to know if it's a political ad or not. The challenge is if advertisers miss classify what the ad it about, which then is subjective to Facebook as you say.
  - Raed667 6y ago
    We just moved the problem one step away. If (for example) i classify my ad about climate-change as non-political. Can Facebook disagree with that?
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      Almost any topic is potential political. But all facebook cares about, is not to be blamed again for fake news on their network are responsible again for a not desired outcome of the election. So this is just one step towards that image, nothing more.
    - prepend 6y ago
      I think it’s the flavor of money from a campaign finance perspective. If I’m using campaign donations and run an ad on climate change, it’s political. If I’m Nike and run an ad for climate change, it’s non-political. Unless it runs afoul of the FEC.
- Angostura 6y ago
  I presume it is going to be ads placed by political parties and PACs
- eplanit 6y ago
  Yes to both of those examples.
andy_ppp 6y ago
This is absolutely pointless... my guess is < 1% of people will turn it on. On the one hand this feature admits there is a problem with political ads (otherwise why have the toggle) and provides a non-solution to fix it (not enough people will filter the bullshit to make any meaningful difference). This is all exactly within the Facebook playbook.
- anpago 6y ago
  While I am a nerd hence why an avid reader of HN. My wife is the opposite but if I or someone else points out a useful tip which takes little effort but makes something better/easier it will be read. Also we need to remember politics in the western nations is still something most people can talk about or mention and put a poster up or wear a badge. The biggest issue will be people avoiding you thinking you might bore them on the subject. Go to a number of countries in the world. Random political adverts being spotted on your feed may cause you much grief and possibly harm in some way.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
This is a good move but could go further, really wish FB and moreso Twitter would include a big switch in their settings that was just "Politics On/Off" hide all political ads, and tweets and retweets for people who just don't want to see that for mental health reasons or just because they're not there for that (e.g brand customer support workers) but they'd never do that because I suspect they ideologically think its more important to control the flow of political information that is broadcast to their users even if its at a great detriment to their users mental health.
- lovetocode 6y ago
  I have been asking for this for a long time. I am happy to see it is gaining traction in some form.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Maybe we should put some effort into making political discourse less damaging to your mental health instead of enabling large parts of a democratic country to just shut themselves off from politics.
  - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    It's my feed should I not get a say what I see in it and what I don't? This is what mean by ideology, the idea that it's more important to make sure I see the right things so hopefully I think the right way takes precedent over how it makes me feel. This sort of thing seems to be all what modern journalism is too, it's all through the lens of editorial now. I don't want to be on Twitter, I'm on Twitter because Google Reader killed RSS and all the bloggers said "What's the big deal? Just use Twitter" because their follower counts going up made them feel good and now I can't get what I used to get from RSS without the unwanted side serving of (mostly) American politics.
    - dillonmckay 6y ago
      Why do you think it is ‘your’ feed?
jka 6y ago
What we may be witnessing here is Facebook introducing a feature that allows them to delay and block legal complaints and requests related to questionable political advertising and influence (whether domestic or foreign). This feature presumably wouldn't prevent those cases from concluding eventually, but introducing it now could mean that it'd be difficult for jurisdictions (local, state or federal) to prepare and apply meaningful regulations over what Facebook should permit in terms of election-related advertising. Mark Zuckerberg has previously stated he'll to 'go to the mat'[1] and fight if there's any existential threat to Facebook as a result of the election outcome. That's probably reassuring for Facebook employees to hear - they are likely to feel more invested in the health of the company that their own careers, social lives and financial outcomes are directly connected to than the health of the U.S. population and government which may seem more distant. In some less likely scenario it'd even be possible that Facebook leadership would perceive a weak U.S. government as an opportunity for the company to take on a larger role in the nation and perhaps worldwide. Naively as an outsider it might appear that Facebook's incentives would be to maximize the number of people using Facebook around election time, so that their audience figures and advertising revenue can be maximized. Creating an opt-out setting for political ads could make a dent in that revenue, although from outside Facebook it's hard to say how many people would become aware of the configuration setting. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/01/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-elizabeth-warren-big-tech https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/01/mark-zuck...
- bhupy 6y ago
  > introducing it now could mean that it'd be difficult for jurisdictions (local, state or federal) to prepare and apply meaningful regulations over what Facebook should permit in terms of election-related advertising. What kind of regulation could a US jurisdiction apply that wouldn’t violate the Constitution?
throeawayjoe 6y ago
The idea behind this "turning off political ads" is to prevent the masses by being fooled into voting for one party over the other due to "fake" news. As someone who was born and brought up in a third world country, this is my observation because I have a different perspective on this. People like Donald Trump have won elections despite severe personal and public failings. And the reason they win is because they are demagogues. They have the ability to connect to voter's emotions. Obama is not a demagogue but he dripped with Charisma and had the ability to connect to everyone and share his vision for a better America. Likewise for Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan had immense Charisma. Hillary Clinton is not an inspiring person. She did not have the same kind of Charisma or Vibe that Obama had. All of this started because Hillary Clinton lost the election in 2016 to Donald Trump. If Hillary Clinton won the election, this wouldn't even be a discussion. There is this quote from Rocky Balboa: Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! If Obama contested in the 2016 elections, there is a good chance he would have beaten Trump. It is true that there was fake news. We can't assume that the fake news was the sole cause for Hillary Clinton's defeat. This is a media narrative which was unable to come to terms with the fact that a racist narc like DT was able to defeat Clinton. DT would have beaten Hillary regardless of the "fake articles" on Facebook. Blaming it on anything else is the same as not taking responsibility for being wrong about the election.
- kwistzhaderach 6y ago
  It’s honestly shocking that in a country of 300M people u can’t find someone economically and politically sane to lead the country.
- Craighead 6y ago
  You seem under educated about the perverseness of Cambridge Analytica, the Mueller report, and WikiLeaks role in the 2016 election. Calling those aspects "fake news" and saying "hrc was weak" is a bad faith argument
hardlianotion 6y ago
I can see how this will stop people being irritated by political adverts they don't like, but I don't see how this addresses the claim that dishonest political adverts are skewing the democratic process.
cosmodisk 6y ago
Political adverts isn't the main problem. The key issue is that the candidates can say virtually anything they want irrespectively whether it's true or not.The blame game is huge as well and shouldn't be allowed at all. Until all this is fixed, there's not much hope for any ON/OFF settings on social media.
- nradov 6y ago
  How would you propose to fix that? Should candidates only be allowed to make "true" statements?
  - harimau777 6y ago
    This wouldn't completely fix the problem, but I think it would help to not allow candidates to make factually false statements. That is to say: there may not be a way to objectively say whether a given statement is true, but it is possible to objectively say that some statements are false.
    - braythwayt 6y ago
      In other words, “science.” Science is the study of falsifiable theory. Things that cannot be falsified lie outside of science.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      NYT v Sullivan was a landmark Supreme Court case which held that the Constitution protects the publishing of political advertisements that contain factual inaccuracies.
  - Nightshaxx 6y ago
    Who verifies what is true or not? Much of the media has a bias either way. Who is the arbiter of absolute truth? Who decides when a theory is mature enough to be absolute fact?
    - cosmodisk 6y ago
prepend 6y ago
Facebook has a really interesting feature that I haven’t seen in Twitter, Google, or others. I can block all ads from a page. Whenever I see a political ad, I can choose “don’t show me any more ads from XXX” and it actually works. This was a godsend during the primary and I wish was available in other platforms. I’m surprised they have this feature and have expected it to go away for years.
- coding_lobster 6y ago
  Doesn't such a feature contribute to the creation of echo chambers? It's hard to tell when it comes to something like ads as they usually aren't a great source of information.
  - chrisandchips 6y ago
    I suppose it does, but I feel like echo chambers are more dangerous when people don't necessarily realize they've entered one (e.g. when all of your FB friends only share posts centered around a particular political view). I feel like there's less danger here since one needs to manually click that they don't want to see a particular type of content
  - swarnie_ 6y ago
    I don't really want my political views enforced or challenged on Facebook, its really not the place for it. Why should i have to when all i want is a C rate messenger service?
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    Echo chambers are deliberately created by the platform according to what they think will keep the user on the site. It is fundamentally anti-user. This is the person self-selecting what they want to see. It's a very different thing.
    - Dumblydorr 6y ago
      Echo chambers are also chosen by users, though. They choose who to friend, follow, un follow, like, block, etc. In a broader sense, people have media habits that are fueled by their own views, I doubt a trumpism follower would choose to read NYT or WaPo. There is some personal agency here.
macspoofing 6y ago
It's a good feature from an individual perspective. It's not a good feature if you don't like cultural bubbles forming. Democrats will block Republican ads, Republicans will block Democrat ads - will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa? I find this focus (attack?) on political advertising on social media platforms by traditional media companies to be self-serving and hypocritical. The craziest political ads have been run on local TV and newspapers for decades [1] and everyone just accepted it as part of a normal political discourse ... but now there is a concentrated effort to prevent or "fact check" political ads on Facebook and Twitter. Why? I'm sure it has nothing to do with billions spent on political ads (revenue that will go to traditional media outlets if it can't be spent on social media), nor anything to do with the pro-Democratic party bias in almost all traditional media. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcjEe9guEIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcjEe9guEIA
- piva00 6y ago
  It can be one motive but it's not the only one. Can be the driver for a lot of actors attacking social media but we can't deny that social media has enabled a lot of new techniques for reaching an audience in a much easier and rapid platform than ever before. Those techniques have been twisted into the range of untruthfulness that we couldn't have seen before in the old media because moderation was much more strict (and papers depended on some kind of respectability). The closest we had to this in the past were tabloids but people could more easily categorise those than the thousands of "Truth News Online"-esque articles peddled on social media. It's an extreme torrent of an old issue, we scaled it up. Very few campaigns ran on extreme blatant lies and warped reality as we have seen the past few years... So yes, money might be a shady motive behind this hunt but there is also quite a lot of damage that we haven't yet found a way to deal with. And it's causing very real problems, in real life, right now. Not that these problems were caused directly by social media but they are adding fuel to the fire and it only seems to be increasing now when having checks on them becomes another divisive subject and added as another single-issue partisan bullshit.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    > Those techniques have been twisted into the range of untruthfulness that we couldn't have seen before in the old media because moderation was much more strict (and papers depended on some kind of respectability). That's not even remotely true. The Atlantic put together snippets of political ads over decades [1]. It's pretty crazy stuff. The local stuff, just from personal memory, was even crazier, frequently asserting the equivalent of the opposition being murderers. >Very few campaigns ran on extreme blatant lies and warped reality as we have seen the past few years... The problem is that even that perspective is your personal bias which you're using to justify censorship. The other side is bad and lying and therefore they wrong so they shouldn't be allowed to speak. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcjEe9guEIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcjEe9guEIA
moron4hire 6y ago
I figured out how to do this a long time before Facebook made an official feature for it: delete your Facebook account.
ubertaco 6y ago
As long as this is an opt-out setting, and not a community standard, this is a cop-out. The problem is not "our poor users are bombarded with untrue political ads!" The problem is that Facebook has become a cesspool that breeds conspiracy theories and communities of disinformation and denial the same way that stagnant swampwater breeds mosquitoes and other harmful pests. Its tight-knit havens of the willfully disinformed will not opt out of "the real truth" (read: the coordinated distribution of lies). If Facebook was actually interested in addressing the problem of its festering pits of QAnon and antivaxxers and the like, it would start by deplatforming advertisers who intentionally spread lies. No, it's clear that Facebook's intent here is to put up the paltriest, lowest-actual-impact defense against any sort of consequences that legal systems might bring against it.
- spoopyskelly 6y ago
  Why should they block content you don't like? Move to another platform.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    More specifically, why does one get to decide what content another person sees, on a platform?
forgingahead 6y ago
I wish there was a broader filter in Facebook that would allow me to filter by specific terms. So then any post, story, like, etc that would be surfaced into the newsfeed would have to pass through this filter first. If any of the flagged words are found, just block it from my view. There is still a great deal of positive discovery that happens via Facebook, and they should be letting people customise their noise filters as much as possible so that they can get to the good stuff.
deleted 6y ago
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wiremine 6y ago
This is a good start. I always thought it would be great to have a "no X today" button, where I could mute all political content, all sports content, all WWDC content, etc.
vaibhawc 6y ago
Facebook? What is that?
ori_b 6y ago
This misses the point hard. The problem is people who don't realize they're being lied to.
- bhupy 6y ago
  I think FB (and Zuck) have made it pretty clear by now that they actively want their users to be free to consume what they want, even if others think that’s bad for them. They understand what they’re doing.
  - ori_b 6y ago
    That's blatantly false. Try posting porn, or lies in ads about non-political topics. Political ads are the only thing that gets a pass.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      > porn Sure, this is a fair exception. FB has decided that it does not want to be a porn site. We may all disagree with that decision, but it's theirs to make. > lies about non-political topics Can you elaborate on this? It is 100% possible to post non-political lies on FB. The only exception to this is libel/defamation and false advertising, but that's for legal reasons. And even there, you can only sue for material damages incurred, and cannot simply sue for the speech in question (which is itself protected). To the extent that FB wants its platform to contain political ads (factual or otherwise), it's because they subjectively see value in a global platform for users to decide for themselves what is true and what is false. You may argue that this is bad for society/bad for democracy, which is fair. Facebook clearly seems to disagree with that, which is also fair.
      - ori_b 6y ago
        > Sure, this is a fair exception. FB has decided that it does not want to be a porn site. We may all disagree with that decision, but it's theirs to make. Yes, they've made a decision to restrict what the users can see, because facebook thinks it's bad. That's their right, but it highlights their double standard. I don't disagree with the decision, but it shows that this line of reasoning is bogus. > Can you elaborate on this? It is 100% possible to post non-political lies on FB. https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads Most relevant: https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/misleading_claims https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/mis... Also, the community standards, which describes what facebook may take down has a section on integrity and authenticity. That includes manipulated media and false news. It's likely not enforced on most posts due to cost reasons, but it's absolutely a part of their terms of service. https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/integrity_authenticity https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/integrity_authen...
elicash 6y ago
I'm a political advertiser as part of my job and one thing most people don't get is that it's not just ELECTORAL ads that Facebook usually is referring to when they're talking about "political" ads. It's, as mentioned in the article, a shorthand for "Ads About Social Issues, Elections or Politics." So, a few points. First, the obvious, that these things all depend on the extent to which Facebook promotes this "feature." So with that said: 1. I planned a big vote-by-mail (political orgs are concerned about in-person voting bc of COVID) ad campaign to members of my organization. Obviously, it wasn't just Facebook and Instagram, but these will be flagged as politics and less effective than they were previously. Facebook will do its own encouragement to register and to vote, but we know our membership better than Facebook and were crafting campaigns meant to motivate them based on research of what we know works, combined with in-person organizing that's coordinated in a way Facebook would never do. This will also hurt recruitment for members who want to knock on doors. 2. They define social issues as "sensitive topics that are heavily debated, may influence the outcome of an election or result in/relate to existing or proposed legislation." That's an "or" joining those, so it's an incredibly broad category. Expect more to be swept up in this than people in this thread are talking about. 3. The category is so broad that it's going to include most union ad activity. Not just organizing new workers, but let's say a union wants to advertise to its membership of nurses about how they can advocate for N95 masks in the workplace with their employer. It's not actually about public policy, yet Facebook generally will reject this type of ad if it's not categorized as "political." Facebook and Google both have anti-union ad practices, but this is unintentionally going to make it worse. I'm not necessarily against these policies. Something can be bad in some ways and offset by the good. But if Facebook wants to make the argument about giving users the freedom, let me just ask, how informed are users going to be about what they're blocking? Do they know they might be blocking organizations they are dues-paying members of? Are they allowed to make a distinction between electoral ads and ads that are simply about "debated" topics?
- schuyler2d 6y ago
  Indeed -- quite the timely response: Allow people to turn off ads advocating racial justice and equity.
  - 6y ago
netcan 6y ago
There's some interesting shifting going re: social media & politics. Twitter made their decision about political ads. I guess it was a hard call... revenue potential. Meanwhile, Twitter is coming under more pressure and scrutiny. Politicians, moguls and such use it. If they feel twitter is being unfair (or just unfavourable) to them.... Trump isn't Pewdiepie. Youtube has been generally backing away from "hot" content. Covid & Floyd George were very visible examples. Searches and recommendations directed people to official and TV content, not "youtubers." Alphabet just don't want some random video on covid, police protests or whatnot going viral... not unless the channel is NBC's or something. The risk-reward is terrible. I'm guessing that "politics" generally will follow this route on youtube. They just want to be light entertainment. They want out of the heat. Facebook though... FB have an overwhelming interest in politics. Politics is going to be a big revenue source. It's also an important content source. The moral hazards here are insane. Zuch makes Murdoch look quaint. The small details of these policies are media equivalents of gerrymandering, and they'll have a lot of influence on politics in the coming years.
redorb 6y ago
Give me a way to turn off political posts as well please.
captainmuon 6y ago
I see where they are coming from, but this seems backwards to me. I would like to block all commercial ads, but it seems really important to me that people see political ads. Granted, the current campaigns in the US are messed up and most ads look like propaganda, but this is a narrow view of what politics can be. Because on the other hand, as a political activist I know how incredibly hard it is to get your message out there. I mean just the hard facts that people might not know about, and our suggested solutions. The internet and social media provides a slightly leveled playing field: Sure a small social movement can never compete against a billion dollar campaign, but this is a pareto-law distribution where they quickly hit diminishing returns. With a few well timed Twitter posts I hand can reach thousands of people. In the pre-digital world, we would have had to print thousands of flyers, tried to get into newspapers etc.. I find it frustrating and damaging to democracy that politics is viewed as something dirty. Politics should be just a domain of problem solving and discussion like programming, home improvement, or cooking - except that everybody should have a say since it affects everybody. Why do we assume everybody in politics has sinister intentions?
- rglover 6y ago
  Instead of advertisements, then, it seems like they should do something like politics.facebook.com which includes interviews with candidates, breakdowns of candidate platforms and affiliations, and essays by candidates. Ads are just an opportunity to sling more mud and incite rage. I want to see some content that I as a voter can actually inform my opinion with. Fair, even, and well-organized to support voters. Not only that, but it moves people toward having an educated opinion, not getting all gassed up on rage-bait.
- vz8 6y ago
  Everyone in politics has an agenda. Not everyone in politics is willing to be honest about what that agenda is, and rarely are they held accountable for misinformation used in pursuit of that agenda.
  - deleted 6y ago
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12xo 6y ago
I wonder if this excludes posts which pay to be boosted? So many of the "ads" on FB are not banners, they're paid boosts of random posts (content, video, etc). IMO, these are the problem as they are difficult for people to ID as ads and appear to be legit.
deleted 6y ago
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plorg 6y ago
I no longer receive any Facebook ads. And it's not just my adblock on desktop - I get no ads in mobile either (although I don't watch much FB video). The recently seen ads section is empty. I went through a period where every time I saw an ad I clicked the X and marked it irrelevant, and every so often I go through the list of "businesses that have uploaded your contact information" and marked to hide ads from those entities. On Instagram I've been following the same procedure and it doesn't seem to be changing anything.
mpalmer 6y ago
The problem is actual disinformation in political ads. Opt-out solves basically nothing, it just has the vague sheen of being a "positive step". Also, this quote from Zuckerberg galls (emphasis mine): “I believe Facebook has a responsibility not just to prevent voter suppression -- which disproportionately targets people of colour -- but to actively support well-informed voter engagement, registration, and turnout.” What is it to "actively support" well-informed voter engagement while taking money from campaigns who make false ads?
surround 6y ago
Facebook has been (successfully) evading ad blockers for a long time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21688816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21688816 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/3367 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/3367
jcampbell1 6y ago
From the article: > President Trump saying "when the shooting starts, the looting starts” They have the quote backwards. I may be crazy, but it seems strange to not notice the error. What Trump actually wrote is far more insidious than how he is being quoted.
steveharman 6y ago
This has "Users interested in political advertising should opt IN" written all over it. But I imagine that wouldn't sit very well at caring-and-considerate Facebook HQ as it would dent the bottom line
PaulWaldman 6y ago
This probably also means that advertisers will pay more per impression, with obviously fewer impressions, because whoever sees the ads will be more receptive to political ads.
annadane 6y ago
I do think we should give credit where it's due, this is a nice feature
lukemichals 6y ago
The people who need it the most are going to be the least likely to not take advantage of it.
RadioEnForce 6y ago
Last election the majority of the so-called political stories that I saw my relatives sharing were a bunch of fly-by-night Macedonian sites. This does nothing to deal with that. It only deals with official, directly paid advertisements. And those are not anywhere near the most problematic political crap on Facebook.
duxup 6y ago
How do they determine what is 'political'? In common language usage I see folks describing everything as 'political'.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- elicash 6y ago
  There's info here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/167836590566506?id=288762101909005 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/167836590566506?id=28... But that doesn't fully capture it. They also have definitions of social issues, which is a subset of this shorthand of political ads: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/214754279118974?id=288762101909005 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/214754279118974?id=28... Here's how those ads are reviewed: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/313752069181919?id=288762101909005 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/313752069181919?id=28... If you go into the United States at that last link, you can see further definitions by issue. So, civil rights, or education, or guns.
MrMan 6y ago
I left FB not because of the things I could identify as ads, but fake stories and hate memes shared by other users. Then hateful / terroristic / reality denying comments were also a problem. "Time for a civil war" "soon we will start shooting anti-gun people" and these got at of likes. FB is a genocide machine, and I don't think it is entirely because of ad content.
GoodJokes 6y ago
Facebook also lets users turn off Facebook.
ComodoHacker 6y ago
Can we deduce from this move that political ads are a minor share of Facebook's revenue? If so, I somehow feel good about it. Perhaps Facebook should have a legal obligation to disclose that share.
- Vysero 6y ago
  I am not sure that we can deduce that, but regardless I feel good about it.
- wpowiertowski 6y ago
  In a way they already do, all political ads on facebook (in any country) are public information through their Ad Library Report: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/?source=archive-landing-page&country=US https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/?source=archive-... Simply take their earning reports and divide one by the other and you'll get the percentage of revenue
s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
Wow, Hacker News loves ads all of a sudden. Hilarious to see people try to spin why allowing someone to personally block ads is a bad thing. I see uBlock touted here everyday, so blocking all ads okay, but we HAVE to force people to see political ads?
crazygringo 6y ago
This may sound positive (less ads, less disinformation) at first glance, but I think it's actually a terrible and dangerous development. Zuck has seen that he's going to get hate no matter what his political content moderation policy is, so he thinks he can escape that by literally escaping from it: letting users just turn it off. But while he has the legal right to, in the larger societal sense it's dangerously and profoundly antidemocratic. One of the most famous quotes regarding political speech is: > "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." — Justice Louis Brandeis (emphasis added) Enforced silence is the antithesis of a healthy democratic society. The ability to close yourself off in a bubble where you can't be reached by opposing viewpoints is relinquishing your duties as a democratic citizen. The true downside of this is that people will continue to get toxic, false political speech from their crazy uncles, friends and family members -- and truth-minded political groups will be unable to place ads to counter that influence. This is why it's a a terrible, dangerous development. Again -- Zuck has every legal right to do it since Facebook is a private (not governmental) entity. But as Facebook these days is essentially half of our national "town square" of citizens (the other half being Twitter), this is not a good direction for America (or the world broadly) to head in.
- mgbmtl 6y ago
  Ads give more power to those with more money. It's not a leveled playing field, at least in the US. Many countries limit spending on adverts (or campaigns in general) for this reason.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    I'm not making any claims about how level the playing field is, or whether there ought to be limits to political ad spending in order to create a more balanced conversation. I'm arguing that being able to choose to eliminate political advertising entirely is antidemocratic. That's not balance -- it's deeply unbalanced.
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
What a cop out. This doesn't fix any of the problems, not to mention that given it's a default that doesn't materially affect the users experience most people won't enable it.
bobmcbobface 6y ago
What are the bets that this feature only exists for this election?
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  Even if "only for the election", nobody pays for political advertisements when an election isn't near. The disinformation problem won't go away in 2024.
deleted 6y ago
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null0pointer 6y ago
I don't use Facebook but I hope they can do this with Instagram too. As a non-citizen, and hence non-voter, living in the US I'm sick of being bombarded with political campaign ads.
adrianmonk 6y ago
I'd also love a feature that lets me block non-advertising political content. A lot of people like to use Facebook as a political soapbox. That's not what I want out of it. I want to stay connected to people, hear updates, socialize, etc. Some people push it so far that the solution of unfriending them is easy. But not everybody is so egregious that I want the nuclear option. (For example, relatives who are vocal about politics.) Text classification is a thing, and there are many other techniques, so it seems possible to recognize political content with some reasonable level of accuracy and show me a lot less of that. Maybe this would even go beyond making my own feed better. If enough people feel the same, maybe it would cut down on the audience size and reduce people's temptation to get on a soapbox.
- bananamerica 6y ago
  Social Fixer is a browser extension that provides filters for Facebook. I used it during elections period and it’s great. My current solution is to not use Facebook at all, and I got say it’s pretty neat :P
- ericsoderstrom 6y ago
  You can use an ad blocker to filter out html elements that contain keywords or hashtags that are often used in the types of posts you don't want to see. Not a perfect solution, but an ok solution.
- kgin 6y ago
  Absolutely, I want to know what people I care about are up to. I don't want my entire social world to turn into hot takes. There are important issues, absolutely. But my personal relationships with other humans are not based on their hot takes on those issues.
- yosito 6y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree with you. I've been thinking so often lately, that I'd really just like to know what's happening in my loved ones' lives, and not see everyone airing their amateur political opinions. But I think the reality is that these sorts of things are often a gray area. For example, I don't want to hear everyone's opinion about the riots in America. But my sister lives in Minneapolis and the building next to her house was burned down. I want to know about that. And while generally I don't want to hear heated debates about laws and court decisions, I've got LGBTQ family members and when SCOTUS makes decisions affecting their lives, I want to know about it. But what I do and don't want to know about is not an easy thing to filter. Even my closest friends probably wouldn't be able to accurately filter what I do and don't want to know about. I highly doubt that an algorithm tuned to optimize engagement and profit is really going to be able to accurately filter what I want to know about either. I've resorted to muting anyone who posts anything about politics, and doing things the old fashioned way and calling people to hear what's new in their lives.
topicseed 6y ago
I would love to be able to turn off fake gurus' adverts.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jtms 6y ago
I turned off political Facebook adverts by simply uninstalling the app and never using it
6510 6y ago
You know what we need. A data driven approach to election programs. The primary goal should be to inform the voter how completely clueless they are about the options. One should know how shameful this is. An insult to democracy. There are lots of candidates to chose from and they all have their own program. Howabout you take some time out of your day to vaguely familiarize yourself with the menu before ordering? The second goal should be to further encourage the voter to stop screaming, sit themselves down and make an at least some what less uninformed decision. It's not as boring as it sounds. Some are truly colorful creatures. https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_registered_2020_presidential_candidates https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_registered_2020_presidential... Look at the un-notable candidates. Don't be afraid! I started by looking into Christine Weston Chandler and was not disappointed. Note: Last time the green party had 100-250 views on the youtube videos. This is a reasonably well known party. Everyone less noted had considerably less. Some had so few facebook followers as to not account for friends or relatives. To me it means no one in the entire world bothered to look at anything on the list. People say they don't want to be informed by their facebook friends but secretly they don't want to be informed at all. You know who you are! Numbers don't lie!
- leotaku 6y ago
  > Look at the un-notable candidates. Don't be afraid! I started by looking into Christine Weston Chandler and was not disappointed. Are you sure "Christine Weston Chandler" is a genuine Candidate? A well known and somewhat controversial Internet figure shares the same name. Also, I am barely able to find any other information relating to someone with this name running for president. Might this be a troll candidate?
  - 6510 6y ago
    Yes, yes, yes and yes I suppose. Now lets look at Phil Collins https://www.prohibitionparty.org https://www.prohibitionparty.org I'm buying a mug, looks like a great gift https://www.cafepress.com/prohibitionparty.513117792 https://www.cafepress.com/prohibitionparty.513117792
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  It's worth noting that upstart successful parties like the Green Party in other countries start from the bottom up (local councils -> state representatives -> national office), because being familiar and having a track record is a great way to earn trust that you deserve the next highest position. The US Green Party strategy seems to be to go for the jugular in the Presidential election, inevitably lose, and then fizzle out because there's no baseline party to fall back onto.
phantom0308 6y ago
FB political ads don't seem to be the root cause of their radicalizing influence. My understanding is that it's more related to how their algorithms push more and more extreme pages and groups. A relatively non-partisan person who likes a news article about gun rights gets pushed news and pages that promote more conservative viewpoints, and those pages lead to fringe ideas, conspiracy theories, and the groups that promote those ideas. Trump/Biden ads seem less problematic than memes about vigilante justice against minorities that float around FB.
thegayngler 6y ago
I guess I just want the list in the order that it was posted in and without political ads.
xtat 6y ago
Nobody will use this. Facebook is defaultsville
andyshi 6y ago
How about only showing friends feed and letting the user decide what to filter out?

543 points by blopeur 6y ago

jibal 6y ago

That obviously doesn't address the problem.

baq 6y ago

i'd also want to turn off political wall posts.

catalogia 6y ago
In fact, I think facebook would be much better if I could turn off every last feature facebook has.

simion314 6y ago

I am not from US, I hate FB during electoral campagins not because of paid ads but because of people sharing tons of political crap, I would like to hide all political post and shares of my friends and ads.

ManlyBread 6y ago
Hopefully at some point someone notices that politics are a huge turn-off for many people. I live in Poland and EA decided they need me to see a statement for BLM in one of their games. What's the value of that? I have zero influence over the things happening in US and it's not like the topic is not all over the internet anyway. If it weren't for the fact that I play that game with friends I would just uninstall it completely.
- IngoBlechschmid 6y ago
  A couple of days ago, I noticed that my favorite science fiction author Greg Egan has published a new book. He listed several distributors which are equally good for him. When I saw that one them displayed a huge BLM banner, my decision where where to buy was set. I also don't live in the US, but similar issues exist in many countries, including mine, and I appreciate any company publically showing their support for this cause (and other causes important to me). Of course some companies support those causes only for publicity reasons. But it's still positive signaling.
- foldr 6y ago
  >What's the value of that? I have zero influence over the things happening in US BLM isn't only relevant to the US. It's not as if Poland doesn't have any issues with racism. I actually think this has been one of the positive effects of the high profile of BLM. Too many European countries have been content to tell themselves that racism is an American problem which they don't have.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Poland is extremely .. traditional about this kind of thing; racism is hardly mentioned because Poland was never a colonial power and has in the modern era been a country that people emigrate from rather than immigrate to. So the non-white population of Poland is tiny. More relevant to Poland is the conservative consolidation of power and rollback of LGBT rights. (And if you want to start a really uncomfortable discussion about racism in Poland, the Holocaust will definitely do that)
    - foldr 6y ago
      As you mention yourself, anti-Semitic racism is a serious problem in Poland. And other forms of racism are still a problem, even if the number of non-white people is small.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    BLM has organizations directly tied to US democrats. People giving money might not have realized this. BLM has no monopoly on fighting racism. EAs claims to be interested in fighting racism is an insult to many people. I think a lot of members of BLM are racists.
    - foldr 6y ago
      >BLM has organizations directly tied to US democrats Most large political organizations in the US have "ties" of some kind or another to one or both of the major political parties. But BLM isn't a single monolithic organization.
  - tester34 6y ago
chippy 6y ago
This is the problem with reddit also and twitter - indeed all social media. The main problem is that US political elections "season" runs for 2 years! So out of every 4 years, half of the time is campaigning season so it means that the rest of the worlds social media is polluted with "tons of political crap" 50% of the time. For US folks: look at how other western democracies run their electoral campaigns to help understand this. They tend to be much much shorter in duration. For international users - remember that for Americans, it's normal to be swamped in political campaigning pollution for half of their time.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  Well, that the US presidential voting system is weird, is out of the question. But simply having a shorter campaign before election is no magic bullet either. Here we have the saying, that politicians only listen to people during the election. So shorten that time, shortens the window to get through with something. But from a rational and idealistic point of view, none of this makes much sense. Campaigning is a huge waste of everyones attention and energy.
  - simion314 6y ago
    >Well, that the US presidential voting system is weird, is out of the question. But simply having a shorter campaign before election is no magic bullet either. I disagree, before the election start here the politicians won't even be sure who will be candidate, then the flyers, walking trough the streets will not happen, there will be no debates on TV. When campaign starts soem peolpe get activated and they will try to promote their favorite party/ person - I am OK with that I would like an option to not see those posts, or an option to hide all posts from this person for the campagin duration. I think this persons think they are doing the right thing and informing people etc I just don't care and when I open FB once a week to see if there is some message for me I would like to see only relevant stuff. Anyway, here in Romania I do not see many political posts outside electoral campaigns or when the government is doing some shity stuff and people are calling them out , or when some politician says a stupid thing and memes are created about their idiocy(now thinking about it if you have politicians that say a lot of idiotic things often you get a ton of political memes/satire ).
sshagent 6y ago
tell me about it. On my browser its quite nice as i have the "F.B. Purity" addon, that lets me choose words to filter entire posts by. So i add both common political part words ( tories, labour, conservative etc ) and my feed is a lot nicer. Its just a shame when i use fb on my phone i get to read that stuff. Muting people for 30 days is a reasonable start i guess, but i'd much rather filter by content
- bronco21016 6y ago
  I tried muting people during the 2016 cycle. It worked for sure, my feed was less political garbage. It turns out my feed was also mostly empty. I quit and have been off ever since.
  - sshagent 6y ago
    Yeah, sounds very familiar. Muting all the annoying posts just left pictures of peoples food
sneak 6y ago
Unfollow your friends that post boring partisan nonsense. Alternately, just delete your Facebook account, and stop donating content and ad revenue to a censorship platform.
- simion314 6y ago
  I done that for some persons, and for people that post religious stuff daily. I hide all from them. But there could be a solution, like say I am a honest person that I want to get elected in a possition in my little village, can I post things and somehow mention to show it only for people that are in the same village as me, so my friends in other locations don't have to see the local stuff. I am not a big FB user, but FB is the only way I can keep in touch with some of my colleagues from school/university , sadly soem of them are not on FB and the old phone numbers are not valid so they are just gone, no idea if they are still alive
  - sneak 6y ago
    You have to have an email account to sign up for Facebook; if you wish to keep in touch with your old colleagues you can simply ask them for their email addresses. This is what I did when I quit Instagram.
monadic2 6y ago
Funny, I only go on facebook to try and pierce my friends’ open political apathy.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Top feature of 2020 right there.

rvz 6y ago
Good move for the users. Solves the issue of having political ads promoted on your feed and gives users the option as: If you don't like it, disable these political ads altogether.

nyanpasu64 6y ago

I want the ability to turn off political non-advertisement posts.

lvs 6y ago
I already have the ability to turn off facebook, and I exercised it years ago.
lostlogin 6y ago
This and turning off adverts would be a nice combination.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
I'm surprised we don't get more control over our "feeds" on some platforms - it would be useful signal for advertisers I'd imagine, so there's a win-win aspect. On Reddit I'd like to filter out (ie remove) all posts with animal pictures. I keep coming back to Slashdot's model of democratised curation.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  The FB algorithm of feeding you unchronoligal crap instead of what your friends write seems to get more ad views since you scroll more. It is really user hostile and are depleting there user pool in the long term.
- zo1 6y ago
  It's the same reason Google doesn't let you have more control over the search results. If they give out granular-enough permissions / tooling, then plugins and other tools would be somehow able to make your FB/Google experience akin to a completely different site, with very little control on their part. As a bit of an analogy: They want to be the television that you look at your content through as well as the content provider/curator, but they also don't want to be forced into being just the radio-broadcasting infrastructure provider which is all that they really are if you drill down far enough. Oh and ads, of course.
azernik 6y ago

john___matrix 6y ago

I wonder if it'll be a obscurely named toggle hidden away in a settings sub page somewhere just so they can say they've offered the option. Unlikely of course but it would be nice if they were turned off by default and they offered users the option to turn them on with a disclaimer about how inaccurate and shady many of them are.

blocked_again 6y ago
> Unlikely of course but it would be nice if they were turned off by default This means the revenue KPI of the ads team would go down right? So will never happen.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  It's probably worth noting that if you were running an online ads platform, revenue probably wouldn't be what you'd optimise for. You'd be better off optimising for an event that advertisers will pay you for.
buybackoff 6y ago
Not only hidden away, but one will have to set this option every time the page refreshes, as with time ordering of timeline. That latter behavior nullified FB usability for me, not using for 2+ years and happy. Every time when come back just run away scary of the political trash bin it has become.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  There are browser extensions for that
CyanBird 6y ago
They would not even need to hide it, the fact that it is an optin feature already means that most people won't ever turn it off and therefore be exposed to said political messaging even when the idea is for them to not be
6y ago

Legogris 6y ago

Next trend: subliminal political propaganda in what looks like product ads.

seven4 6y ago

Facebook wants to be seen to address its perceived interference in politics. Particularly ahead of the upcoming election cycle. It wants to do this without hamstringing its ad-revenue. Let's look at what the measures are - -an opt-out option for political ads: "The feature, which will start rolling out on Wednesday, allows users to turn off political, electoral and social issue adverts from candidates and other organisations that have the "Paid for" political disclaimer." -encouraging voter enfranchisement: "Mr Zuckerberg went on to encourage people who aren't signed up as voters to register in time for the US election in November." By implementing these Facebook could reasonably make the claim (i.e. at a congressional hearing) that it has consistently and passionately worked to deliver fairness on its platform and protected against manipulation. You can't design against every crisis...but you can design to say you took "reasonable measures" to prevent a crisis. I think that's exactly what these measures are aimed at doing. Someone pointed out in an earlier thread that it's the people who don't think to opt-out that are most in need of "protecting".

prepend 6y ago
This seems to be more than print, radio, and television are doing? I wish there was a way to turn this off for tv or youtube.

Traster 6y ago

Here is his full Op-Ed: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/06/17/facebook-voter-campaign-strengthen-democracy-mark-zuckerberg-column/3191152001/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/06/17/facebook-vo... Isn't it bizarre that Facebook has decided it's going to censor exactly 1 type of political view. If you want to discourage someone from voting - a perfectly legitimate position (not necessarily one I whole heartedly agree with, but I think arguments can be made, for example by Russell Brand in 2015[1]). It just seems like pure unadulterated hypocrisy to me. [1]:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24648651/russell-brand-i-ve-never-voted-never-will https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24648651/russell-brand-i-ve...

MatekCopatek 6y ago
Exactly! And to add to your argument - their encouragement isn't entirely neutral, it will cause a potential turnout increase in the population that uses Facebook. If anyone is bothered by priests in church telling believers to go vote - this is the same thing applied to a different focus group.

quijoteuniv 6y ago

It would be fine if they allow to turn ALL the adverts :) I barely use FB anymore is just adverts. It was nice when it started, just friends posts, now most of my good friends left or do not use it anymore.

GuB-42 6y ago
And a lot of friends posts are also adverts. There are: - Official Facebook sponsored posts - Viral ads, the most obvious being "share this and get a chance to win..." - Friends or promoting their own, their friends or some other business they want to promote - Friends trying to sell their stuff Just because it comes from someone close doesn't make it less of an ad. And for some reason Facebook algorithms seem to put the least interesting post forwards. Personal ads, pseudo-profound bullshit and viral "opinion" pieces, etc... My friends in real life are people I find interesting, I mean, why would I want them as friends otherwise? But looking at my Facebook feed, I don't recognize the people I enjoy spending time with.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

What if someone were to develop an app, browser extension, etc. that automatically disabled political ads in Facebook. Why not disable political ads by default and if users want them, then they can enable them. Otherwise this is nothing more than the old "opt-out" trick, as used for email spam and now ubiquitous in internet marketing. The choice should not be to "opt-out", it should be to "opt-in".

martin-adams 6y ago
I suspect the political parties would start screaming that Facebook are limiting access to freedom of speech.
hutzlibu 6y ago
I don't use facebook, so I am confused, but aren't there apps/browser extension that block all ads, called addblockers? (or are they blocked by facebook?) Why on earth would I choose to view normal advertisement, but not political?
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  To be honest I am not an expert in this area either. I know there are ways to avoid ads on Facebook (even without using an adblocker) but these would only be known by more technical users. I also believe Facebook tries to subvert ad blockers. What I am referring to is the idea of an app/extension for non-technical users. Make it so easy that it's "frictionless".

Raed667 6y ago

Here Facebook is making a stand on what is political and what is not? Is climate change political? Are immigration policies political? etc..

martin-adams 6y ago
You need to be authorised to run ads about politics, so this is simple way for them to know if it's a political ad or not. The challenge is if advertisers miss classify what the ad it about, which then is subjective to Facebook as you say.
- Raed667 6y ago
  We just moved the problem one step away. If (for example) i classify my ad about climate-change as non-political. Can Facebook disagree with that?
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    Almost any topic is potential political. But all facebook cares about, is not to be blamed again for fake news on their network are responsible again for a not desired outcome of the election. So this is just one step towards that image, nothing more.
  - prepend 6y ago
    I think it’s the flavor of money from a campaign finance perspective. If I’m using campaign donations and run an ad on climate change, it’s political. If I’m Nike and run an ad for climate change, it’s non-political. Unless it runs afoul of the FEC.
Angostura 6y ago
I presume it is going to be ads placed by political parties and PACs
eplanit 6y ago
Yes to both of those examples.

andy_ppp 6y ago

This is absolutely pointless... my guess is < 1% of people will turn it on. On the one hand this feature admits there is a problem with political ads (otherwise why have the toggle) and provides a non-solution to fix it (not enough people will filter the bullshit to make any meaningful difference). This is all exactly within the Facebook playbook.

anpago 6y ago
While I am a nerd hence why an avid reader of HN. My wife is the opposite but if I or someone else points out a useful tip which takes little effort but makes something better/easier it will be read. Also we need to remember politics in the western nations is still something most people can talk about or mention and put a poster up or wear a badge. The biggest issue will be people avoiding you thinking you might bore them on the subject. Go to a number of countries in the world. Random political adverts being spotted on your feed may cause you much grief and possibly harm in some way.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

This is a good move but could go further, really wish FB and moreso Twitter would include a big switch in their settings that was just "Politics On/Off" hide all political ads, and tweets and retweets for people who just don't want to see that for mental health reasons or just because they're not there for that (e.g brand customer support workers) but they'd never do that because I suspect they ideologically think its more important to control the flow of political information that is broadcast to their users even if its at a great detriment to their users mental health.

lovetocode 6y ago
I have been asking for this for a long time. I am happy to see it is gaining traction in some form.
adrianN 6y ago
Maybe we should put some effort into making political discourse less damaging to your mental health instead of enabling large parts of a democratic country to just shut themselves off from politics.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  It's my feed should I not get a say what I see in it and what I don't? This is what mean by ideology, the idea that it's more important to make sure I see the right things so hopefully I think the right way takes precedent over how it makes me feel. This sort of thing seems to be all what modern journalism is too, it's all through the lens of editorial now. I don't want to be on Twitter, I'm on Twitter because Google Reader killed RSS and all the bloggers said "What's the big deal? Just use Twitter" because their follower counts going up made them feel good and now I can't get what I used to get from RSS without the unwanted side serving of (mostly) American politics.
  - dillonmckay 6y ago
    Why do you think it is ‘your’ feed?

jka 6y ago

What we may be witnessing here is Facebook introducing a feature that allows them to delay and block legal complaints and requests related to questionable political advertising and influence (whether domestic or foreign). This feature presumably wouldn't prevent those cases from concluding eventually, but introducing it now could mean that it'd be difficult for jurisdictions (local, state or federal) to prepare and apply meaningful regulations over what Facebook should permit in terms of election-related advertising. Mark Zuckerberg has previously stated he'll to 'go to the mat'[1] and fight if there's any existential threat to Facebook as a result of the election outcome. That's probably reassuring for Facebook employees to hear - they are likely to feel more invested in the health of the company that their own careers, social lives and financial outcomes are directly connected to than the health of the U.S. population and government which may seem more distant. In some less likely scenario it'd even be possible that Facebook leadership would perceive a weak U.S. government as an opportunity for the company to take on a larger role in the nation and perhaps worldwide. Naively as an outsider it might appear that Facebook's incentives would be to maximize the number of people using Facebook around election time, so that their audience figures and advertising revenue can be maximized. Creating an opt-out setting for political ads could make a dent in that revenue, although from outside Facebook it's hard to say how many people would become aware of the configuration setting. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/01/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-elizabeth-warren-big-tech https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/01/mark-zuck...

bhupy 6y ago
> introducing it now could mean that it'd be difficult for jurisdictions (local, state or federal) to prepare and apply meaningful regulations over what Facebook should permit in terms of election-related advertising. What kind of regulation could a US jurisdiction apply that wouldn’t violate the Constitution?

throeawayjoe 6y ago

The idea behind this "turning off political ads" is to prevent the masses by being fooled into voting for one party over the other due to "fake" news. As someone who was born and brought up in a third world country, this is my observation because I have a different perspective on this. People like Donald Trump have won elections despite severe personal and public failings. And the reason they win is because they are demagogues. They have the ability to connect to voter's emotions. Obama is not a demagogue but he dripped with Charisma and had the ability to connect to everyone and share his vision for a better America. Likewise for Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan had immense Charisma. Hillary Clinton is not an inspiring person. She did not have the same kind of Charisma or Vibe that Obama had. All of this started because Hillary Clinton lost the election in 2016 to Donald Trump. If Hillary Clinton won the election, this wouldn't even be a discussion. There is this quote from Rocky Balboa: Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! If Obama contested in the 2016 elections, there is a good chance he would have beaten Trump. It is true that there was fake news. We can't assume that the fake news was the sole cause for Hillary Clinton's defeat. This is a media narrative which was unable to come to terms with the fact that a racist narc like DT was able to defeat Clinton. DT would have beaten Hillary regardless of the "fake articles" on Facebook. Blaming it on anything else is the same as not taking responsibility for being wrong about the election.

kwistzhaderach 6y ago
It’s honestly shocking that in a country of 300M people u can’t find someone economically and politically sane to lead the country.
Craighead 6y ago
You seem under educated about the perverseness of Cambridge Analytica, the Mueller report, and WikiLeaks role in the 2016 election. Calling those aspects "fake news" and saying "hrc was weak" is a bad faith argument

hardlianotion 6y ago

I can see how this will stop people being irritated by political adverts they don't like, but I don't see how this addresses the claim that dishonest political adverts are skewing the democratic process.

cosmodisk 6y ago

Political adverts isn't the main problem. The key issue is that the candidates can say virtually anything they want irrespectively whether it's true or not.The blame game is huge as well and shouldn't be allowed at all. Until all this is fixed, there's not much hope for any ON/OFF settings on social media.

nradov 6y ago
How would you propose to fix that? Should candidates only be allowed to make "true" statements?
- harimau777 6y ago
  This wouldn't completely fix the problem, but I think it would help to not allow candidates to make factually false statements. That is to say: there may not be a way to objectively say whether a given statement is true, but it is possible to objectively say that some statements are false.
  - braythwayt 6y ago
    In other words, “science.” Science is the study of falsifiable theory. Things that cannot be falsified lie outside of science.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    NYT v Sullivan was a landmark Supreme Court case which held that the Constitution protects the publishing of political advertisements that contain factual inaccuracies.
- Nightshaxx 6y ago
  Who verifies what is true or not? Much of the media has a bias either way. Who is the arbiter of absolute truth? Who decides when a theory is mature enough to be absolute fact?
  - cosmodisk 6y ago

prepend 6y ago

Facebook has a really interesting feature that I haven’t seen in Twitter, Google, or others. I can block all ads from a page. Whenever I see a political ad, I can choose “don’t show me any more ads from XXX” and it actually works. This was a godsend during the primary and I wish was available in other platforms. I’m surprised they have this feature and have expected it to go away for years.

coding_lobster 6y ago
Doesn't such a feature contribute to the creation of echo chambers? It's hard to tell when it comes to something like ads as they usually aren't a great source of information.
- chrisandchips 6y ago
  I suppose it does, but I feel like echo chambers are more dangerous when people don't necessarily realize they've entered one (e.g. when all of your FB friends only share posts centered around a particular political view). I feel like there's less danger here since one needs to manually click that they don't want to see a particular type of content
- swarnie_ 6y ago
  I don't really want my political views enforced or challenged on Facebook, its really not the place for it. Why should i have to when all i want is a C rate messenger service?
- moron4hire 6y ago
  Echo chambers are deliberately created by the platform according to what they think will keep the user on the site. It is fundamentally anti-user. This is the person self-selecting what they want to see. It's a very different thing.
  - Dumblydorr 6y ago
    Echo chambers are also chosen by users, though. They choose who to friend, follow, un follow, like, block, etc. In a broader sense, people have media habits that are fueled by their own views, I doubt a trumpism follower would choose to read NYT or WaPo. There is some personal agency here.

macspoofing 6y ago

It's a good feature from an individual perspective. It's not a good feature if you don't like cultural bubbles forming. Democrats will block Republican ads, Republicans will block Democrat ads - will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa? I find this focus (attack?) on political advertising on social media platforms by traditional media companies to be self-serving and hypocritical. The craziest political ads have been run on local TV and newspapers for decades [1] and everyone just accepted it as part of a normal political discourse ... but now there is a concentrated effort to prevent or "fact check" political ads on Facebook and Twitter. Why? I'm sure it has nothing to do with billions spent on political ads (revenue that will go to traditional media outlets if it can't be spent on social media), nor anything to do with the pro-Democratic party bias in almost all traditional media. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcjEe9guEIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcjEe9guEIA

piva00 6y ago
It can be one motive but it's not the only one. Can be the driver for a lot of actors attacking social media but we can't deny that social media has enabled a lot of new techniques for reaching an audience in a much easier and rapid platform than ever before. Those techniques have been twisted into the range of untruthfulness that we couldn't have seen before in the old media because moderation was much more strict (and papers depended on some kind of respectability). The closest we had to this in the past were tabloids but people could more easily categorise those than the thousands of "Truth News Online"-esque articles peddled on social media. It's an extreme torrent of an old issue, we scaled it up. Very few campaigns ran on extreme blatant lies and warped reality as we have seen the past few years... So yes, money might be a shady motive behind this hunt but there is also quite a lot of damage that we haven't yet found a way to deal with. And it's causing very real problems, in real life, right now. Not that these problems were caused directly by social media but they are adding fuel to the fire and it only seems to be increasing now when having checks on them becomes another divisive subject and added as another single-issue partisan bullshit.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  > Those techniques have been twisted into the range of untruthfulness that we couldn't have seen before in the old media because moderation was much more strict (and papers depended on some kind of respectability). That's not even remotely true. The Atlantic put together snippets of political ads over decades [1]. It's pretty crazy stuff. The local stuff, just from personal memory, was even crazier, frequently asserting the equivalent of the opposition being murderers. >Very few campaigns ran on extreme blatant lies and warped reality as we have seen the past few years... The problem is that even that perspective is your personal bias which you're using to justify censorship. The other side is bad and lying and therefore they wrong so they shouldn't be allowed to speak. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcjEe9guEIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcjEe9guEIA

moron4hire 6y ago

I figured out how to do this a long time before Facebook made an official feature for it: delete your Facebook account.

ubertaco 6y ago

As long as this is an opt-out setting, and not a community standard, this is a cop-out. The problem is not "our poor users are bombarded with untrue political ads!" The problem is that Facebook has become a cesspool that breeds conspiracy theories and communities of disinformation and denial the same way that stagnant swampwater breeds mosquitoes and other harmful pests. Its tight-knit havens of the willfully disinformed will not opt out of "the real truth" (read: the coordinated distribution of lies). If Facebook was actually interested in addressing the problem of its festering pits of QAnon and antivaxxers and the like, it would start by deplatforming advertisers who intentionally spread lies. No, it's clear that Facebook's intent here is to put up the paltriest, lowest-actual-impact defense against any sort of consequences that legal systems might bring against it.

spoopyskelly 6y ago
Why should they block content you don't like? Move to another platform.
- bhupy 6y ago
  More specifically, why does one get to decide what content another person sees, on a platform?

forgingahead 6y ago

I wish there was a broader filter in Facebook that would allow me to filter by specific terms. So then any post, story, like, etc that would be surfaced into the newsfeed would have to pass through this filter first. If any of the flagged words are found, just block it from my view. There is still a great deal of positive discovery that happens via Facebook, and they should be letting people customise their noise filters as much as possible so that they can get to the good stuff.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

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wiremine 6y ago

This is a good start. I always thought it would be great to have a "no X today" button, where I could mute all political content, all sports content, all WWDC content, etc.

vaibhawc 6y ago

Facebook? What is that?

ori_b 6y ago

This misses the point hard. The problem is people who don't realize they're being lied to.

bhupy 6y ago
I think FB (and Zuck) have made it pretty clear by now that they actively want their users to be free to consume what they want, even if others think that’s bad for them. They understand what they’re doing.
- ori_b 6y ago
  That's blatantly false. Try posting porn, or lies in ads about non-political topics. Political ads are the only thing that gets a pass.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    > porn Sure, this is a fair exception. FB has decided that it does not want to be a porn site. We may all disagree with that decision, but it's theirs to make. > lies about non-political topics Can you elaborate on this? It is 100% possible to post non-political lies on FB. The only exception to this is libel/defamation and false advertising, but that's for legal reasons. And even there, you can only sue for material damages incurred, and cannot simply sue for the speech in question (which is itself protected). To the extent that FB wants its platform to contain political ads (factual or otherwise), it's because they subjectively see value in a global platform for users to decide for themselves what is true and what is false. You may argue that this is bad for society/bad for democracy, which is fair. Facebook clearly seems to disagree with that, which is also fair.
    - ori_b 6y ago
      > Sure, this is a fair exception. FB has decided that it does not want to be a porn site. We may all disagree with that decision, but it's theirs to make. Yes, they've made a decision to restrict what the users can see, because facebook thinks it's bad. That's their right, but it highlights their double standard. I don't disagree with the decision, but it shows that this line of reasoning is bogus. > Can you elaborate on this? It is 100% possible to post non-political lies on FB. https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads Most relevant: https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/misleading_claims https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/mis... Also, the community standards, which describes what facebook may take down has a section on integrity and authenticity. That includes manipulated media and false news. It's likely not enforced on most posts due to cost reasons, but it's absolutely a part of their terms of service. https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/integrity_authenticity https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/integrity_authen...

elicash 6y ago

I'm a political advertiser as part of my job and one thing most people don't get is that it's not just ELECTORAL ads that Facebook usually is referring to when they're talking about "political" ads. It's, as mentioned in the article, a shorthand for "Ads About Social Issues, Elections or Politics." So, a few points. First, the obvious, that these things all depend on the extent to which Facebook promotes this "feature." So with that said: 1. I planned a big vote-by-mail (political orgs are concerned about in-person voting bc of COVID) ad campaign to members of my organization. Obviously, it wasn't just Facebook and Instagram, but these will be flagged as politics and less effective than they were previously. Facebook will do its own encouragement to register and to vote, but we know our membership better than Facebook and were crafting campaigns meant to motivate them based on research of what we know works, combined with in-person organizing that's coordinated in a way Facebook would never do. This will also hurt recruitment for members who want to knock on doors. 2. They define social issues as "sensitive topics that are heavily debated, may influence the outcome of an election or result in/relate to existing or proposed legislation." That's an "or" joining those, so it's an incredibly broad category. Expect more to be swept up in this than people in this thread are talking about. 3. The category is so broad that it's going to include most union ad activity. Not just organizing new workers, but let's say a union wants to advertise to its membership of nurses about how they can advocate for N95 masks in the workplace with their employer. It's not actually about public policy, yet Facebook generally will reject this type of ad if it's not categorized as "political." Facebook and Google both have anti-union ad practices, but this is unintentionally going to make it worse. I'm not necessarily against these policies. Something can be bad in some ways and offset by the good. But if Facebook wants to make the argument about giving users the freedom, let me just ask, how informed are users going to be about what they're blocking? Do they know they might be blocking organizations they are dues-paying members of? Are they allowed to make a distinction between electoral ads and ads that are simply about "debated" topics?

schuyler2d 6y ago
Indeed -- quite the timely response: Allow people to turn off ads advocating racial justice and equity.
- 6y ago

netcan 6y ago

There's some interesting shifting going re: social media & politics. Twitter made their decision about political ads. I guess it was a hard call... revenue potential. Meanwhile, Twitter is coming under more pressure and scrutiny. Politicians, moguls and such use it. If they feel twitter is being unfair (or just unfavourable) to them.... Trump isn't Pewdiepie. Youtube has been generally backing away from "hot" content. Covid & Floyd George were very visible examples. Searches and recommendations directed people to official and TV content, not "youtubers." Alphabet just don't want some random video on covid, police protests or whatnot going viral... not unless the channel is NBC's or something. The risk-reward is terrible. I'm guessing that "politics" generally will follow this route on youtube. They just want to be light entertainment. They want out of the heat. Facebook though... FB have an overwhelming interest in politics. Politics is going to be a big revenue source. It's also an important content source. The moral hazards here are insane. Zuch makes Murdoch look quaint. The small details of these policies are media equivalents of gerrymandering, and they'll have a lot of influence on politics in the coming years.

redorb 6y ago

Give me a way to turn off political posts as well please.

captainmuon 6y ago

I see where they are coming from, but this seems backwards to me. I would like to block all commercial ads, but it seems really important to me that people see political ads. Granted, the current campaigns in the US are messed up and most ads look like propaganda, but this is a narrow view of what politics can be. Because on the other hand, as a political activist I know how incredibly hard it is to get your message out there. I mean just the hard facts that people might not know about, and our suggested solutions. The internet and social media provides a slightly leveled playing field: Sure a small social movement can never compete against a billion dollar campaign, but this is a pareto-law distribution where they quickly hit diminishing returns. With a few well timed Twitter posts I hand can reach thousands of people. In the pre-digital world, we would have had to print thousands of flyers, tried to get into newspapers etc.. I find it frustrating and damaging to democracy that politics is viewed as something dirty. Politics should be just a domain of problem solving and discussion like programming, home improvement, or cooking - except that everybody should have a say since it affects everybody. Why do we assume everybody in politics has sinister intentions?

rglover 6y ago
Instead of advertisements, then, it seems like they should do something like politics.facebook.com which includes interviews with candidates, breakdowns of candidate platforms and affiliations, and essays by candidates. Ads are just an opportunity to sling more mud and incite rage. I want to see some content that I as a voter can actually inform my opinion with. Fair, even, and well-organized to support voters. Not only that, but it moves people toward having an educated opinion, not getting all gassed up on rage-bait.
vz8 6y ago
Everyone in politics has an agenda. Not everyone in politics is willing to be honest about what that agenda is, and rarely are they held accountable for misinformation used in pursuit of that agenda.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

12xo 6y ago

I wonder if this excludes posts which pay to be boosted? So many of the "ads" on FB are not banners, they're paid boosts of random posts (content, video, etc). IMO, these are the problem as they are difficult for people to ID as ads and appear to be legit.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

plorg 6y ago

I no longer receive any Facebook ads. And it's not just my adblock on desktop - I get no ads in mobile either (although I don't watch much FB video). The recently seen ads section is empty. I went through a period where every time I saw an ad I clicked the X and marked it irrelevant, and every so often I go through the list of "businesses that have uploaded your contact information" and marked to hide ads from those entities. On Instagram I've been following the same procedure and it doesn't seem to be changing anything.

mpalmer 6y ago

The problem is actual disinformation in political ads. Opt-out solves basically nothing, it just has the vague sheen of being a "positive step". Also, this quote from Zuckerberg galls (emphasis mine): “I believe Facebook has a responsibility not just to prevent voter suppression -- which disproportionately targets people of colour -- but to actively support well-informed voter engagement, registration, and turnout.” What is it to "actively support" well-informed voter engagement while taking money from campaigns who make false ads?

surround 6y ago

Facebook has been (successfully) evading ad blockers for a long time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21688816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21688816 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/3367 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/3367

jcampbell1 6y ago

From the article: > President Trump saying "when the shooting starts, the looting starts” They have the quote backwards. I may be crazy, but it seems strange to not notice the error. What Trump actually wrote is far more insidious than how he is being quoted.

steveharman 6y ago

This has "Users interested in political advertising should opt IN" written all over it. But I imagine that wouldn't sit very well at caring-and-considerate Facebook HQ as it would dent the bottom line

PaulWaldman 6y ago

This probably also means that advertisers will pay more per impression, with obviously fewer impressions, because whoever sees the ads will be more receptive to political ads.

annadane 6y ago

I do think we should give credit where it's due, this is a nice feature

lukemichals 6y ago

The people who need it the most are going to be the least likely to not take advantage of it.

RadioEnForce 6y ago

Last election the majority of the so-called political stories that I saw my relatives sharing were a bunch of fly-by-night Macedonian sites. This does nothing to deal with that. It only deals with official, directly paid advertisements. And those are not anywhere near the most problematic political crap on Facebook.

duxup 6y ago

How do they determine what is 'political'? In common language usage I see folks describing everything as 'political'.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
elicash 6y ago
There's info here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/167836590566506?id=288762101909005 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/167836590566506?id=28... But that doesn't fully capture it. They also have definitions of social issues, which is a subset of this shorthand of political ads: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/214754279118974?id=288762101909005 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/214754279118974?id=28... Here's how those ads are reviewed: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/313752069181919?id=288762101909005 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/313752069181919?id=28... If you go into the United States at that last link, you can see further definitions by issue. So, civil rights, or education, or guns.

MrMan 6y ago

I left FB not because of the things I could identify as ads, but fake stories and hate memes shared by other users. Then hateful / terroristic / reality denying comments were also a problem. "Time for a civil war" "soon we will start shooting anti-gun people" and these got at of likes. FB is a genocide machine, and I don't think it is entirely because of ad content.

GoodJokes 6y ago

Facebook also lets users turn off Facebook.

ComodoHacker 6y ago

Can we deduce from this move that political ads are a minor share of Facebook's revenue? If so, I somehow feel good about it. Perhaps Facebook should have a legal obligation to disclose that share.

Vysero 6y ago
I am not sure that we can deduce that, but regardless I feel good about it.
wpowiertowski 6y ago
In a way they already do, all political ads on facebook (in any country) are public information through their Ad Library Report: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/?source=archive-landing-page&country=US https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/?source=archive-... Simply take their earning reports and divide one by the other and you'll get the percentage of revenue

s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago

Wow, Hacker News loves ads all of a sudden. Hilarious to see people try to spin why allowing someone to personally block ads is a bad thing. I see uBlock touted here everyday, so blocking all ads okay, but we HAVE to force people to see political ads?

crazygringo 6y ago

This may sound positive (less ads, less disinformation) at first glance, but I think it's actually a terrible and dangerous development. Zuck has seen that he's going to get hate no matter what his political content moderation policy is, so he thinks he can escape that by literally escaping from it: letting users just turn it off. But while he has the legal right to, in the larger societal sense it's dangerously and profoundly antidemocratic. One of the most famous quotes regarding political speech is: > "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." — Justice Louis Brandeis (emphasis added) Enforced silence is the antithesis of a healthy democratic society. The ability to close yourself off in a bubble where you can't be reached by opposing viewpoints is relinquishing your duties as a democratic citizen. The true downside of this is that people will continue to get toxic, false political speech from their crazy uncles, friends and family members -- and truth-minded political groups will be unable to place ads to counter that influence. This is why it's a a terrible, dangerous development. Again -- Zuck has every legal right to do it since Facebook is a private (not governmental) entity. But as Facebook these days is essentially half of our national "town square" of citizens (the other half being Twitter), this is not a good direction for America (or the world broadly) to head in.

mgbmtl 6y ago
Ads give more power to those with more money. It's not a leveled playing field, at least in the US. Many countries limit spending on adverts (or campaigns in general) for this reason.
- deleted 6y ago
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- crazygringo 6y ago
  I'm not making any claims about how level the playing field is, or whether there ought to be limits to political ad spending in order to create a more balanced conversation. I'm arguing that being able to choose to eliminate political advertising entirely is antidemocratic. That's not balance -- it's deeply unbalanced.

X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago

What a cop out. This doesn't fix any of the problems, not to mention that given it's a default that doesn't materially affect the users experience most people won't enable it.

bobmcbobface 6y ago

What are the bets that this feature only exists for this election?

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
Even if "only for the election", nobody pays for political advertisements when an election isn't near. The disinformation problem won't go away in 2024.

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null0pointer 6y ago

I don't use Facebook but I hope they can do this with Instagram too. As a non-citizen, and hence non-voter, living in the US I'm sick of being bombarded with political campaign ads.

adrianmonk 6y ago

I'd also love a feature that lets me block non-advertising political content. A lot of people like to use Facebook as a political soapbox. That's not what I want out of it. I want to stay connected to people, hear updates, socialize, etc. Some people push it so far that the solution of unfriending them is easy. But not everybody is so egregious that I want the nuclear option. (For example, relatives who are vocal about politics.) Text classification is a thing, and there are many other techniques, so it seems possible to recognize political content with some reasonable level of accuracy and show me a lot less of that. Maybe this would even go beyond making my own feed better. If enough people feel the same, maybe it would cut down on the audience size and reduce people's temptation to get on a soapbox.

bananamerica 6y ago
Social Fixer is a browser extension that provides filters for Facebook. I used it during elections period and it’s great. My current solution is to not use Facebook at all, and I got say it’s pretty neat :P
ericsoderstrom 6y ago
You can use an ad blocker to filter out html elements that contain keywords or hashtags that are often used in the types of posts you don't want to see. Not a perfect solution, but an ok solution.
kgin 6y ago
Absolutely, I want to know what people I care about are up to. I don't want my entire social world to turn into hot takes. There are important issues, absolutely. But my personal relationships with other humans are not based on their hot takes on those issues.
yosito 6y ago
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I've been thinking so often lately, that I'd really just like to know what's happening in my loved ones' lives, and not see everyone airing their amateur political opinions. But I think the reality is that these sorts of things are often a gray area. For example, I don't want to hear everyone's opinion about the riots in America. But my sister lives in Minneapolis and the building next to her house was burned down. I want to know about that. And while generally I don't want to hear heated debates about laws and court decisions, I've got LGBTQ family members and when SCOTUS makes decisions affecting their lives, I want to know about it. But what I do and don't want to know about is not an easy thing to filter. Even my closest friends probably wouldn't be able to accurately filter what I do and don't want to know about. I highly doubt that an algorithm tuned to optimize engagement and profit is really going to be able to accurately filter what I want to know about either. I've resorted to muting anyone who posts anything about politics, and doing things the old fashioned way and calling people to hear what's new in their lives.

topicseed 6y ago

I would love to be able to turn off fake gurus' adverts.

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jtms 6y ago

I turned off political Facebook adverts by simply uninstalling the app and never using it

6510 6y ago

You know what we need. A data driven approach to election programs. The primary goal should be to inform the voter how completely clueless they are about the options. One should know how shameful this is. An insult to democracy. There are lots of candidates to chose from and they all have their own program. Howabout you take some time out of your day to vaguely familiarize yourself with the menu before ordering? The second goal should be to further encourage the voter to stop screaming, sit themselves down and make an at least some what less uninformed decision. It's not as boring as it sounds. Some are truly colorful creatures. https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_registered_2020_presidential_candidates https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_registered_2020_presidential... Look at the un-notable candidates. Don't be afraid! I started by looking into Christine Weston Chandler and was not disappointed. Note: Last time the green party had 100-250 views on the youtube videos. This is a reasonably well known party. Everyone less noted had considerably less. Some had so few facebook followers as to not account for friends or relatives. To me it means no one in the entire world bothered to look at anything on the list. People say they don't want to be informed by their facebook friends but secretly they don't want to be informed at all. You know who you are! Numbers don't lie!

leotaku 6y ago
> Look at the un-notable candidates. Don't be afraid! I started by looking into Christine Weston Chandler and was not disappointed. Are you sure "Christine Weston Chandler" is a genuine Candidate? A well known and somewhat controversial Internet figure shares the same name. Also, I am barely able to find any other information relating to someone with this name running for president. Might this be a troll candidate?
- 6510 6y ago
  Yes, yes, yes and yes I suppose. Now lets look at Phil Collins https://www.prohibitionparty.org https://www.prohibitionparty.org I'm buying a mug, looks like a great gift https://www.cafepress.com/prohibitionparty.513117792 https://www.cafepress.com/prohibitionparty.513117792
bobthepanda 6y ago
It's worth noting that upstart successful parties like the Green Party in other countries start from the bottom up (local councils -> state representatives -> national office), because being familiar and having a track record is a great way to earn trust that you deserve the next highest position. The US Green Party strategy seems to be to go for the jugular in the Presidential election, inevitably lose, and then fizzle out because there's no baseline party to fall back onto.

phantom0308 6y ago

FB political ads don't seem to be the root cause of their radicalizing influence. My understanding is that it's more related to how their algorithms push more and more extreme pages and groups. A relatively non-partisan person who likes a news article about gun rights gets pushed news and pages that promote more conservative viewpoints, and those pages lead to fringe ideas, conspiracy theories, and the groups that promote those ideas. Trump/Biden ads seem less problematic than memes about vigilante justice against minorities that float around FB.

thegayngler 6y ago

I guess I just want the list in the order that it was posted in and without political ads.

xtat 6y ago

Nobody will use this. Facebook is defaultsville

andyshi 6y ago

How about only showing friends feed and letting the user decide what to filter out?