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All political ads running on Google in the US
- mettamage 2y agoSeems like a general handy site in general as a sort of Google Trends alternative. I know it's not an actual alternative but to pick up on certain trends from advertizers.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Dig1t 2y agoAm I reading this wrong or does it seem like the majority of these are for Harris/Democrats?
- Dwedit 2y agoWhen one campaign raises 3 times as much money as the other campaign, that tends to happen.
- lucianbr 2y agoInteresting that money is considered to have a large influence on US elections, one side has a lot more money, and yet the race is incredibly close.
- cwillu 2y agoThe polling may be close, but we really won't know if the election is close until the final numbers come out.
- sickofparadox 2y agoMoney is a lot in US politics, but Michael Bloomberg will tell you himself that it isn't everything. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg_2020_presidential_campaign#:~:text=By%20the%20end%20of%20January,in%20a%20US%20presidential%20election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg_2020_preside....
- nradov 2y agoMoney has an influence but it's not decisive. In the 2016 presidential election, the Clinton / Kaine campaign spent about twice as much as their opponents but still lost. Could they have won with even more money? Maybe?
- Yawrehto 2y agoIn my view, money might once have, but the number of persuadable voters is quite low. If someone has decided to vote for Trump, it's unlikely they will change their mind. And if someone is undecided, they'll probably vote for Trump, because let's face it, most people voting for Harris aren't voting because they like her platform - they're voting because they dislike Trump. If you don't dislike Trump, Harris's platform is nothing world-changingly new or different.
- rootusrootus 2y ago> most people voting for Harris aren't voting because they like her platform - they're voting because they dislike Trump That seems to be a popular conclusion by people who are on the Trump side. I see little evidence for it in real life. Many factors go into a political choice, and sure, disliking Trump is one of them, but most Harris supporters would not be voting R in any case because they do not agree with that platform.
- Yawrehto 2y agoTrue. But if you look at Harris's platform, it's not very ground-breaking, honestly. It's mostly just par for the course. A fair portion of the reason my family is voting for them is because Trump is a danger to democracy. Frankly, I'd barely looked at her platform - I just knew Trump had tried to destroy American democracy, and that is all that matters. I don't know how many people are genuinely enthused about her platform. Mostly it feels like it's fueled by hating Trump's platform and Trump (which, to be clear, is a valid reason!). I guess I should have been clearer - I meant that they're voting Harris not because her platform is great (honestly it seems about average for Democratic candidates), but because they dislike Trump's platform and Trump himself. They don't really care what Harris is proposing, as long as it's vaguely reasonable.
- 0x457 2y agoWell, I don't like her and her platform is alright compared to trump's, but that just words. Tim Walz is alright tho. I still voted for her. My sample size is definetly biased and small, but that is the sentiment I get from her voters that I know.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lazyeye 2y agoYes remember when billionaire money interfering in election campaigns was considered a bad thing?
- loeg 2y agoWhat do you think the demographics are of Google ad viewers vs Harris / Trump potential voters? But also, yes, the Harris campaign has spent about 2x as much in aggregate: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/us/elections/kamala-harris-donald-trump-campaign-finance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/us/elections/kamala-harri...
- Macha 2y agoI'd expect the demographics of google ad viewers to be more or less "the internet at large, minus a few markets like China were Google is much less prevalent, and a few groups techy enough to disproportionately run adblockers"
- afavour 2y agoIf I were in the Trump campaign I'd be targeting Facebook over Google by a fair margin. A lot of older folks live on there.
- ryandrake 2y ago"Facebook users" or "Google users" are way too broad for a political campaign ad to target. Party A's ad will go to too many of Party B's users and vice versa. They need to be much more carefully targeted to be effective. The purpose of a political ad is not to convince undecided people to vote for [party]. The number of undecideds is vanishingly small, so there's no ROI there. The purpose of a political ad is to convince people who have already picked a side to actually vote vs not voting. So you need to carefully target your "go vote" message to your own team.
- loeg 2y ago> more or less "the internet at large" Right. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/#who-uses-the-internet https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-bro... Older voters are less likely to use the internet (and those who do use it probably use it less). And there's a small urban/rural divide still.
- 2y ago
- teach 2y agoI suspect that the given the different demographics of the voting population, the republican side probably advertises more on Facebook.
- loeg 2y agoOr day time TV, yeah.
- bakugo 2y ago[flagged]
- marcosdumay 2y agoI wonder who the Republicans are aligned with... I can't think of an answer.
- older 2y agoIt's Musk. Opposite of economic elites!
- CamperBob2 2y agoThe world's wealthiest man, who has aligned himself with a billionaire property developer and reality-TV host, isn't part of the "economic elite?" Some days I just wake up on the wrong side of the rabbit hole, I guess.
- reverius42 2y agoI read it as sarcasm.
- marcosdumay 2y agoWell, one person does not make an entire class. But yeah, people that want him to send them some federal money... Nah, most of them seem to be on the other side too. And yet an entire party is supporting the guy. And he's getting about half of the votes. Maybe a lot of people are supporting him is secret.
- bakugo 2y agoNot the economic elites, or at least not most of them, otherwise they'd be better funded. Hope that makes sense.
- Yawrehto 2y ago
- romanovcode 2y agoYou are reading it right
- jabroni_salad 2y agoKeep in mind it is only google. Trump has been developing his comms channels for a decade with a core base composed of people who hate 'the media' in every form. And he has gotten pretty good at using those channels. It's also the case that everyone has heard of him now (you may recall that he was recently The President). Harris was put into candidacy at the last second and needs to speedrun building a president's worth of goodwill from scratch against a guy who functionally already has it. That means her marketing base is 'the entire country' and you need to hit that as hard as possible as fast as possible, which is expensive.
- neilv 2y agoKudos to Google. We also need this for all the non-Google outlets.
- mkmk 2y agoHere's the equivalent from Meta: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=active&ad_type=political_and_issue_ads&country=US&media_type=all https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=active&a...
- throwaway29812 2y agoHere's one from X via CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/04/politics/doj-alleges-russia-funded-company-linked-social-media-stars/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/04/politics/doj-alleges-russia-f...
- omoikane 2y agoLooks like you have to supply a search query for the link to work. I just search for the letter "a": https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=active&ad_type=political_and_issue_ads&country=US&media_type=all&q=a&search_type=keyword_unordered https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=active&a... They also have an aggregate report page. It doesn't seem possible to break it down by ad category, but looks like the most recent big spenders are all political ads: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/
- ccleve 2y agoThis really interesting, but I think they have an odd idea of transparency. I searched for some ads for a congressional race in 2018, obviously inactive, and they were all there, but I couldn't view them because: "This content was removed because the disclaimer didn’t follow our policy for ads about social issues, elections or politics." For what conceivable reason would they block historical ads, ads that actually ran in the past but are no longer active? Those ads probably didn't meet the disclaimer rules because the rules were different back in 2018.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y agoInteresting to compare the top ads when sorting "Amount spent: high to low" and "Number of times shown: high to low". Political ads from 4 years ago appear to have been shown many more times for much less cost. This year's ads seem considerably more expensive while also reaching a smaller audience.
- xnx 2y agoInflation is part of that.
- candiddevmike 2y agoNah, I think this one is just greed.
- jpadkins 2y agowhat caused this sudden change in greed? Were these actors not greedy before 2019?
- namrog84 2y agoCovid was a catalyst for bigger changes to go potentially unchallenged and opportunity for extra greed. 1 company dared do a thing and no one batted eye. Then 2nd. Domino's of greed and fake excuse on supposed inflation. But it was just domino's of greed
- exe34 2y agoboiling the frog slowly. if you start out being more expensive than traditional media, they won't use you. same thing with streaming. start out cheaper/more convenient/more comprehensive than traditional media - and an enormous market to grow into, so your shareholders are happy even with a reasonable price. wait a few years until you have saturated the market, and now the only way to achieve the holy growth is to raise the prices indefinitely.
- 2y ago
- matsemann 2y agoIn Norway it's forbidden with political ads on TV. Reasoning being that live images can have a huge influence, while also possibly being inflammatory and dumb down the debate. But main reason mainly is that it would give those with enough money to afford these "expensive tv ads" a leg up. However, this law hasn't been updated in decades. So it's still only TV ads that's illegal. So it feels like a quite arbitrary restriction now. Not saying it should be illegal on other media as well, but I do like the idea of it not being the size of your pockets determining the election. I guess that would be hard to police anyways now, with how influencers can sway stuff without it being an "ad", or how algorithms drive you into a rabbit hole of tailored content anyways.
- sneak 2y agoThe population of all of Norway is substantially less than that of the New York, LA, Chicago, or Houston metro areas. The scale of these markets or the spending related thereto is not comparable at all.
- teach 2y agoIt's fascinating. I'm at home and my pi-hole ad-blocking rules apparently trigger for that page, so although I can see the titles, all the images just fail to load.
- scythmic_waves 2y agoOh _that's_ what's happening. I was wondering why so many images were broken but I hadn't investigated.
- xyst 2y agoI don’t run a pi hole but use quad9 dns. Getting the same thing
- yccs27 2y agoSome filters trigger simply on the word "ads" in the url.
- lysace 2y agoFrom the insights tab, with a date range of the past year, the state where the second most ad money was spent was California (after Pennsylvania). California is not even close to being a swing state, afaik?
- entropicdrifter 2y agoThere are a ton of smaller races in California that end up hotly contested. The state has big money on both sides of those smaller races.
- fallingknife 2y agoThere are lots of people on the ballot besides Harris and Trump.
- pchristensen 2y agoCalifornia has over 10 million people more than Texas. It’s huge, so absolute number comparisons are often confusing. As usual, XKCD (can’t find the comic) - https://x.com/xkcd/status/1339348000750104576?lang=en https://x.com/xkcd/status/1339348000750104576?lang=en
- lysace 2y agoSure, but it's a winner-takes-all situation. (That tweet is excellent.)
- mananaysiempre 2y ago> can’t find the comic The tweet quotes the alt-text of https://xkcd.com/2399/ https://xkcd.com/2399/ “2020 Election Map”: > There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont.
- swatcoder 2y agoCalifornia is strongly "blue" on the national issues these days, but that doesn't mean that there aren't hotly contested elections and ballot measures at issue within the state. Seperately, it brings potential as a source of funding to spend elsewhere specifically because some of the national questions aren't really open. If you are confident in the ROI, you can run ads there to drive fundraising -- especially early on -- and then spend those raised funds in contested elections elsewhere. The same dynamic happens in soundly "red" markets, although that may not be apparent in this dataset because of the specific demographics of Google advertising.
- pembrook 2y agoDemocrat, Republican, or Independent, Google gets rich either way. You can clearly see price per view has gone up dramatically from the historical comparison. $2B in Google ad spend so far this cycle. Also interesting, the New York Times is the most viewed ad of this election season, having been seen 10M+ times. It appears the only true winners of US presidential election mania are Google and the Media.
- netsharc 2y agoIn the middle of the 2008 Dem primaries (H. Clinton vs Obama) it was obvious it won't be much of a race anymore, Obama was going to clinch it, but the media narrative was still portraying it as one... it made me wonder how much of it came because if the audience thinks it's a race, then they'll tune in, and more eyeballs = better ad sales. Ah, Allah bless the everlasting Attention Economy!
- akomtu 2y agoNFL is a microcosm of american politics. Two opponent teams, each has a trainer, a rich donor, some ideology and millions of fanatics who vote for their team no matter what. It may seem like the goal is to win the game on the stadium, but behind the scenes it's a well calculated auction of advertisements.
- dgfitz 2y agoYour first sentence is spot on. Your analysis is dead wrong.
- edm0nd 2y agoI disagree. The point is kinda spot on. Their end goal is to have their team perform the best possible in order to sell out tickets/stadiums/merch and have high ratings from viewership and syndication. It's about as American as you can get.
- j1mmie 2y agoIn the age of information warfare, ads are a weapon and Google is the modern day Colt. If you sell guns to the North, the South needs more guns from you. If you sell to the criminals, the cops need more guns from you. Not sure what this is called but it's definitely not "don't be evil"
- mwest217 2y agoWhy in the world is a generic NY Times ad categorized as a political ad?
- AftHurrahWinch 2y agoGood question. These ads don't look political to me: The New York Times: https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR04753989623657529345?region=US&topic=political https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR047539896236... The Economist: https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR12923782096626909185?region=US&topic=political https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR129237820966...
- YZF 2y agoIf certain media is associated with a certain political position then one could consider their advertising to be political?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tgtaptarget 2y ago[dead]
- hammock 2y agoThe top-spent ad in the last 7 days included no targeting other than "nationwide, 18+." That seems folly, doesn't it? Huge waste?
- silverquiet 2y agoWouldn't an essentially untargeted ad be the most expensive to run? Meaning that something like that will always be the top-spent?
- hammock 2y agoHow “expensive” (in the sense of total spend) an ad is is entirely driven by what budget you allow for the order. But without targeting constraints you will get essentially remnants and are unlikely to reach any of your actual target, e.g. undecided likely voters in swing states
- mh- 2y agoNot necessarily. If you bid low, you're effectively picking up "remnant" inventory that no one else was willing to pay to target.
- nradov 2y agoA lot of nationwide ads aren't intended to directly influence voting. Rather they are campaign donation solicitations to get more money to run future ads targeted to undecided voters in swing states. Just about everyone 18+ nationwide could afford to make a small campaign contribution if they care about the outcome.
- swayvil 2y agoTalk about normalized bad behavior.
- cedws 2y agoPolitical advertising just makes democracy look like a total joke. If you can buy votes by shoving ads in peoples’ faces that’s not a democracy, that’s an oligarchy.
- readyplayernull 2y agoCircenses et panem
- Loughla 2y agoI'm confused how that applies to political ads.
- Dilettante_ 2y agoThere is a perspective from which all politics is just entertainment with audience participation, while The Powers That Be control the things that actually matter. (I'm not saying I endorse this view, I'm just trying to explain) t. Kooky conspiracy theory collector
- unclad5968 2y agoWell anyone can buy ads so it's not really an oligarchy. What alternative would you propose for candidates to get they're name out?
- Biganon 2y agoEqual time on national television, by law. Like they do in France for example.
- thrance 2y agoHonestly it doesn't work that well. Far-rights channels will push left-wing candidates to graveyard slots, or put them against 3 trained "interviewers", etc. Maybe it's still better than in the US? It's far from perfect.
- Jiiiiii 2y ago[flagged]
- Ninjinka 2y agoWhy can't they show the ads that violated policy on the ads transparency page? Seems like part of the transparency would be seeing what they removed.
- standardUser 2y agoNow THAT would be extremely interesting.
- amadeuspagel 2y agoFascinating stuff. I went down a rabbit hole with this particlar ad: https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR13265040647275937793/creative/CR18341814140017836033?region=US&topic=political https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR132650406472... It links to a website called fultongrandjury.com, which I at first thought would be an official government website, and what initially made me curious was the idea of spending money to advertise a government website, getting this additional credibility. Like, if the facts are so strongly on your side that you merely need to spend ad money to point people to official sources, that's a strong signal. > Fulton County Jury is a project of Our Community Media, Small Town American Media, and Small Town Truth. None of these are linked, but they can be found with Google. Our Community Media appears to be a website with stories scraped from Google News, one even has the Google News default image. Small Town America Media claims to support Small Businesses, Telehealth in Rural America and Digital Literacy. Their latest news: Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws Are Political Theater by State Politicians. Small Town Truth is probably the most inspiring: > For over 200 Years > American has fought for truth > Now.... > We need you to help They have page dedicated to "discovering truth", telling it apart from "russian fake news"[1] which is copied from and links to a medium post. None of these websites have information about who's behind them. No person. No address. They have contact pages, but these are just forms, probably to add you to some spam mailing list. [1]: https://www.smalltowntruth.org/discover-truth https://www.smalltowntruth.org/discover-truth
- jodacola 2y agoSmall Town Truth says it's a registered 501(c)(3). I just found it by searching here: https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/ https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/ It leads to further rabbit holes I don't have the time to dig into now, but I might later, because now I'm very curious where it leads.
- jodacola 2y agoMeetings ended and I couldn't wait to get back! So, searching via that Exempt Organization Search led to a 501(c)(3) letter being issued to Small Town Truth, mailed to a residential address in the care of the "Better Narrative Group" - another "interesting" site[0]. Doing a little more searching, I've found another 501(c)(3) in care of Better Narrative Group: Soul of a Nation Media. Similar setup. In trying to find more information to connect some dots, I found Soul of a Nation Media's taxes were filed by ChurchBiz[1], but this hasn't led to anything interesting. Both Small Town Truth and Soul of a Nation Media changed addresses to a PO Box in Virginia in 2022. Oh, and here are another two I just found related to Better Narrative Group: American Volunteer Corps[2], Better Neighbors Network[3]. To not assume malice, maybe it's a concerned citizen trying, in their own way, by establishing these organizations. Something feels off about the sites, though - not much content, a little dead behind the eyes, and I can't put my finger on the actual purpose of the sites. Odd. [0] https://www.betternarrativegroup.org https://www.betternarrativegroup.org [1] https://www.churchbiz.com https://www.churchbiz.com [2] https://www.americanvolunteercorps.org/ https://www.americanvolunteercorps.org/ [3] https://www.betterneighborsnetwork.org/ https://www.betterneighborsnetwork.org/ edit: formatting
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoThis is the data Googles (and others’) models are trained on Extreme biases in data mean extreme biases in inference
- technotarek 2y agoIf anyone is interested in connecting with someone working in this space, please hit me up. We’ve been building tools for political media buyers for the last several years. We draw data from the Google Transparency DB, Meta’s equivalent and other disparate sources to allow campaigns to analyze the spending in greater detail. It has been really interesting from an engineering perspective, but also just to learn more about how this industry operates.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- NotBoolean 2y agoIf the spend figure is right the difference between the money spent in the USA and UK is larger than I expected. Highest weekly spend in the UK is just under £1M (Dec 2019) while in the US it’s £50M (Oct 2024). That’s 10 times more spending with only 5 times the population.
- kevin_p 2y agoThe UK is poorer than you think. Per-capita GDP is $82k in the US vs $49k in the UK (source: World Bank), which accounts for about two thirds of the gap in ad spend.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- morpheuskafka 2y agoAccording to the site, ad targeting is allowed based on gender and age, but not race or religion, for example. All four of those categories were previously used to restrict voting and are now legally protected from voting discrimination. Why allow targeting some of them but not all? Either all should be disallowed (for the same reason that race, religion, etc are), or all should be allowed (on the reasoning that this is about choosing who to promote your message to, not in any way affecting who can vote or independently search about election issues--which is presumably why age and gender are allowed).
- lazide 2y agoWell, targeting works. Really well. Advertisers love it. It’s also why it gets banned when it gets used to hurt people too much.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago> Why allow targeting some of them but not all? Either all should be disallowed (for the same reason that race, religion, etc are), or all should be allowed Easy: as already mentioned advertisers love targeting. On the other hand, considering the current sentiment in society allowing gender and age as targeting category causes much less of an outcry (or even shitstorm) than race and religion. So, to balance earning vs risk for reputation damage the first two categories are allowed for advertising targeting while the latter two are not.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI see the sentiment often from people who want a categorically clear legal system. The answer is that these choices are often made taking into account real world situations. Not just theory. When different rights come into conflicts, the courts weigh them against each other, and take into account the magnitude of the real world impact. Ban all for a logical simplicity sounds appealing, but the courts frequently find that this would lead to a greater Injustice then mixed decisions.
- zahlman 2y agoShowing untargeted ads to children might be worse than showing them targeted ads.
- mef 2y agointeresting that the company that has the most viewed ads for 2024[1] ("FORCE VECTOR COMMUNICATIONS") has a total of 3 matches when you search for them[2] [1] https://adstransparency.google.com/political?region=US&topic=political&start-date=2024-01-01&end-date=2024-10-26 https://adstransparency.google.com/political?region=US&topic... [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22force+vector+communications%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22force+vector+communicatio...
- tomschwiha 2y agoNow you added hackernews :)
- xyst 2y agoJust shell companies for various PACs and how rich people donate through dark pools. The Citizens United vs FEC ruling is a sham.
- kristopolous 2y agoThe obscuring seems to be unnecessary these days. I don't know how many people are still fooled by names like "Americans for America" who would actually change their vote after finding out it's just a group of real estate speculators or whatever.
- doe_eyes 2y agoI think it's the other way round. You're a respectable individual, you're buying some low-brow ads - and you don't want a newspaper to publish an expose about you, your employees throwing a hissy-fit, or a neighbor getting upset.
- kristopolous 2y agoI understand that mentality but it's clearly not how people behave. People who buy into bullshit do so as a core personality behavior. It's like how doomsday cult members double down when the predictions don't come to pass. I mean https://www.heavensgate.com/ https://www.heavensgate.com/ is still around. Being discredited has the opposite effect as the intended. It instead concretizes the delusions. Exposing charlatans seems to only increase the fanaticism of their adherents.
- progrus 2y agoOk, now let’s see the breakdown of winred/ActBlue email getting through spam filtering. IOS only capitalizes one of those, so there’s a clue
- Aeolun 2y agoTitle: Please vote! Views: 8-9k Total spent: $14-15k This country is doomed.
- kristopolous 2y agoI'm still amazed these stock images with highlighted text don't send off immediate red flags in everyone's mind that they're being tricked. Especially ones that have children, veterans, or old people, usually with big frowns or drooping flags. "Don't disappoint this stock image! Vote no on prop blah-blah" It works. This strategy actually works
- JadeNB 2y ago> It works. This strategy actually works It works because, in any context, people are easily persuaded that something that they want to believe is true. Willingly or not, people are often looking for excuses to believe something, not evidence to help determine whether it is true. (Of course, you and I are included in this; believing oneself immune to propaganda is just a way of being more vulnerable to the kind of propaganda targeted at people who pride themselves on this supposed immunity.)
- kristopolous 2y agoSure but if I see a mailer or an ad in that format, it's a red flag. The only way this would work as a propaganda tactic on me is if they reversed that, if say, the "yes on 3" campaign sent out a glossy mailer with a frowning minority wheelchair bound veteran that said "save our seniors. Vote no on 3". If that subterfuge happened, then I fell for it
- fragmede 2y agoSince dark money no longer has to be registered, no only would the "Yes on 3" team send out a "No on 3" flyer, it would have a wrong explanation of what 3 is, and give really bad reasons for voting no, so even if you did read it, you'd still vote yes (a no vote will raise taxes on seniors and veterans and give the money to corporations) and hope voters don't check outside sources.
- kristopolous 2y agoIn the kind of advertisement I'm talking about there is no correlation between the imagery and the policy. You'll have a stock photo of a worried immigrant mother holding a child and the proposition will be about something like rezoning a light industrial area for mixed use. My universal response is "some bastard is trying to hustle me with stock photos" I wrote about this 8 years ago https://kristopolous.medium.com/the-voters-are-dumbfucks-heres-why-b4cca9f117b2 https://kristopolous.medium.com/the-voters-are-dumbfucks-her... I think my thoughts are basically the same today
- tgma 2y agoWeird that some ads are hidden on that page indicating "policy violations." You'd think in the ads transparency section they would be particularly interested in such ads or at least the reason for their violation for investigative purposes. That seems like a good way to slip controversial things under the rug.
- Tycho 2y ago[flagged]
- tetnis 2y agolol yes hope techies are colluding to ensure democracy
- arnaudsm 2y agoIn France we limit campaign budgets to 50M$ (population adjusted) and the state fully reimburses it. US presidential campaigns are 60x more expensive per capita! Have people in the US proposed such a cap to prevent corporations from buying elections, or is that too foreign of a concept ?
- aegypti 2y agoThat was the case until 2010. Controversially, the Supreme Court then found the First Amendment/freedom of speech prevents the federal government from restricting spending by corporations, unions, nonprofits, etc.
- bluesnews 2y agoThere have been attempts but when corporations are considered people limitations on their "speech" all eventually fail
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI hate this phrasing. Corporations aren't people. The finding was that people dont lose their rights when working together via a corporation. If you can buy a political sign and your friend can buy a sign, then the two of you can buy a sign together.
- asynchronous 2y agoThe issue is then the theoretical contract of the two of you together takes no real repercussion for breaking the law, whereas separately if you committed crimes independently then you could be put in jail. We don’t have capital punishment for corporations, and we should.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoHow does that argue against people still having rights. Corporate death penalty exists, it is called bankruptcy. It is called criminal liability and people are put in jail. You just seem to disagree with how harsh (or not) the penalties are. However, that doesn't say anything about taking away rights.
- idatum 2y agoEarly voting has advantages, one being that once I drop my ballot in the local ballot collection box, I can more easily ignore political ads. It's liberating.
- googlehater 2y agoi kneel