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Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
- ceejayoz 6y ago> Political ads will be banned indefinitely after polls close on Nov. 3... Of course.
- sleavey 6y agoWhat's the reason not to ban them immediately?
- pb7 6y ago$$$
- sleavey 6y agoReally? For a few last months of revenue versus potentially stopping an election result from being bought?
- nicolas_ 6y agoIt's Facebook you're talking about. I'm not sure why you'd think they would make the right choice instead of chasing $.
- interestica 6y agoI suspect the lead-up to an election is like the Christmas season for political advertisers. So, it's hard to look at it as "few months of revenue" when in fact it might count for the majority.
- pb7 6y agoRight. It's either already decided and no money left to be had or not yet decided and the majority of the money is yet to be captured.
- ssss11 6y agoDo you think they favour a fair election over $$$? Do you think there is anything they favour over $$$ at this point?
- nl 6y agoThe mistake here is thinking that (generally speaking) allowing questionable behavior is a "whole of Facebook" decision. Instead there is some VP in charge of "ad sales for mid-West US" who looks at their target numbers for a bonus, looks at the ~$100M+ spending planned by the campaigns in that area in the next month[1] and goes "I don't want to sell an election but it is and important free speech issue that campaigns are allowed to get their message across". Stopping that is a decision that has to be made at the top, by one person who then needs to argue against a lot of people whose financial interest is in the opposite direction. [1] https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article245569490.html https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/electio...
- dchi 6y agoThat would significantly advantage incumbents and unfairly change the rules of the game in the 9th inning.
- marcell 6y agoIt violates the principle of free speech (even if it does not violate the letter of the law in the first amendment). There is nothing inherently bad about paying $1000 (or $1M) for a political ad. For a mental image, someone paying for a political ad could be running for school board in a medium sized city. A ban on all political ads would restrict that person's ability to explain why they want to be on the school board, and would restrict that person's ability to advocate for new policies in their school district. Why do you want to impose a ban on this?
- Zak 6y agoFacebook is not committed to the principle of free speech in advertising, and prohibits advertisements for a great many things that are legal to advertise.
- marcell 6y agoWhether or not FB has this commitment right now, they should have this commitment. A ban on political ads would go against a hypothetical commitment to the principle of free speech.
- Zak 6y agoEvery large advertising platform I can think of has rules about what they will accept that are narrower than what the laws that apply to them require. For example, it's generally legal in the US to advertise firearms, but most large advertising platforms refuse ads for them.
- marcell 6y agoAgain, I’m describing a goal. You are describing the status quo. The existence of a bad status quo doesn’t negate what the goal should be. In my view, the goal of FB should be to allow for free speech, especially in the context of politics.
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- weeboid 6y agoRhymes with "revenue". 2016 I made a large (for me) investment into FB certain that the revenue would appear, and it worked out quite handsomely. I can't stomach it this time.
- sg47 6y agoSomething about stable doors and horses.
- hyldmo 6y agoThey were already going to be banned temporarily from 27th of October[0], this is just now a permanent ban. [0]: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/167836590566506?id=288762101909005 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/167836590566506?id=28...
- koolba 6y agoI predict they walk that back when they realize the huge market for post election day ads for steering the narrative of when to stop counting votes. See 2000 for a great example.
- jsendros 6y agoFWIW this misses the context that they'll already be banned 1 week before Nov 3. This just extends that ban beyond the election.
- kyrra 6y ago(googler, opinion is my own). Google did the same thing: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/25/21456323/google-election-ad-ban-donald-trump-early-victory https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/25/21456323/google-election-... As there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week), the tech companies seem to be getting in-front of a potential problem to keep campaigns from drumming up any kind of fear about the election results after the polls are closed.
- erichocean 6y ago> there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week) That's by design.[0] The goal is to have the media and protests decide who wins the election if Trump appears to win on Nov 3rd, using the same playbook currently being run in Belarus as we speak (and that was run successfully in 2014 in Ukraine). Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald Trump. If it looks like he might win, we can attack the legitimacy of the vote and install Biden instead. Of course, if Biden wins in a landslide on Nov 3rd (which seems increasingly likely), then the legitimate media will announce him as the winner immediately, and none of this will be necessary. Better safe than sorry though… > keep campaigns from drumming up any kind of fear about the election results The goal is to keep Trump from doing this, while legitimate media promotes Biden unopposed (regardless of the vote totals). I also will not be surprised if Trump is suspended from Twitter immediately after the election, and any "this election was rigged!" content from Trump's people on YouTube to also be banned. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution
- hnaccy 6y ago>Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald Trump. If it looks like he might win, we can attack the legitimacy of the vote and install Biden instead. There's been one camp consistently attacking the legitimacy of the election and it's not Biden's.
- erichocean 6y ago
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- ogre_codes 6y agoThis just seems like too little, too late. Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
- newacct583 6y ago> viral content from sketchy sources. Many of those sources are seeded with promoted links, though. It's true that a lot of conspiracy nonsense is genuinely organic, but a LOT of it is not.
- MattGaiser 6y agoA lot of the "viral" content is started with a paid ad though.
- ogre_codes 6y agoA fair amount of misinformation and outright lies comes directly from the mouths of Trump (or other politicians) themselves.
- duckMuppet 6y agoFar more comes from the media itself. Like the "undecided voters" who thought Biden won the debate, but some of whom were interviewed by msnbc months ago and said they were voting got Biden. Or the fact they classify antifa and blm as peaceful protest groups, not hate groups. It's likely people don't particularly care about the truth. Narratives matter more.
- systemvoltage 6y agoA simple way would be to stop all content from propagating beyond few thousand people before a human vetting it.
- jariel 6y ago
- Upvoter33 6y agoI just wish they would get out of politics altogether.
- KiranRao0 6y agoI would love if Facebook could simply remove all political ads. The problem then becomes what classifies as political ad. This can be very obvious (vote for president = political, buy cereal = not political), but it can also be far less obvious. For example, would an ad for in support of an oil pipeline be considered a political ad? What if it's in support for an outcome of a referendum? Or an Ad for a charity? What if that charity is the EFF/ACLU in support of changing policies? It's an extremely difficult problem to differentiate what is considered a political ad and what is not and I don't exactly trust Facebook to do so.
- baq 6y agoeverything can be made political, most things are political. humans are political animals. it's a great success of politicians who are gatekeeping non-politicians from making political statements (e.g. pressuring book authors to 'keep their political opinions to themselves' on twitter, etc.) even weather can be made political, see sharpie-wielding POTUS making amends to NHC forecasts.
- dgellow 6y agoThe thing is: it doesn't have to be perfect. If you already remove the ones that are obviously political ads, you already reduce the noise by a lot.
- bob33212 6y agoSome people's entire Facebook feed is political. Facebook knows that if you remove the political aspect from Facebook all those people will jump to Twitter or Reddit or whatever to get their daily 5 hours of politics.
- mentos 6y agoThe same way the pandemic opened up the opportunity for remote work, I'd love to see Facebook _experiment_ with maybe 6 months of no political ads and see what emerges in its place.
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- bretpiatt 6y agoThe challenge for all of the platforms to exit "political advertising" is the same as exiting "selling likes/follows", if they don't do it directly then 3rd party operators will enter midstream and broker it connecting people with political (or other content) to a network of bot/fake/paid posting accounts who then go promote and spread the content. By keeping advertising on the platform it actually allows better control and enforcement than pushing it to dark web markets. The tech players don't want to be regulated like broadcast networks are so they've created this mess by lobbying against regulation. Some level of "FCC" (I use quotes as maybe it should be a different agency online) regulation as we have with broadcast ads could make this all much better. FCC broadcast guidelines: https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/statutes-and-rules-candidate-appearances-advertising https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/statutes-and-rules-candidat...
- vmception 6y agoProfiteer off of unlimited Super PAC spending all year until 3 weeks before the election? They really think we’re dumb. The only thing Facebook can do right is to shut the ad and social graph down and deal with private shareholder lawsuits till the end of time.
- divbzero 6y agoWhenever I read about the potential harms of social media or targeted ads I think of the imagery from Snow Crash describing our retinas as the only exposed part of our brain, offering a direct neural interface for good or for ill.
- smcleod 6y agoA truely brilliant book that I too think back to regularly.
- mrfusion 6y agoI came across this article today and actually thought it as true for a couple minutes. https://babylonbee.com/news/facebook-will-now-add-warnings-to-any-posts-expressing-hope-or-optimism https://babylonbee.com/news/facebook-will-now-add-warnings-t... I just found that telling on how bad the current state of affairs has gotten.
- driverdan 6y agoBabylon Bee is satire, like The Onion but with a right wing bias. Edit: If you're going to downvote please explain why. What I said is factually correct.
- zo1 6y agoReasons: 1. The person appears to know it's satire already. 2. What difference does it make that it has a "right wing" bias? 3. To me it looks like it's just dismissing the commentary by OP because it includes a link to a "right-wing bias" source. 4. This is precisely what's wrong with any sort of social-media policing by government or private entities. Your post is factually correct. But just as in-person conversations have non-verbal communication, likewise text has it's own subtle and implied meanings that it conveys.
- splintercell 6y agoOP implies that it's satire. So the only information you wanted to add is the right wing nature of the website (which has nothing to do with the article posted or OP's commentary). Anyways (unlike reddit) we also don't ask why were we downvoted here, take it and move on. Generally down votes here come in when you add unnecessary 'color' to the conversation. Like you bring up an unrelated issue to the conversation to make it go towards the flame wars. Its factually correct that a certain filesystem's developer went to jail for killing their spouse, but if someone keeps bringing it up on any discussion on filesystems and it results in a flamewar every single time then HN audience will downvote you.
- duncan_bayne 6y agoYou know, there's only one thing that bothers me more than political organisers spreading fear and misinformation through social networks. And that's social networks becoming "Ministries of Truth", deciding for themselves what information is fit to be shared with the masses, and what must be suppressed. I mean, all the evidence we've seen over the years suggests that Facebook is in no way, shape, or form trustworthy.
- engineer_22 6y agoI'm bothered that there seems to be a vocal subset on HN who say that freedom of speech doesn't apply to these platforms.
- driverdan 6y agoIt doesn't matter what anyone says on here, free speech doesn't apply to private platforms. If it did then they'd be full of spam.
- weakfish 6y agoYou know that Facebook is private and can do whatever they please as far as content goes, right? Use a different platform if it bothers you so - free markets!
- BestCatalonia 6y agoThis is ironic. The west blames China for censorship while today they support their own. China truly has vision banning facebook from.the beginning
- mensetmanusman 6y agoIf American democracy can survive this election with FB, it can survive anything. China could not survive 10 years with a platform with open dialogue, that is why their corrupt leadership fears these systems.
- smileysteve 6y agoIt's only censorship if the government does it. If Facebook runs editorial on any of it's content, it simply follows the same process private (and/or) foreign media companies have done since 1776.
- commandlinefan 6y agoNo, it's censorship no matter who does it. It's only illegal if the government does it.
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- sdfkkksdfsdff 6y agoI really hope Facebook can not interfere in the elections. If they can do that, it would be a serious cause for concern. But how would they do that? Send a zombie code to the brains of its users? Hack into voting machines? That article makes little sense, imo.
- bladegash 6y agoFrom the post about the potential for upcoming anti-trust actions against Big Tech earlier this week[1]: “One thing that occurred to me is the potential that Democrats could be using the threat of anti trust actions to pressure the tech companies to be more proactive, re: misinformation prior to the elections. Guess we will know if they make any significant policy changes over the next week or two.” Now I guess we will see if Google and the rest to make any announcements :-). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24697860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24697860
- mensetmanusman 6y agoHere is how facebook can solve this issue. By default, each user (including news outlets) should have an area of influence analogous to a square kilometer of travel. This means that any post or share is only ever seen by a dozen people or so. Now, the hard part comes in how you design an algorithm that reinforces community building behavior. Essentially, every troll in the world should start shadow-banned with no way to work their way to a larger audience without years of community building comments (kindness, engagement, supportive, etc.). This would also mean that FB would have to enforce geotagging of comments, so that operatives in other countries couldn’t be a large part of the hidden political discussion in another country.
- nindalf 6y agoFacebook already does something similar to this. Newer accounts have less reach. That said, thank you for giving an actual constructive, concrete suggestion. Most people persist with vague criticisms like Senator Warren here - https://mobile.twitter.com/ewarren/status/1313978641517289472 https://mobile.twitter.com/ewarren/status/131397864151728947...
- engineer_22 6y agoNationalize Facebook.
- bhupy 6y agoIf that were to happen, then banning political ads would violate the First Amendment.
- noworriesnate 6y agoIf Facebook were nationalized, it would have to adhere to the constitution, including the first amendment right to free speech. So if it was run constitutionally Facebook would be even less restricted than it is now. However I don't think that Facebook would be run constitutionally if it were government owned. It would be run as a propaganda outlet and a way to spy on people all over the world. Right now Facebook's motives are just money. If Facebook were government owned its motives would become more complex and dangerous. It would want to make the American government look good. It would want to elect corrupt politicians who promised behind closed doors to increase Facebook's funding.
- jacobush 6y agoNo, split it up in 50 BabyBell-Facebooks.
- nsx147 6y agoThe answer here is to pull politics out into a separate app, made by FB or someone else
- richardARPANET 6y agoBig tech is doing everything in their power to make Biden win this election, yet he'll still lose.
- ravenstine 6y agoPrecisely. Anyone denying this is kidding themselves.
- charliebrownau 6y agoIs anyone pro freedom / right wing or christian left on Zionist Run platforms such as Twatter, Fakebook, Google, Microsoft You are never going to get fair treatment if you reveal truth about Poltics, gender, race, Facts, Stats or go against the Global system Narritive
- castratikron 6y agoWhat if they made all social media read-only for a day or two preceding the election? Analogous to radio silence. Then it would be impossible for anyone to post misinformation about where to vote or other things that are designed to change the result of an election.
- untog 6y agoI imagine that would be hugely disruptive to people’s lives, given how central social media is these days. Besides, you’d presumably only do this to US users. So if someone wanted to spread some piece of viral misinformation they’d just post it under a non-US user and promote it.
- schwinn140 6y agoSimple solutions: * Block all political ads all the time. * Require all political parties, and their PACS, to register as a known Advertiser account within the system. Any time an ad runs, and regardless of the source, the associated party will be heavily penalized with a removal of their non-paid content. There needs to be ramifications for their abuse of the platform. Being that Facebook can't charge them a fine, penalizing their organic exposure is the only thing that they can hold against them. Multiple offenses will result in longer and longer periods of their content being "muted".
- lanevorockz 6y agoOnly if they wanted a fair balance, I think Facebook is just aiming to under advertise Conservatives. There is no secret that about 95% of all donations from Silicon Valley goes to Democrats. It won't take too long until the whole world is a mirror of California.
- zo1 6y agoIt's not quite 95% all around, here are the top ones with the percentage of all their employees' contributions to the Democrat party: Netflix = 98% Nvidia = 93% Adobe = 93% IBM = 90% Salesforce = 89% Google = 88% Microsoft = 85% Apple = 84% Paypal = 84% Cisco = 80% Amazon = 77% Facebook = 77% Intel = 68% Broadcom = 68% Oracle = 67% Texas Instruments = 60% Qualcomm = 50% Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-ranked-by-employee-donations.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-... Still pretty bad, and makes one worry about where those employees are donating their non-political and non-tracked donations to. Edit. Added source.
- zeroonetwothree 6y agoSurprising it’s the Dems in Congress that want to break up tech then. I guess money isn’t everything.
- netcan 6y agoHonestly, I've been quite shocked over the last 5 years or so at Zuck's take on political and politically adjacent politics. I get that they're of the "money at any cost" ethic, but a lot of decisions (or lack thereof) have been downright imprudent. These last minute decisions are likely reactive to something, whether or not it's actually reactive to the debate comment that this writer thinks triggered it. My (uneducated) guess is that its more related to stuff happening on the platform itself. In any case, the creepiness of fb just keeps rising. Maybe they'll end up exploding the whole thing.
- save_ferris 6y ago> In any case, the creepiness of fb just keeps rising. Maybe they'll end up exploding the whole thing. Somehow, I doubt it. They’ve established themselves as a major tech stock, largely through the “money at all costs” ethic you describe above, they have billions of users that derive significant amounts of self-worth from the platform, and a world-class marketing arm to keep reminding us how much good they’re doing for the world. Barring some major fraud scandal, I don’t think the market would be interested in moving away from them at all.
- NortySpock 6y ago"These last minute decisions are likely reactive to something" The House "Facebook and others have monopoly power, are abusing it, and should be split up" report, perhaps. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/house-amazon-facebook-apple-google-have-monopoly-power-should-be-split/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/house-amazon-fac...
- Voloskaya 6y ago> These last minute decisions are likely reactive to something Yes, reacting to Trump having a 16 point lag just a month before election day, so now Facebook is strategically aligning itself more on the side of the likely winner, which is increasingly talking about regulating FB. If the polls were tied, I am certain this would not happen.
- dangjc 6y agoWe have a serious misinformation problem. It started with Fox News decades ago, and now it’s amplified by Facebook. It’s too easy for bad info and conspiracy theories to proliferate, and good info to be downplayed, before the truth rises to the top. Most voters aren’t getting the full picture and the media sources they consume aren’t integrating evidence well.
- joquarky 6y agoRetractions and corrections are usually buried deeper than the original erroneous statement.
- weeboid 6y agoThe rot is already set and hardened. Just as MySpace user freedomed their way to a tacky, spastic shitshow, FB has dwindled down to rabid, death cult, Fox Zombie boomers screaming at clouds. WTF are they doing w/ Insta and WA monetization? Anyone know the rev breakdowns (thx, too lazy to look through the quarterlies)
- cryptica 6y agoIt's good to see Facebook finally taking a firm stand against fake news and hate speech. All this hateful fake news makes me (pronouns he/him) feel unsafe about the future. The other day, my Fitbit indicated to me that my heartbeat was abnormally high; I was panicking and hyperventilating... Thankfully Alexa automatically ordered me a puffer from Amazon and I was able to calm myself down. That's how unsafe all this fake news makes me feel. Someone needs to take a stand against Trump's basket of deplorables. They're hurting my democracy. I'm so pleased that Biden is taking a lead in all the polls. These deplorables are not qualified to vote, they don't know what's good for them so we have to choose for their own protection. I know how important it is that we can all feel safe. Biden is the only way to feel safe.
- walleeee 6y agoAssuming this is satire, how does it add to the discussion?
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- hanselot 6y agoSince when did the honus of identifying sophistry fall to someone else? Only you are able to think critically about what information you absorb. If you don't, you probably shouldn't have the right to affect other people's lives.
- shadowprofile77 6y agoAm I missing something or has a controversy been created out of nearly thin air by random politicized factors here? Facebook may be a gigantic media company with a whole social component, but it's still in many ways (especially in terms of advertising) mostly another media company with lots of eyeballs, fundamentally like so many media companies that have existed for a very long time. Since political ads have been a part of media placement since (a very damn long time ago), what justification beyond hand wavey "it's a social danger" arguments can some of you favoring this state for such a ban or the feeling of having to pursue it? It almost seems as if this only started being a supposed problem since the unpopular-among-educated-liberal-types Trump won an election. Prior to that I recall much less mention of anyone worrying too much about political ads on social media (my memory might be faulty on that though). So, is it a general thing or are we talking about many people now thinking there's a problem mainly because someone they happen to dislike took advantage of social media to win a major election? Also worth noting: 1. Much of the really rabid fake news type content on platforms like Facebook doesn't even come from paid in-platform ads. It's sourced and virally spread from people (or fake accounts in many cases) posting it more or less organically, albeit in a highly coordinated way sometimes. 2. The whole argument of Russia supposedly using Facebook to "influence" the 2016 election has yet to be in any way credibly substantiated and has gone nowhere so far. Or does anyone have a piece of concrete evidence arguing the opposite to put forth?
- mixmastamyk 6y agoI wish they'd also de-emphasize the ugly political memes that are constantly forwarded by some addicted folks. I used to unfollow them, but recently found that if I blocked their sources instead it was more effective because I could still hear from them when they post themselves. I just don't see any use for this content, it is 99% garbage.