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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, Rep

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
  - AlexMax 6y ago
    > The problem is that even that perspective is your personal bias which you're using to justify censorship To clarify, are you asserting that hiding political advertisements - either by not allowing them like Twitter or by giving people an option to opt-out like Facebook - is censorship?
blueatlas 6y ago
You are saying this as if those ads state facts and stick to the issues. Politics in the US is a mess. Party politics makes absolutely no sense to me. My trust in what they have to say, particularly on social media, is nil. Those ads will be turned off. I have never have, nor never will, vote along party lines. I am, proudly, unaffiliated.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Politics in the US is a mess. Why would you want it any other way? Democracy is messy. >You are saying this as if those ads state facts and stick to the issues I'm not saying that at all, but I will say this, political discourse is never about facts and policy. Same with activism. Do you think activists stick to facts and data to prove their case? Almost never. Do you think any housing activists that push 'rent control' as a partial solution to homelessness, care that 'rent control' as a policy has been objectively an abject failure and doesn't actually solve the issue at hand? Politics are emotion-driven and things like 'emotional trust' will outweigh any policy or fact-based discussion.
  - ses1984 6y ago
    >Why would you want it any other way? Democracy is messy. Sounds an awful lot like giving up to me. >Do you think activists stick to facts and data to prove their case? Almost never. There's a difference between "appeal to emotion" and spewing outright lies.
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      >Sounds an awful lot like giving up to me No! The opposite in fact! When Democracy is messy it means there's a lot of 'bumping' and 'turn' (to use some metaphors), unlike the sterile utopia that some push for, where everything is clean and specified and everyone follows a neat pattern (to use more metaphors). For example, I love how messy caucuses are, people are yelling and clamouring, convincing each other to join the other side, negotiating and trading (TALKING to each other), making mistakes, etc. Democratic chaos! Beautiful! But they are going away to just regular, boring voting because this chaos makes many people uncomfortable and it FEELS better to have a top-down, clean, organized, designed approach. This reminds me of Jane Jacobs [1], an urban activist that criticized the then modern notions of urban renewal which called for creating neat, sterile, single-purpose zoned areas. To her, a city should be 'messy' with active mixed-use neighbourhoods encouraging this 'bumping' and 'mixing'. She's right! And I see this idea of urban planning analogous to the democratic process. There is a side-benefit to this chaotic Democracy - it's harder to be gamed, by Russians or political consultants or political parties. >There's a difference between "appeal to emotion" and spewing outright lies. The other side feels the same about your side. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs
dan-robertson 6y ago
One difference is that there’s less transparency with digital ads. They can be targeted at much smaller groups of people so you may see quite different ads from your neighbour. It seems much harder to talk to other people about the ads as you are less likely to be seeing the same things, and it seems much harder for their to be a public debate when one side may not even know the arguments being made by the other
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
The problem isn't the cultural bubbles; the problem is that there are apparently only two bubbles, which quickly boils down to "you're with us or you're against us". This is not a technological problem or a filter bubble problem, but a core issue with how US politics is currently organized. With sweeping political reform, you can have dozens of parties active, each representing a much more fine-grained selection of the US population. That way, one can be extreme-right and vote for the KKK party instead of the current Republicans which may be too mild for their liking; they'll be represented in the government (and outed for being a racist) and feel like their vote counts, but their influence will be marginalized. There'll be a room for a Democrats-like party headed by Clinton and/or Biden, and another one more liberal / socialist headed by Sanders. It gives more space for more nuanced policies, and it gives more room for different opinions (whereas the current one is with us or against us, and if you're not cool enough your candidacy has no chance).
- cheschire 6y ago
  The US would require multiple votes as well to really succeed at this. For example in Germany a person has 2 votes, and that enables them to perhaps use one vote to support a moderate-left party like SPD who they want to be a strong opposition party, but then at the same time vote for a far-right party like AfD. Maybe the voter's issue is the power of CDU? Maybe they're just anti-establishment? Maybe they're just voting on specific issues? Who knows, but it's way better than only being able to put your stamp on one party, and gives a little more negotiating power to the smaller parties when forming coalitions.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  The current US electoral system makes this practically impossible. You'd need widespread adoption of PR or similar. A FPTP system, like nearly all US states use, essentially ensures that there will only be two viable parties (there are occasional cases where such systems lead to a 2.5 party system for historical reasons, as with the UK's Liberal Democrats, descendants of the defunct Liberal Party, one of the previous two parties).
deleted 6y ago
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Dumblydorr 6y ago
I don't think you can equate FB and traditional media and then honestly ponder why people are upset. Traditional media ads weren't paid for in rubles by Putin's agents. Traditional ads weren't being approved by the most dangerous CEO in modern times. Traditional media didn't lead to the most terrible president in history. Clearly we are in a different world than the strawman traditional media, FB is a whole new monstrosity.
- bhupy 6y ago
  Question: how many rubles were used to pay for US political ads in the 2016 election?
cwhiz 6y ago
You can target Facebook ads with surgical precision to manipulate people exactly the way you want. This is exactly what Cambridge Analytica did. You cannot target people with such precision in traditional advertising. I don’t think it’s unfair to say social media advertising and data collection is the biggest risk to democracy that we have ever faced.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >This is exactly what Cambridge Analytica did The impact of Cambridge Analytica is so overstated that it crosses into hyperbole. They were a bunch of clowns with minimal impact that got magnified to a status of super-villain because you could use them to club Trump over the head with. And let's not lose sight of the big picture, namely before Trump accidentally won (yes, accidentally and barely), the Trump campaign was seen (correctly) as a total disorganized disaster and one of the biggest clown-shows in modern political campaigns ... and yet they were at the same time these nefarious puppet masters using modern high-tech technology to manipulate voters and ultimately skew the election.
  - retortio 6y ago
    Exactly. Not just that, when the Obama used social media targeted advertising to its advantage it was fawned over in the media. Cambridge Analytica was targeted purely because they were on the wrong political side, it's as simple as that. Does anyone really think they would have gotten any attention if they were working for Hillary?
    - edmundsauto 6y ago
      Yes, I think they would have been screamed about from every Republican supporting media outlet there is. And I think they were targeted because of the underhanded way they went about collecting data, and for violating FB ToS. But the real reason that I think they were targeted? I think they leaned into it as a submarine PR coverage tactic. "We're so effective that it's a national scandal" was a great marketing tactic in the (hopefully bygone) era when amorality had no consequences.
danShumway 6y ago
I am mildly skeptical that disabling advertising will have the effect you worry about. Anecdotally, I am more likely to be charitable and curious about someone else's views if I'm not surrounded by a lot of appeals to emotion or party loyalty. Watching Republican/Democrat ads doesn't make me more sympathetic to either party, often it's the opposite. Get rid of all of the ads comparing Nancy Pelosi to the devil, and I'll be more likely to engage with the actual issues being discussed. Modern political advertising seems specifically designed to push me into more tribal attitudes. I won't comment on banning things, but blocking political ads on a personal level may be healthy for at least some people. It's not exactly hard to find political arguments if you search for them. And if you do search for them, you're more likely to engage with people who actually know what they're talking about, instead of conspiracy theorists on Facebook. It's the same attitude of, 'if you want to learn Javascript, there are better ways you can spend your time than reading random rants online about the death of the web.' If you want to learn conservatism/liberalism/socialism, there are better sources than a Facebook ad.
newacct583 6y ago
> 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? The article doesn't say they'll allow partisan choice about what to block. Just that they'll give you a bubble disallowing "political" ads. I think the big quibble is how they define "political", but the scenario you're imagining doesn't exist. And FWIW: maybe all those ads in the Atlantic video you posted are "crazy". Very few of them (none that I saw) are lies. It's routine for a median Facebook user to be faced with screenfulls of misinformation. Zuckerberg was challenged about this directly, and stated that it wasn't his job to act as a gatekeeper.
Hitton 6y ago
>It's not a good feature if you don't like cultural bubbles forming. I agree with that, but I don't think that advertising will meaningfully impact that. From what I gather political advertising isn't used to change opinions of opposition, it's precisely targeted. It's used to help sway undecided and make your own vote base actually register for voting and vote. People from groups with differing opinions already haven't been seeing the advertisement.
tlrobinson 6y ago
> Democrats will block Republican ads, Republicans will block Democrat ads I could be wrong, but it sounds like you can just turn off all political ads, not those from specific parties.
- giarc 6y ago
  Not to mention you already could accomplish this by blocking ads from those specific parties... just like you could block ads from a company.
  - Balgair 6y ago
    I think this highlights another issue with this: How many people even know that they can do this, something already implemented? Of the people that use FB, some percent won't even know that they can block ads from anyone, let alone political ones. Taking only the political ads into account, you then bifurcate the population into those that turn them off, and those that don't know to in the first place. We've been dealing (poorly) with these filter bubbles already, adding in more filtering may not be the solution here.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    But that turns into a ridiculous game of whack-a-mole, because there are always new PACs that can pop up. That is a huge difference from a one-and-done checkbox somewhere that lets me block all political adds, regardless of what new parties and organizations are created in the future.
- michaelmior 6y ago
  Interestingly, it seems like if you have solidly made up your mind, you should block your own party's ads to save the unnecessary ad spend. Similarly, you should not block the other party's ads to cause them to waste ad dollars.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    That assumes the annoyance you suffer would be worth the money they lose. I sincerely doubt that would be the case, unless you have an exceptionally high tolerance for annoyance.
bad_user 6y ago
Whether it's a good feature for your or not, that's your opinion and choice. Personally I find Facebook to be unusable and I'm close to deleting my account. I couldn't care less about information bubbles, I basically started unfollowing all acquaintances that frequently post political articles. I'm really sick of it and given Facebook's feed is screwed anyway, I would like the option of completely filtering out posts on certain topics, such as politics. Alas Facebook doesn't even give the option of censoring words from that stupid timeline.
throawy1234 6y ago
I was in the social media team of one of the Democratic presidential candidates. I agree with you. It's my belief that if you want to give a chance to lesser known candidates who are not backed by millionaires and powerful insiders, Facebook was the last option available. I believe Facebook was one of the last services available to make our democracy more democratic. I think this move by Facebook will make it so much harder for smaller candidates to have a chance now. I know there is this perception that without Facebook ads Trump would have not won. I don't believe that at all. I think Trump won first because of NBC and then because of CNN, ABC, etc. than because of any Facebook ads. Allow me to explain: A - It was NBC that gave Trump years of national TV exposure and created this myth of this business mogul and business guru with his TV show the Apprentice. So people believed "Make America Great Again" was possible. B - Trump got about $5billion in free media [0]. Because Trump and all his statements captured so much interests. C - In 2016 election, about 8.5 million people who voted for Obama in 2012 voted for Trump and about 2.5 million of 2012 Romney voters voted for Hillary [1]. These 8.5 million 2012 Obama voters may or may not have been Fox viewers and as likely watched CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, local news (which are all affiliated). Did you know the Democratic party will cancel working with you as an agency or entity if you work with any candidates that challenge any incumbents? [2]. Basically if you are a professional or entity doing email campaigns or other work and if you work for any non-incumbent you're basically gone and blacklisted. Are we okay with this? Facebook made it so easy for much smaller candidates with little resources to challenge the incumbents. Now this path is gone. BTW, in the past 4 years or so Republicans have invested and built this enormousness voter database with email, sms and phone number targeting. I've seen screenshots of it. There are other entity who have built something similar at the DNC or will offer one to the Democrats at the right price. There is so much data out there outside of Facebook to target you. If a candidate has the budget and all the resources he/she/they don't need facebook to get that kind of targeting. I had the opportunity to evaluate various vendors and their pitches. What's available now out there outside of facebook is rather scary. Any candidate with large budget can target the audience they want it's the smaller ones who will be eliminated by this change. Lastly, Trump won because of the message. Trump actually ran economically on the left of Hillary and socially on her right. The kind of stuff like union jobs/workers protection, which used to be the platform of Democrats is what Trump ran on. Everyone talked about the wall, and racism. But many Americans who have been gradually marginalized and seeing every product that used to be made in USA was now coming from China and blaming their jobs lost to Mexico because of NAFTA wanted to hear Trump's message. I know for us in the Bay Area or in NY, this doesn't matter, but I believe it's because we are out of touch with the rest of the country. This is why I had predicted Trump win during GOP primary and his national win. I spoke with random people in various parts of the country. Once they felt comfortable with you, they had a positive view of Trump and how he would somehow come and rescue them. He fooled them, but the message resonated and Trump got $5 billion in free media coverage. That's why he won, because of the places like NBC, CNN, FOX, etc. You can talk about the small narrow of victory by which Trump won places like Michigan and if Facebook wasn't there he would have not won. I'm not sure about that at all. I think this facebook narrative distracts from the bigger picture, which Trump won on the message that years ago was part of the Democratic platform and he got his message across for free using the mainstream media. [0] https://www.thestreet.com/politics/donald-trump-rode-5-billion-in-free-media-to-the-white-house-13896916 https://www.thestreet.com/politics/donald-trump-rode-5-billi... [1] http://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/just-how-many-obama-2012-trump-2016-voters-were-there/ http://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/just-how-m... [2] https://theintercept.com/2019/03/22/house-democratic-leadership-warns-it-will-cut-off-any-firms-who-challenge-incumbents/ https://theintercept.com/2019/03/22/house-democratic-leaders...
Justsignedup 6y ago
The problem is if you turn off all ads, you won't see any alternative points. I don't need Biden ads because I already will vote for Biden, so I turn off political ads. That's it I'm back in my bubble. This is a cop-out for actually having to verify/review political ads. Zuckerburg is really really good at the art of seeming like he is progressive but is empirically horrible for society.
- biscottigelato 6y ago
  Having of all people FB to be your arbiter of truth of what is a fact based political ad vs a non-fact based political ad sounds like a dystopian nightmare. What we perceive as fact is actually something derived from a lot of open discourse based on a lot of evidence. Removing open discourse based on whether the discourse is fact based is circular reasoning and a chicken & egg problem. It's not fact check, it just becomes outright censorship.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  Zuckerburg is really really good at the art of seeming like he is progressive but is empirically horrible for society. Is he good at the art of seeming progressive? He's hosted fundraisers for Chris Christie, his lobbying group FWD.us had created a GOP-led spin off called "Americans for a Conservative Direction" that supported the keystone XL pipeline, and the decidedly non-progressive politicians Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio. So when I hear people say stuff like "Facebook has a liberal bias" or that Zuckerberg himself is progressive, I'm genuinely puzzled.
- catalogia 6y ago
  > The problem is if you turn off all ads, you won't see any alternative points. That's ridiculous, it's not as though Facebook ads are the only source of political information in America. Even on facebook specifically that's not true; everybody's Facebook wall will still be packed to the brim with their friends, family and neighbors still talking about politics. We're talking about politics right now, despite there not being any paid promotional material present in this thread. Advertisers simply do not fill the vital social role you seem to attribute to them.
giarc 6y ago
When you see a bad ad on TV, you might talk about it with your spouse or kids. When you see a bad ad on Facebook, you argue with 1000 strangers. I deactivated my Facebook account 6 months ago or so for precisely that reason. I was in a "community group" for my neighbourhood and every little thing would descend into an argument you would never have if you were talking in person. For example, a person complained that his neighbour was shoveling the snow from his sidewalk onto the road instead of his yard. Huge 40 person argument began. People act different online.
skybrian 6y ago
How many Facebook ads even target people in the opposite party? I have only seen fundraising ads for Democrats. The ads seem to be reinforcing cultural bubbles. It seems like targeting people committed to the other side wouldn't be a good use of campaign funds? With low voter participation rates, there is a lot more to be gained from increasing turnout for your own side.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  In 2016, I saw ads for both D's and R's running for president and senate. The primary elections aren't totally over yet. I'll bet come November you have a different experience.
lisper 6y ago
It's "Democratic" not "Democrat". Democratic ads. Democratic voters. Democratic party. "Democrat" is a noun. It is used by Republicans as an adjective with the intent to be belittling and pejorative. It's like calling a black man "boy". Don't do it.
- thrwawy0601858 6y ago
  No; it's used by Republicans to deprive Democrats of their unearned rhetorical monopoly on 'Democracy' and their consciously manipulative party branding.
  - lisper 6y ago
    If you really believe that, why did you feel the need to hide your identity behind the anonymity of a throwaway account before you were comfortable expressing that opinion? Could it be that you know that it's not actually true, that in your heart of hearts you know that "Democrat party" is a Republican dog whistle? That it is offensive? Because it is. If you really want to dispute this, step out from behind the shadows and let us see your face. (And the same goes for all of you anonymous down-voters too. FYAIOTLB.)
deleted 6y ago
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dragonwriter 6y ago
> Republicans will block Democrat ads - will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa? The piece indicates that there will be an option off political ads entirely, not to block political ads by partisan affiliation. (The latter is both more complex to even superficially inplement and would be rather ineffective because SuperPAC ads are formally unaffiliated with either parties or candidates.) Also FYI: The adjective for “Associated with the Democratic Party” is “Democratic”, just like the adjective in the party name. “Democrat” is the noun form. EDIT: I'm going to quote and respond to a dead reply, because it makes a common point which deserves a response rather than downvoting to oblivion: > Yes, but Republicans consistently use the term 'Democrat' instead of 'Democratic' because they don't want to imply that Democrats have a connection to the concept of Democracy. > It's a shibboleth; folks who instinctively say "Democrat" are reliably far-right. While this is correct as to the origin and the tactical employment of the usage, it is not a reliable indicator because lots of people who aren't far-right or Republican partisans are exposed to media in which far-right (or at least solidly Republican partisan) voices which embody this tactic are common and don't realize that is what it is, and adopt the pattern from that source. The ones who persist after correction are doing it intentionally and tactically, though.
- amznthrwaway 6y ago
  Yes, but Republicans consistently use the term 'Democrat' instead of 'Democratic' because they don't want to imply that Democrats have a connection to the concept of Democracy. It's a shibboleth; folks who instinctively say "Democrat" are reliably far-right.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    I'm not saying you are making things up, but that makes no sense to me. I don't think any Republicans I know are aware of that tactic, use that tactic, or would even think it's effective.
    - dhosek 6y ago
      Start paying closer attention. You'll see it all the time from Republican officials and conservative media personalities.
TLightful 6y ago
>>It's not a good feature if you don't like cultural bubbles forming. I think you'll find the horse has bolted on that. You'll not catch me dead on Facebook, ever. But the feature to turn off political ads sounds great.
harikb 6y ago
Targeted advertising literally made propaganda 10 times cheaper. This means I can spare a few bucks and target whatever sh*t I want at whoever I like. I don't need to a big business with a big budget. Most orgs who have an agenda can easily throw a few thousand dollars to push a narrative. Not all of them can afford a TV ad at Prime time (at least TV ad on a network anyone is watching).
hairofadog 6y ago
> the pro-Democratic party bias in almost all traditional media I often see this presented as a given, but it doesn't ring true to me. Is there some evidence or research I'm missing showing that traditional media is biased toward the Democratic party?
- dfxm12 6y ago
  Quite the opposite, when you consider how the Sinclair Broadcast group is the largest owner of local broadcast stations, where most people get their news, and force their affiliates to run certain conservative segments. Then, consider how owners of 3 of the top 4 most circulated newspapers in the US are conservative: Frank Gannett and News Corp (which owns 2!).
  - lliamander 6y ago
    I forget where the statistics are from, but as I recall a significant majority of all journalists are left of center.
- _-david-_ 6y ago
  I think what people tend to mean is national media not necessarily local news sources. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC tend to favor the Democratic Party. While Fox News tends to favor the Republican Party. Some of the largest newspapers NYTimes, LA Times, Washington Post, etc tend to favor the Democratic Party. There are a few that tend to support the Republican Party. When you look at the endorsements by newspapers and magazines you will see that it is overwhelmingly supporting the Democratic Party [0]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...
minikites 6y ago
>will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa? We've lived in this world since 2016, if not earlier. The question is how to proceed from here.
sangnoir 6y ago
> will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa? That entirely depends on whether you think voter suppression ads are fair-play or not
dhosek 6y ago
I have never seen a Republican or conservative political ad on Facebook. This hypothetical bubble already exists.
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baby 6y ago
IMO political ads should be banned from all platforms, as a law. It is insane that candidates who have more money and funding will in turn have more reach. This is antidemocratic.

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
- AlexMax 6y ago
  > The problem is that even that perspective is your personal bias which you're using to justify censorship To clarify, are you asserting that hiding political advertisements - either by not allowing them like Twitter or by giving people an option to opt-out like Facebook - is censorship?

blueatlas 6y ago

You are saying this as if those ads state facts and stick to the issues. Politics in the US is a mess. Party politics makes absolutely no sense to me. My trust in what they have to say, particularly on social media, is nil. Those ads will be turned off. I have never have, nor never will, vote along party lines. I am, proudly, unaffiliated.

macspoofing 6y ago
>Politics in the US is a mess. Why would you want it any other way? Democracy is messy. >You are saying this as if those ads state facts and stick to the issues I'm not saying that at all, but I will say this, political discourse is never about facts and policy. Same with activism. Do you think activists stick to facts and data to prove their case? Almost never. Do you think any housing activists that push 'rent control' as a partial solution to homelessness, care that 'rent control' as a policy has been objectively an abject failure and doesn't actually solve the issue at hand? Politics are emotion-driven and things like 'emotional trust' will outweigh any policy or fact-based discussion.
- ses1984 6y ago
  >Why would you want it any other way? Democracy is messy. Sounds an awful lot like giving up to me. >Do you think activists stick to facts and data to prove their case? Almost never. There's a difference between "appeal to emotion" and spewing outright lies.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >Sounds an awful lot like giving up to me No! The opposite in fact! When Democracy is messy it means there's a lot of 'bumping' and 'turn' (to use some metaphors), unlike the sterile utopia that some push for, where everything is clean and specified and everyone follows a neat pattern (to use more metaphors). For example, I love how messy caucuses are, people are yelling and clamouring, convincing each other to join the other side, negotiating and trading (TALKING to each other), making mistakes, etc. Democratic chaos! Beautiful! But they are going away to just regular, boring voting because this chaos makes many people uncomfortable and it FEELS better to have a top-down, clean, organized, designed approach. This reminds me of Jane Jacobs [1], an urban activist that criticized the then modern notions of urban renewal which called for creating neat, sterile, single-purpose zoned areas. To her, a city should be 'messy' with active mixed-use neighbourhoods encouraging this 'bumping' and 'mixing'. She's right! And I see this idea of urban planning analogous to the democratic process. There is a side-benefit to this chaotic Democracy - it's harder to be gamed, by Russians or political consultants or political parties. >There's a difference between "appeal to emotion" and spewing outright lies. The other side feels the same about your side. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs

dan-robertson 6y ago

One difference is that there’s less transparency with digital ads. They can be targeted at much smaller groups of people so you may see quite different ads from your neighbour. It seems much harder to talk to other people about the ads as you are less likely to be seeing the same things, and it seems much harder for their to be a public debate when one side may not even know the arguments being made by the other

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

The problem isn't the cultural bubbles; the problem is that there are apparently only two bubbles, which quickly boils down to "you're with us or you're against us". This is not a technological problem or a filter bubble problem, but a core issue with how US politics is currently organized. With sweeping political reform, you can have dozens of parties active, each representing a much more fine-grained selection of the US population. That way, one can be extreme-right and vote for the KKK party instead of the current Republicans which may be too mild for their liking; they'll be represented in the government (and outed for being a racist) and feel like their vote counts, but their influence will be marginalized. There'll be a room for a Democrats-like party headed by Clinton and/or Biden, and another one more liberal / socialist headed by Sanders. It gives more space for more nuanced policies, and it gives more room for different opinions (whereas the current one is with us or against us, and if you're not cool enough your candidacy has no chance).

cheschire 6y ago
The US would require multiple votes as well to really succeed at this. For example in Germany a person has 2 votes, and that enables them to perhaps use one vote to support a moderate-left party like SPD who they want to be a strong opposition party, but then at the same time vote for a far-right party like AfD. Maybe the voter's issue is the power of CDU? Maybe they're just anti-establishment? Maybe they're just voting on specific issues? Who knows, but it's way better than only being able to put your stamp on one party, and gives a little more negotiating power to the smaller parties when forming coalitions.
rsynnott 6y ago
The current US electoral system makes this practically impossible. You'd need widespread adoption of PR or similar. A FPTP system, like nearly all US states use, essentially ensures that there will only be two viable parties (there are occasional cases where such systems lead to a 2.5 party system for historical reasons, as with the UK's Liberal Democrats, descendants of the defunct Liberal Party, one of the previous two parties).

deleted 6y ago

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Dumblydorr 6y ago

I don't think you can equate FB and traditional media and then honestly ponder why people are upset. Traditional media ads weren't paid for in rubles by Putin's agents. Traditional ads weren't being approved by the most dangerous CEO in modern times. Traditional media didn't lead to the most terrible president in history. Clearly we are in a different world than the strawman traditional media, FB is a whole new monstrosity.

bhupy 6y ago
Question: how many rubles were used to pay for US political ads in the 2016 election?

cwhiz 6y ago

You can target Facebook ads with surgical precision to manipulate people exactly the way you want. This is exactly what Cambridge Analytica did. You cannot target people with such precision in traditional advertising. I don’t think it’s unfair to say social media advertising and data collection is the biggest risk to democracy that we have ever faced.

macspoofing 6y ago
>This is exactly what Cambridge Analytica did The impact of Cambridge Analytica is so overstated that it crosses into hyperbole. They were a bunch of clowns with minimal impact that got magnified to a status of super-villain because you could use them to club Trump over the head with. And let's not lose sight of the big picture, namely before Trump accidentally won (yes, accidentally and barely), the Trump campaign was seen (correctly) as a total disorganized disaster and one of the biggest clown-shows in modern political campaigns ... and yet they were at the same time these nefarious puppet masters using modern high-tech technology to manipulate voters and ultimately skew the election.
- retortio 6y ago
  Exactly. Not just that, when the Obama used social media targeted advertising to its advantage it was fawned over in the media. Cambridge Analytica was targeted purely because they were on the wrong political side, it's as simple as that. Does anyone really think they would have gotten any attention if they were working for Hillary?
  - edmundsauto 6y ago
    Yes, I think they would have been screamed about from every Republican supporting media outlet there is. And I think they were targeted because of the underhanded way they went about collecting data, and for violating FB ToS. But the real reason that I think they were targeted? I think they leaned into it as a submarine PR coverage tactic. "We're so effective that it's a national scandal" was a great marketing tactic in the (hopefully bygone) era when amorality had no consequences.

danShumway 6y ago

I am mildly skeptical that disabling advertising will have the effect you worry about. Anecdotally, I am more likely to be charitable and curious about someone else's views if I'm not surrounded by a lot of appeals to emotion or party loyalty. Watching Republican/Democrat ads doesn't make me more sympathetic to either party, often it's the opposite. Get rid of all of the ads comparing Nancy Pelosi to the devil, and I'll be more likely to engage with the actual issues being discussed. Modern political advertising seems specifically designed to push me into more tribal attitudes. I won't comment on banning things, but blocking political ads on a personal level may be healthy for at least some people. It's not exactly hard to find political arguments if you search for them. And if you do search for them, you're more likely to engage with people who actually know what they're talking about, instead of conspiracy theorists on Facebook. It's the same attitude of, 'if you want to learn Javascript, there are better ways you can spend your time than reading random rants online about the death of the web.' If you want to learn conservatism/liberalism/socialism, there are better sources than a Facebook ad.

newacct583 6y ago

> 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? The article doesn't say they'll allow partisan choice about what to block. Just that they'll give you a bubble disallowing "political" ads. I think the big quibble is how they define "political", but the scenario you're imagining doesn't exist. And FWIW: maybe all those ads in the Atlantic video you posted are "crazy". Very few of them (none that I saw) are lies. It's routine for a median Facebook user to be faced with screenfulls of misinformation. Zuckerberg was challenged about this directly, and stated that it wasn't his job to act as a gatekeeper.

Hitton 6y ago

>It's not a good feature if you don't like cultural bubbles forming. I agree with that, but I don't think that advertising will meaningfully impact that. From what I gather political advertising isn't used to change opinions of opposition, it's precisely targeted. It's used to help sway undecided and make your own vote base actually register for voting and vote. People from groups with differing opinions already haven't been seeing the advertisement.

tlrobinson 6y ago

> Democrats will block Republican ads, Republicans will block Democrat ads I could be wrong, but it sounds like you can just turn off all political ads, not those from specific parties.

giarc 6y ago
Not to mention you already could accomplish this by blocking ads from those specific parties... just like you could block ads from a company.
- Balgair 6y ago
  I think this highlights another issue with this: How many people even know that they can do this, something already implemented? Of the people that use FB, some percent won't even know that they can block ads from anyone, let alone political ones. Taking only the political ads into account, you then bifurcate the population into those that turn them off, and those that don't know to in the first place. We've been dealing (poorly) with these filter bubbles already, adding in more filtering may not be the solution here.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  But that turns into a ridiculous game of whack-a-mole, because there are always new PACs that can pop up. That is a huge difference from a one-and-done checkbox somewhere that lets me block all political adds, regardless of what new parties and organizations are created in the future.
michaelmior 6y ago
Interestingly, it seems like if you have solidly made up your mind, you should block your own party's ads to save the unnecessary ad spend. Similarly, you should not block the other party's ads to cause them to waste ad dollars.
- catalogia 6y ago
  That assumes the annoyance you suffer would be worth the money they lose. I sincerely doubt that would be the case, unless you have an exceptionally high tolerance for annoyance.

bad_user 6y ago

Whether it's a good feature for your or not, that's your opinion and choice. Personally I find Facebook to be unusable and I'm close to deleting my account. I couldn't care less about information bubbles, I basically started unfollowing all acquaintances that frequently post political articles. I'm really sick of it and given Facebook's feed is screwed anyway, I would like the option of completely filtering out posts on certain topics, such as politics. Alas Facebook doesn't even give the option of censoring words from that stupid timeline.

throawy1234 6y ago

I was in the social media team of one of the Democratic presidential candidates. I agree with you. It's my belief that if you want to give a chance to lesser known candidates who are not backed by millionaires and powerful insiders, Facebook was the last option available. I believe Facebook was one of the last services available to make our democracy more democratic. I think this move by Facebook will make it so much harder for smaller candidates to have a chance now. I know there is this perception that without Facebook ads Trump would have not won. I don't believe that at all. I think Trump won first because of NBC and then because of CNN, ABC, etc. than because of any Facebook ads. Allow me to explain: A - It was NBC that gave Trump years of national TV exposure and created this myth of this business mogul and business guru with his TV show the Apprentice. So people believed "Make America Great Again" was possible. B - Trump got about $5billion in free media [0]. Because Trump and all his statements captured so much interests. C - In 2016 election, about 8.5 million people who voted for Obama in 2012 voted for Trump and about 2.5 million of 2012 Romney voters voted for Hillary [1]. These 8.5 million 2012 Obama voters may or may not have been Fox viewers and as likely watched CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, local news (which are all affiliated). Did you know the Democratic party will cancel working with you as an agency or entity if you work with any candidates that challenge any incumbents? [2]. Basically if you are a professional or entity doing email campaigns or other work and if you work for any non-incumbent you're basically gone and blacklisted. Are we okay with this? Facebook made it so easy for much smaller candidates with little resources to challenge the incumbents. Now this path is gone. BTW, in the past 4 years or so Republicans have invested and built this enormousness voter database with email, sms and phone number targeting. I've seen screenshots of it. There are other entity who have built something similar at the DNC or will offer one to the Democrats at the right price. There is so much data out there outside of Facebook to target you. If a candidate has the budget and all the resources he/she/they don't need facebook to get that kind of targeting. I had the opportunity to evaluate various vendors and their pitches. What's available now out there outside of facebook is rather scary. Any candidate with large budget can target the audience they want it's the smaller ones who will be eliminated by this change. Lastly, Trump won because of the message. Trump actually ran economically on the left of Hillary and socially on her right. The kind of stuff like union jobs/workers protection, which used to be the platform of Democrats is what Trump ran on. Everyone talked about the wall, and racism. But many Americans who have been gradually marginalized and seeing every product that used to be made in USA was now coming from China and blaming their jobs lost to Mexico because of NAFTA wanted to hear Trump's message. I know for us in the Bay Area or in NY, this doesn't matter, but I believe it's because we are out of touch with the rest of the country. This is why I had predicted Trump win during GOP primary and his national win. I spoke with random people in various parts of the country. Once they felt comfortable with you, they had a positive view of Trump and how he would somehow come and rescue them. He fooled them, but the message resonated and Trump got $5 billion in free media coverage. That's why he won, because of the places like NBC, CNN, FOX, etc. You can talk about the small narrow of victory by which Trump won places like Michigan and if Facebook wasn't there he would have not won. I'm not sure about that at all. I think this facebook narrative distracts from the bigger picture, which Trump won on the message that years ago was part of the Democratic platform and he got his message across for free using the mainstream media. [0] https://www.thestreet.com/politics/donald-trump-rode-5-billion-in-free-media-to-the-white-house-13896916 https://www.thestreet.com/politics/donald-trump-rode-5-billi... [1] http://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/just-how-many-obama-2012-trump-2016-voters-were-there/ http://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/just-how-m... [2] https://theintercept.com/2019/03/22/house-democratic-leadership-warns-it-will-cut-off-any-firms-who-challenge-incumbents/ https://theintercept.com/2019/03/22/house-democratic-leaders...

Justsignedup 6y ago

The problem is if you turn off all ads, you won't see any alternative points. I don't need Biden ads because I already will vote for Biden, so I turn off political ads. That's it I'm back in my bubble. This is a cop-out for actually having to verify/review political ads. Zuckerburg is really really good at the art of seeming like he is progressive but is empirically horrible for society.

biscottigelato 6y ago
Having of all people FB to be your arbiter of truth of what is a fact based political ad vs a non-fact based political ad sounds like a dystopian nightmare. What we perceive as fact is actually something derived from a lot of open discourse based on a lot of evidence. Removing open discourse based on whether the discourse is fact based is circular reasoning and a chicken & egg problem. It's not fact check, it just becomes outright censorship.
dfxm12 6y ago
Zuckerburg is really really good at the art of seeming like he is progressive but is empirically horrible for society. Is he good at the art of seeming progressive? He's hosted fundraisers for Chris Christie, his lobbying group FWD.us had created a GOP-led spin off called "Americans for a Conservative Direction" that supported the keystone XL pipeline, and the decidedly non-progressive politicians Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio. So when I hear people say stuff like "Facebook has a liberal bias" or that Zuckerberg himself is progressive, I'm genuinely puzzled.
catalogia 6y ago
> The problem is if you turn off all ads, you won't see any alternative points. That's ridiculous, it's not as though Facebook ads are the only source of political information in America. Even on facebook specifically that's not true; everybody's Facebook wall will still be packed to the brim with their friends, family and neighbors still talking about politics. We're talking about politics right now, despite there not being any paid promotional material present in this thread. Advertisers simply do not fill the vital social role you seem to attribute to them.

giarc 6y ago

When you see a bad ad on TV, you might talk about it with your spouse or kids. When you see a bad ad on Facebook, you argue with 1000 strangers. I deactivated my Facebook account 6 months ago or so for precisely that reason. I was in a "community group" for my neighbourhood and every little thing would descend into an argument you would never have if you were talking in person. For example, a person complained that his neighbour was shoveling the snow from his sidewalk onto the road instead of his yard. Huge 40 person argument began. People act different online.

skybrian 6y ago

How many Facebook ads even target people in the opposite party? I have only seen fundraising ads for Democrats. The ads seem to be reinforcing cultural bubbles. It seems like targeting people committed to the other side wouldn't be a good use of campaign funds? With low voter participation rates, there is a lot more to be gained from increasing turnout for your own side.

dfxm12 6y ago
In 2016, I saw ads for both D's and R's running for president and senate. The primary elections aren't totally over yet. I'll bet come November you have a different experience.

lisper 6y ago

It's "Democratic" not "Democrat". Democratic ads. Democratic voters. Democratic party. "Democrat" is a noun. It is used by Republicans as an adjective with the intent to be belittling and pejorative. It's like calling a black man "boy". Don't do it.

thrwawy0601858 6y ago
No; it's used by Republicans to deprive Democrats of their unearned rhetorical monopoly on 'Democracy' and their consciously manipulative party branding.
- lisper 6y ago
  If you really believe that, why did you feel the need to hide your identity behind the anonymity of a throwaway account before you were comfortable expressing that opinion? Could it be that you know that it's not actually true, that in your heart of hearts you know that "Democrat party" is a Republican dog whistle? That it is offensive? Because it is. If you really want to dispute this, step out from behind the shadows and let us see your face. (And the same goes for all of you anonymous down-voters too. FYAIOTLB.)

deleted 6y ago

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dragonwriter 6y ago

> Republicans will block Democrat ads - will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa? The piece indicates that there will be an option off political ads entirely, not to block political ads by partisan affiliation. (The latter is both more complex to even superficially inplement and would be rather ineffective because SuperPAC ads are formally unaffiliated with either parties or candidates.) Also FYI: The adjective for “Associated with the Democratic Party” is “Democratic”, just like the adjective in the party name. “Democrat” is the noun form. EDIT: I'm going to quote and respond to a dead reply, because it makes a common point which deserves a response rather than downvoting to oblivion: > Yes, but Republicans consistently use the term 'Democrat' instead of 'Democratic' because they don't want to imply that Democrats have a connection to the concept of Democracy. > It's a shibboleth; folks who instinctively say "Democrat" are reliably far-right. While this is correct as to the origin and the tactical employment of the usage, it is not a reliable indicator because lots of people who aren't far-right or Republican partisans are exposed to media in which far-right (or at least solidly Republican partisan) voices which embody this tactic are common and don't realize that is what it is, and adopt the pattern from that source. The ones who persist after correction are doing it intentionally and tactically, though.

amznthrwaway 6y ago
Yes, but Republicans consistently use the term 'Democrat' instead of 'Democratic' because they don't want to imply that Democrats have a connection to the concept of Democracy. It's a shibboleth; folks who instinctively say "Democrat" are reliably far-right.
- lliamander 6y ago
  I'm not saying you are making things up, but that makes no sense to me. I don't think any Republicans I know are aware of that tactic, use that tactic, or would even think it's effective.
  - dhosek 6y ago
    Start paying closer attention. You'll see it all the time from Republican officials and conservative media personalities.

TLightful 6y ago

>>It's not a good feature if you don't like cultural bubbles forming. I think you'll find the horse has bolted on that. You'll not catch me dead on Facebook, ever. But the feature to turn off political ads sounds great.

harikb 6y ago

Targeted advertising literally made propaganda 10 times cheaper. This means I can spare a few bucks and target whatever sh*t I want at whoever I like. I don't need to a big business with a big budget. Most orgs who have an agenda can easily throw a few thousand dollars to push a narrative. Not all of them can afford a TV ad at Prime time (at least TV ad on a network anyone is watching).

hairofadog 6y ago

> the pro-Democratic party bias in almost all traditional media I often see this presented as a given, but it doesn't ring true to me. Is there some evidence or research I'm missing showing that traditional media is biased toward the Democratic party?

dfxm12 6y ago
Quite the opposite, when you consider how the Sinclair Broadcast group is the largest owner of local broadcast stations, where most people get their news, and force their affiliates to run certain conservative segments. Then, consider how owners of 3 of the top 4 most circulated newspapers in the US are conservative: Frank Gannett and News Corp (which owns 2!).
- lliamander 6y ago
  I forget where the statistics are from, but as I recall a significant majority of all journalists are left of center.
_-david-_ 6y ago
I think what people tend to mean is national media not necessarily local news sources. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC tend to favor the Democratic Party. While Fox News tends to favor the Republican Party. Some of the largest newspapers NYTimes, LA Times, Washington Post, etc tend to favor the Democratic Party. There are a few that tend to support the Republican Party. When you look at the endorsements by newspapers and magazines you will see that it is overwhelmingly supporting the Democratic Party [0]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...

minikites 6y ago

>will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa? We've lived in this world since 2016, if not earlier. The question is how to proceed from here.

sangnoir 6y ago

> will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa? That entirely depends on whether you think voter suppression ads are fair-play or not

dhosek 6y ago

I have never seen a Republican or conservative political ad on Facebook. This hypothetical bubble already exists.

deleted 6y ago

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baby 6y ago

IMO political ads should be banned from all platforms, as a law. It is insane that candidates who have more money and funding will in turn have more reach. This is antidemocratic.