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Why aren’t advertising platforms like Facebook and google held liable for the adverts they put out?
by midasuni 3y ago
Why aren’t advertising platforms like Facebook and google held liable for the adverts they put out?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoSection 230?
- richbell 3y agoSection 230 protects them from being held liable for content published by users. I don't think it would apply to advertisements that they are publishing on the site in exchange for money, but I'm not a lawyer.
- fsckboy 3y agowhat you call "users" are actually the product. The "users" of google's services are the advertisers.
- richbell 3y agoSure, but that's irrelevant to the matter being discussed.
- adrianmonk 3y agoUsually "you are the product" is a snarky, low-effort comment, but this particular case seems like the rare situation where it actually is directly relevant. If you run a self-service advertising system, then don't advertisers count as users, and don't their ads count as third-party content that the system operator isn't liable for? They may not be your service's only users, and people may not like ads, and ads have a commercial purpose, and advertisers pay for them, but I don't think Section 230 cares about any of those things.
- fsckboy 3y ago"you need to live in a tall building to be able to see who else lives in tall buildings" thank you for recognizing the connection I was making, you are a gentleperson and a scholar.
- bastawhiz 3y agoI suspect it doesn't matter whether they were being paid. Section 230, as best as I can read it, doesn't say anything about whether there's any exchange of value. And at least IMO, what would the expectation be? That Facebook investigates every single ad to make sure that nobody in them is impersonating someone else? How would you do that? To what extent does Facebook need to fact check all of the details of all of the ads across its whole platform? That's exactly the sort of hassle that 230 was intended to prevent the need for in the first place.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago> How would you do that? Either figure it out or don't do it?
- bastawhiz 3y agoI mean how would anyone do it? Can you tell AI and humans apart with no error? How could you allow any advertising online if any person could be deep faked and you were liable? What if it was just the text "I'm Bill Murray and I use Goodyear tires." Are you going to ask Bill Murray? Are you going to take a signed affidavit? Are you going to ban ads with people and opinions in them? I hate advertising and I hate Facebook, but I think there's really nothing the platform can do to stop fake ads because—especially as deep fakes improve—there's nothing that any platform can do as an intermediary to practically prevent them. That doesn't mean the advertisers can't be held liable (and they should). It's just wild to me to think that the intermediary should also be liable simply because they accepted money.
- midasuni 3y ago> How would you do that? Same way that TV stations and magazines do.
- bastawhiz 3y agoYou're assuming they do.
- crooked-v 3y agoWhat would the liability even be in this case? We don't expect anyone that shows ads to comprehensively screen those ads for non-obvious lies (such as in this case, "I have the rights to use the likeness of Tom Hanks for this ad").
- richbell 3y agoI think it's reasonable for platforms to be held to a basic standard of due diligence, especially with repeat offenders. YouTube has been promoting the exact same financial scam (Tessler AI investor created by Elon Musk) for years. The fraudsters haven't even bothered to change the video — there is ignorance, and then there is negligence. If platforms aren't liable for their advertisements in some respect, there's a direct financial incentive for them to look the other way.
- klabb3 3y agoSomething something ads are free speech!!
- Barrin92 3y agowe probably should given that Facebook, unlike with user content, takes a direct cut of a transaction. Seems to me like the incentives are completely out of whack if Facebook can profit from illegal content on their platform. Is it too much to ask that Facebook vets the content of advertisers they enter into direct business with? Facebook should take a loss on this, how else are they encouraged to keep this off the site?
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y agoThey have a responsibility to police issues once they’ve been raised though. What if your likeness was used in an Instagram add that significantly harmed your image or ability to earn income? Edit: but just because you’re big and have automated most of your business, doesn’t mean you should be able to claim ignorance. If I build a robot that shoots enemy combatants and it walks around shooting civilians, I can’t just go ‘oh well auditing these things automatically is hard so I guess it’ll just have to work that way’.
- vinyl7 3y agoWhen you're a tv network or radio station with only a handful of advertisers...it's easy to police. When you're Facebook and Google, who are willing to take money from anyone and everyone...they have to deal with likely tens of thousands of both advertisers and false reports....eventually the scale is too large to handle. Once things get that big...you kinda just have to yolo it and only worry about the big fires.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y agoWait, so your argument is because they don't care who they take money from, they shouldn't be responsible for validating that the ads are legit? That's ludicrous.
- vinyl7 3y agoI'm not saying they shouldn't be responsible. I'm saying that it's not feasible for them to be responsible. Unless they're willing to restrict who they take money from...but that's not how it works in american capitalism where numbers must always be going up because otherwise you're a dead company.
- AdieuToLogic 3y ago> When you're Facebook and Google, who are willing to take money from anyone and everyone... Therein lies the problem.
- voisin 3y agoThey should allow for DMCA takedown requests like sites that inadvertently have pirated content or YouTube with background music.
- kinnth 3y agoThey should be held liable. Just like a TV ad needs to be reviewed, vetted and is ultimately monitored and people can be fined for missrepresentation, why is social media which is not streaming video content any different?
- capableweb 3y agoI'm guessing these platforms will claim that the ads are "user generated content" and therefore they should be able to only post-review content posted and not be liable for anything, rather than pre-review and be liable when stuff slips through.
- FridgeSeal 3y agoAd industry people will tell you that the scale is “simply too large” and “how could we possibly?”. These are deterrences from reality, and if we were forced to take a close look at a large majority of online advertising we would plainly see that it ranges from the outright sketchy, to borderline lying and certainly user-harassing. They worry that if too much scrutiny were applied, they might actually face some consequences for their actions and we might reevaluate their position as arbiters of “what’s viable” on the internet.
- Yeul 3y agoWebsites that take their reputation seriously do vet their online ads. Facebook just isn't one of those I guess.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoThere are legitimately billions of ads served every day. How do we ensure that nothing falls through the cracks?
- bobthepanda 3y agoIs billions of poorly moderated ads a good thing?
- fullshark 3y agoCause technology outraces regulation.
- ChatGTP 3y agoIf Meta wanted too, they could do something about this...we have the labeling technology. What a policing nightmare we've created...