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Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

198 points by bhouston 1y ago

footlose_3815 1y ago
Maybe a month ago, I started getting bombareded with every element of the right wing media ecosphere on Facebook. "Trump for President", Ben Shapiro, JD Vance, and piles of dogwhistle-named Facebook pages who are reaching for every way to feel relevant. Just recently, all of them, in-concert, started trying to focus on the lady who stole that Baseball at that game. All they are talking about for the last week. Promoted content, sent directly to people's facebook profiles. Whether or not I feel nationalist terrorists are running the US government, either way I feel the government shouldn't be working this closely with social media. It's extremely dystopian, and it cheapens everything around it.
- delichon 1y ago
  The first amendment prevents prohibiting it by law. If one party decided not to use social media to get their message out, the other party would get a huge advantage. Even if the parties agreed to leave that battlefield (a nice fantasy), they couldn't enforce it on their own candidates. So it would require a revolution or divine intervention to stop.
  - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
    The amendments aren't god's laws passed to George Washington on Mt. Rushmore. We can change them if we feel it's appropriate. Commenter isn't making the case that the action is illegal, he's saying it's dystopian that the Government is making such blatant use of targeted media. And I agree.
    - delichon 1y ago
      To change the first amendment such that it no longer applied to the speech of political parties would amount to a revolution. Even if it were somehow accomplished without violence, it would deeply change the form of government.
      - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
        I think it's a reasonable thing that the political parties shouldn't be able to use targeted online advertising that makes use of distressing amounts of demographic information to spread propaganda. Granted, I'm biased, I think we should ban targeted advertising altogether but still.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        Revolutions are the norm in the American setup. The first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another is sometimes called the "Revolution of 1800". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidentia... Every constitutional amendment changes our government. The people who wrote the mechanism in expected this. I doubt they expected us to just... stop amending.
        delichon 1y ago
        To say that every election and amendment is a revolution may be true in some sense, but it isn't near the colloquial definition. Neither, strictly speaking, would removal of political speech protections by the approval of 38 out of 50 states be an actual revolution, but that's a lot closer. And I doubt it's possible.
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        I certainly doubt it's going to happen - too many vested interests in power opposing. But it seems less impactful than, say, "women can now vote" in the spectrum of constitutional changes.
    - normalaccess 1y ago
      But they are the best set of laws invented by humans so far for self governance. No kings, no popes, no dictators. As flawed as the current system is, the laws are good even if the people executing them are trash. You can change lots of things much higher up in the system without taking away our God given rights enshrined in the founding documents to fix these kinds of issues.
      - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
        Hell of an assertion to make when the laws have given rise to an administration that, by virtue of loading the courts, have effectively mimicked the exact sort of power plays one expects from a dictator, up to and including allusions from the leader about not having the next election.
        normalaccess 1y ago
        The constitution is not a list of rights the people have, it's a list of rights the Government Doesn't have. You want to add government to fix government? Or take rights away to support your own chosen party? That's a fools errand. It's easy to spot a problem, but very hard to get the right solution.
        ToucanLoucan 1y ago
        Your entire assertion seems to boil down to "government bad" with no further analysis or theory. "Add government to fix government" is effectively how representative democracy works, at least in theory. The amendments we are currently discussing in fact fit the description of "adding government to fix government" quite literally; they were ratified additions to the Constitution. And like, yeah spotting problems is easier than giving right solutions, but what you're discussing here feels a lot more like just giving up on it entirely, which seems a horrific practice when the entity in question literally runs your society?
        normalaccess 1y ago
        The amendments to the U.S. Constitution generally limited the power of the government as time went on. Less government is *almost* always better. I'm no anarchist but I do believe that we need to massively trim the fat from time to time. And I also believe that America has the best foundation to build upon. I have yet to see better founding documents.
    - heavyset_go 1y ago
      The last thing that ever needs to happen in the current US political climate is a Constitutional convention. The worst people on the planet would love for an opportunity to carve up what few remaining rights people have left in favor of enshrining their power for centuries to come.
    - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
      We actually can't pass new amendments, it would require the red states to cooperate and there's more of them because they vote by land instead of by person Same reason we're stuck with gerrymandering and the electoral college and the Senate and the misapportioned House and a generally dumb implementation of elections
  - normalaccess 1y ago
    This is true, it's an unfortunate race to the bottom of the attention economy. The only real solution is educating people about the trash tactics that are used to manipulate them.
    - delichon 1y ago
      Knowing how, why, when, and about what you are being manipulated unfortunately does little to prevent it. Knowing that encourages people to do the same to others in self defense. I'd love to be wrong. If you can find evidence that learning the techniques provides some immunity from them, I'd be happy to see it. I'm well aware of how I'm being manipulated with regard to the murder in Charlotte, yet it still presses my buttons. The same is true when a beautiful women asks me for anything. Self awareness has little effect on primal motives.
    - JKCalhoun 1y ago
      > The only real solution Do there western countries have the same problem as the U.S.? Are they doing a better job at what you suggest?
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    Displaying ads might be constitutionally protected speech. But, other parts of the process, like running a giant surveillance network, doesn’t seem to be particularly protected. If anything, running a giant surveillance network would be a violation of the fourth amendment if it were done by the government and the fourth amendment were interpreted as broadly as the first couple.
everdrive 1y ago
This makes me wonder why people put up with targeted content whatsoever. I actually have a friend who works in game development, and he has a real chip on his should regarding the current attitude that the discoverable customer base has. For instance, he sees a lot of people who think developers are pushing things down people's throats, are making games bad or annoying on purpose just so that users get frustrated, etc. It's pretty disheartening to him since from his perspective everyone is just doing the best they can, sometimes with quite poor results given the constraints of the market. But ultimately, they really just want to make games that people love and are really try to do so. My personal theory is that people broadly are becoming very thick skinned with regard to content being pushed on them, but at the same time it has not occurred to people to simply disengage. (ie, they're getting frustrated by the pushers, but aren't leaving forums, social media, youtube, etc. so that no one can push anything on them) I think in some of the darker corners of the web, you currently see this associated with the term "slop." I assume we're all familiar with metaphor. Most of our waking lives (assuming we're on normal platforms) someone is out trying to twist your arm to get your attention, to get you outraged or jealous; anything for attention. I really think it's breeding an incredible amount of unthinking cynicism, and at least some of the negativity you find online is just related to all the different wars for attention. As noted, it's quite surprising just how many people won't step away from this crazy attention marketplace. It's easy to do in principle: Put down your phone, your computer, and read a book or take a walk. In practice, it's more like overeating; people were never built with impulse control against novelty and social outrage, and lacking the fundamentals most people fail this test.
- n8m8 1y ago
  Good point. Has me thinking: In any field, over time, there's R&D for it to become more effective. How this progression might apply to marketing: 1. Printed ads, newspapers, billboards, magazines -- You can explain your product and show a picture of what it looks like to demonstrate the value to customers 2. Television ads, black and white -- We can demonstrate the value to customers so well! 3. Wait a minute, if we put music in the TV ads, the songs get stuck in peoples' heads, this is good for our brand 4. Color TV Ads -- We have all the previous benefits but can get more attention with color! 5. We can target regional TV ads in different parts of the country! 6. Oh, we can target any ad based on demographics on social media? This will be effective 7. Ok, now we want to keep targeting ads, but we're gonna A/B test multiple versions of the ads in real time to maximize effectiveness 8. Ok, I need to maximize effectiveness of this ad, let me generate an AI mockup of the product I'm selling to create an illusion of the lifestyle my brand represents My point is, marketing has been optimized over time and will continue to optimize for profit in the future, and the result has been a divergence in the actual goal of marketing: We've gone from "Demonstrate the value of our product" to "Create an illusion of our lifestyle".
sixQuarks 1y ago
There’s always one side that is lying, gaslighting, and deceiving. I’m surprised more people still can’t see what’s going on
- normalaccess 1y ago
  I always assume it's both sides (no matter the topic) to some degree.
  - loudmax 1y ago
    Yes, but not to the same degree. The disagreement is on which side is worse.
    - normalaccess 1y ago
      They take turns.
      - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
        Ah remember when Obama sent soldiers into US cities to soft launch a civil war, good times
- boxed 1y ago
  [flagged]
NickC25 1y ago
It's very sad, and very telling that our biggest corporations have become suckups to the reactionary side of the right wing and continue to carry the water for the most degenerate and attention-seeking members of said right wing. None of these nutcases offer true help to society (note: neither do the extreme leftists, just so we're clear that I'm not team red or team blue), and it does no good that our corporations are actively picking a side.
- jerrygenser 1y ago
  Corporations are picking the side that's in power. If team blue is in power they would pick blue. Corporations are (usually) not moral or inherently politically motivated other than to the extent of optimizing short term shareholder value.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    You are being reflexively downvoted, but I am not certain as to why. The assessment strikes me as accurate. Few corps I worked for were willing to go on a limb 'for a cause'. The exceptions were smaller companies where owner had a much bigger say and could effectively align goals with their beliefs.
- everdrive 1y ago
  The extreme flip-flopping of the major tech companies provides a few small possibilities that don't paint a good picture no matter how you look at it: - They never believed in progressive causes, and were just siding with what they believed was the social majority. (and so when they perceive the social majority has changed, they immediately follow and would follow _any_ social majority.) - They don't agree with the current anti-progressive social movement (ie, they still hold their old beliefs) but none of them have any backbone whatsoever, and are getting in line with virtually no resistance or fight. - All the tech company CEOs just happened to be radicalized at the exact same time. I'm sure that #1 is the most reasonable answer, although perhaps there's a dash of #3 in there. In any case, you'd have to question whether a party-in-power (from a social movement perspective) wouldn't just encourage this trend when _they_ were the ones winning.
gchamonlive 1y ago
At this point, whoever opposes big tech regulation is in favor of these kinds of abuses happening. Here in Brazil there is a big discussion around this regulation but for other reasons, like the social media algorithms pushing child abuse content to potential pedophiles. The criticism against these regulations are all valid and need to be discussed, because we also don't want to create these mechanisms at the government level only so the next authoritarian president can use them for their own personal agenda. But all this discussion should be in the direction of how these companies are going to be regulated, not how they aren't.
- cjs_ac 1y ago
  > we also don't want to create these mechanisms at the government level only so the next authoritarian president can use them for their own personal agenda There's nothing stopping this hypothetical authoritarian president from creating this after they come to power.
  - _Algernon_ 1y ago
    It requires less political capital to repurpose an existing system than to introduce a new system for a specific purpose. See for instance the number of times Chat Control has failed to become law.
  - molszanski 1y ago
    It’s much easier to abuse existing oppression machine than to build it from scratch
  - gchamonlive 1y ago
    Which is why the democratic system relies on checks and balances. If the democratic institutions are strong an authoritarian governor will at worse face incredible pushback from the judiciary, if Congress and executive powers are taken over. If one of the three powers remain independent, there is hope to recover the democratic stability without a violent revolution.
- armchairhacker 1y ago
dizlexic 1y ago
[flagged]
- RandomBacon 1y ago
  It sounds like you're saying that you believe money is more important than morals. You're not alone, and that is a problem.
  - dizlexic 1y ago
    I believe an individual is responsible for their own opinions. I also believe that people should spread their own opinions however they can. Personally, I think my outlook is much more moral than someone who wants to silence others. Objective truth is very rare, but differences of opinion are everywhere.
    - layer8 1y ago
      Propaganda isn’t the same as mere opinions, however. It is often deliberate lies and misrepresentations designed to deceive, lies that those who disseminate them don’t actually believe themselves.
      - dizlexic 1y ago
        yeah, propaganda isn't inherently lies or misrepresentations. It is biased, but are you advocating the removal of all biased advertising?
    - titzer 1y ago
      So let's get this straight. You admitted you make money off ad revenue which is 100% a business of using a platform for one thing (the thing people want) to instead allow random people with money to force information on other people to get them to think and do things (when said target people would, almost by definition, prefer not to think or do those things), selling people's attention and interrupting their lives on the regular, subtly coercing them using whatever deceptive tactics work best (the kinds of psychological and neurological vulnerabilities that exploit unconscious mammalian behavior), and seem to think that nothing in the social contract constrains you from vetting what garbage lies people put in the ecosystem, as long as you are making money. Hard disagree on that being "moral". You let people put ideas into other people's heads because they pay you. And we're not talking "good" ideas like education and facts, but usually vapid consumerism crap at best and viral lies and propaganda at worst.
pen2l 1y ago
Reddit is one of the most potent places where opinion-shaping has been happening. I've been getting ads for Reddit everywhere recently (even thought I've been a reddit user for about 20 years). r/worldnews is pretty tightly controlled, it's a default subreddit meaning 50+ million people see the posts submitted in this subreddit, and most critically, the ensuing conversation in comments which goes only in one direction. Frankly I'm impressed this all was pulled off so seamlessly.
- jimbohn 1y ago
  And a lot of lead-generating subreddits are gatekept by admins/mods, sometimes for money. Also, there are russians offering services to promote (spam upvotes and fake comments) your product, and for some of our competitors it's very obvious when that happens, somehow reddit doesn't notice. Same about twitter, somehow super tight checks for normal users while some spam is somehow unfiltered. Social media is a destructive force.
- adhamsalama 1y ago
  That sub is pretty much controlled by Zionist. If you criticize Israel in any way shape or form, you'll get a permanent ban.
  - bhouston 1y ago
    This post from today on r/worldnews was hilarious -- all the top comments where deleted (and their authors probably permanently banned) because they didn't hold the party line: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1nc65sx/israel_is_not_committing_genocide_in_gaza_uk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1nc65sx/israel_i...
  - albulab 1y ago
    "controlled by zionists" Interestingly, every place Qatar doesn't pour billions into spreading propaganda sewage suddenly becomes "controlled by Zionists."
    - bjourne 1y ago
ehnto 1y ago
It is a disservice to yourself and family to not block ads. You shouldn't let these companies have a conduit into your life. I don't think it's amorale to use the service for which you are blocking the ads for either. If they don't like it, they can try a new business model. They don't protect you, why should you protect them.
- philipallstar 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - _Algernon_ 1y ago
    Stealing a physical thing = the previous owner can't use it. Copying a thing or accessing a platform = the previous owner can still use or sell it. Even if you consider it unethical access, the comparison to stealing really misses the mark.
    - jpadkins 1y ago
      ok, call it theft of services. You used the service but blocked how the creator makes money on the service. Is it really different from someone who runs out of a barber or restaurant?
      - snapcaster 1y ago
        yes, the barber doesn't wield enormous power over society duh
      - fragilerock 1y ago
        the restaurant spends resources (both physical and human) cooking and serving you the meal, likewise for the barber. a better example would be showing up late for a cinema showing so that you deliberately avoid watching the adverts and trailers... which i would guess most people would agree is morally fine?
        1y ago
deleted 1y ago
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chpatrick 1y ago
The Orbán government here in Hungary is one of the biggest ad spenders in the EU. You literally can't open a YouTube video without seeing propaganda with just plain lies, increasingly with AI-generated video. I find it really hypocritical that these allegedly progressive companies are willing to sell millions of dollars of brainwashing to the most hateful toxic regime in the EU.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  > allegedly progressive companies… If the last ~9 months has demonstrated anything, it's that this was never the case.
  - chpatrick 1y ago
    Hence "allegedly", but I think it's pretty telling that the people who work at Google and Meta are okay with this.
    - arethuza 1y ago
      I'd imagine those big salary cheques buy a lot of acceptance of what these companies are actually doing.
    - helqn 1y ago
      Should everybody who works at Google and Meta be progressive?
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        You don't have to be progressive to be not "okay with this".
jpadkins 1y ago
> Google did not pro-actively vet the truth of Israeli government claims It is really scary that people are pushing for Google and Meta to be the arbiter of truth. I don't think people realize what they are asking for. Western civilizations have a tradition of liberal free speech, and allowing the courts to sort out the specifics of what speech causes harm to what parties (libel, etc). There are already laws on the books for false advertising. In the US, the FTC is one who prosecutes those laws, not Google or Meta! full disclosure: I work on Ads at Google. You really don't want to privatize the prosecution, judgement, jury, and execution of speech laws to mega corps (and I am usually pro-privatization on most topics).
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  We do put additional editorial standards on news publications. This puts legal responsibility for the published content on the publisher. It doesn't seem like that big a step to apply a similar standard to advertising platforms. Advertisers have failed to selfregulate the ads they choose to publish and it is infeasible to use the court system to judicate every false ad (that would be millions of court cases). Ergo you do the obvious which is to make the advertiser name a human editor who holds legal responsibility for published ads (on behalf of the company). Now you can sue the advertising company (eg. Google) for millions of false advertisements at once.
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    Actually we don’t put any responsibilities on news publications beforehand. They can be sued after the fact for libel/slander.
    - etchalon 1y ago
      Yes, but you can sue the organization itself. However, our laws mean that Google, Meta, etc. are not legally responsible for the content of the ads they run. The creator of the ad is. And it is shockingly easy to construct a legal entity that is unaccountable.
basilikum 1y ago
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axegon_ 1y ago
That's (initially a small-ish) part of the reason why I've gone from "no ad blockers" to "block absolutely everything". That said, that is only part of the problem. Take tiktok for instance, which is a clean cut, self-installed direct link to the ccp. And not just tiktok: why do you think products such as this [1] exist? And they are dirt cheap too. If you think these aren't selling like mad, boy are you in for a shock. While griefters do exist, the dictators of the world absolutely love these opportunities. [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Android-Phone-Farm-Server-Box-System_1601459019294.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Android-Phone-Farm-Se...
nataliste 1y ago
It seems everyone is missing the forest for the trees by focusing on political motives, because the system is working exactly as designed. An ad platform is an auction-based machine for changing human behavior at scale, and a state actor is just the ultimate power user. They have a clear objective, an unlimited budget, and are willing to pay a premium for high-value keywords. To the ad exchange, a bid from the Israeli government to show an anti-UN ad is indistinguishable from a bid from Nike to show a shoe ad; it's just a high CPM impression from a client with a good credit line. The entire infrastructure is optimized to find the highest bidder for a given set of eyeballs, not to make a moral judgment on the message. You don't need to control the newspaper anymore, you just need to outbid everyone else for the ad space next to the article. It’s propaganda-as-a-service.
mediumsmart 1y ago
Everyone here including the author and me have been raised on propaganda and the mantra of the true alcoholic - this time its going to be different Regulating the corporations or their shadow, the government is both fine I guess and with that out of the way: lets discuss this!
talkingtab 1y ago
Ads are propaganda. Propaganda is Ads. Ads = propaganda. Propaganda is a tool to persuade people. Are ads an attempt to persuade people? So is it news that people are using ads/propaganda to persuade people? No. Will Google, Facebook, Amazon or Apple do anything that will harm their revenue as propaganda platform? No. Do Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple use propaganda? Yes. This is like reading an article about how weapons from weapon companies are being weaponized.
- bjourne 1y ago
  Yes, water is wet and all that. The harm done by Google and others by running ads for casino sites is probably much greater than the harm done by running Israeli propaganda. However, that battle has already been lost, in a way, and Google won't stop running casino ads because they make so much money on them. But perhaps they can be persuaded to stop running propaganda from genocidal states such as China, Russia, Israel, North Korea, etc.?
lyxsus 1y ago
UNRWA is compromised as hell, ofc it must go, so it's a pretty good use case for ethical ads usage. Definitely not a reason to enforce an additional censorship.
- adhamsalama 1y ago
  Is Israel your source?
  - lyxsus 1y ago
    Is Hamas and Iran yours?
  - albulab 1y ago
    I just read the Guardian report noting that UNRWA fired nine staff members to “preserve the integrity” of their mission. They weren’t punished for refusing to participate in any wrongdoing—instead, they were let go because investigations suggested they might have been involved in the October 7 attack Comments that suggest this was some kind of cover-up or rewriting of history only hurt their credibility. Implying that an entire group is spinning the past—even two years on—comes off as divisive. Let’s stick to the facts, not broad-brush accusations. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/05/nine-unrwa-staff-members-may-have-been-involved-in-7-october-attack?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/05/nine-u...
tensor 1y ago
Ads have long been weapons. It's time the west woke up to the threat of propaganda. And no, addressing this is not incompatible with "free speech." Propaganda is not free speech. The person paying for the propaganda has a voice they can use, that is their free speech. Whenever did it become somehow a "right" to be able to pay for large scale propaganda? Oddly enough this right is not afforded to those without the funds to pay for it.
j45 1y ago
It's profitable to let two sides of a topic run ads. After the pressure from the outcome of election influencing, there seemed to be new rules come in place. For other topics? Not so sure. Maybe it's something to look at before it has an election type response. There's parallels to this I suspect in other industries affecting the world.
daveguy 1y ago
Don't forget about the entirety of regular social media -- Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, etc, etc, etc. Planting follow bait and switching to propaganda memes is a pervasive tactic. At this point propaganda mongers only need processing investment not direct ad investment.
deleted 1y ago
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albulab 1y ago
This article brings up important questions about digital influence in wartime, but it's hard to ignore how one-sided the framing is when it comes to Israel. There's barely a mention of the October 7 massacre, where over 1,200 Israelis were murdered and hundreds taken hostage some of them are children. That’s the context behind Israel’s messaging. Leaving that out gives a very distorted picture of why these campaigns exist in the first place. The article criticizes Israel for running ads that target UNRWA, but completely skips the fact that more than a dozen UNRWA staff were accused of actively participating in the massacre and holding hostages, That allegation was serious enough for countries like the US, Germany, the UK, and Australia to suspend their funding. That’s not “disinformation,” that’s a real international response. There’s also zero mention of Hamas’s own propaganda operations. No discussion of how they use Telegram, TikTok, or social platforms to push graphic and often fake content to manipulate global opinion. If we're talking about the weaponization of information, how is that not relevant? Instead, the article spends thousands of words dissecting Israel’s side while ignoring everything else. It presents only one narrative and wraps it in a moral argument that conveniently excludes key facts and context. A fair critique would examine how all sides are using digital tools in modern conflicts, not just the one the author disagrees with politically. Otherwise, it’s not an analysis. It’s just a well-written piece of propaganda in itself.

198 points by bhouston 1y ago

Maybe a month ago, I started getting bombareded with every element of the right wing media ecosphere on Facebook. "Trump for President", Ben Shapiro, JD Vance, and piles of dogwhistle-named Facebook pages who are reaching for every way to feel relevant. Just recently, all of them, in-concert, started trying to focus on the lady who stole that Baseball at that game. All they are talking about for the last week. Promoted content, sent directly to people's facebook profiles. Whether or not I feel nationalist terrorists are running the US government, either way I feel the government shouldn't be working this closely with social media. It's extremely dystopian, and it cheapens everything around it.

delichon 1y ago
The first amendment prevents prohibiting it by law. If one party decided not to use social media to get their message out, the other party would get a huge advantage. Even if the parties agreed to leave that battlefield (a nice fantasy), they couldn't enforce it on their own candidates. So it would require a revolution or divine intervention to stop.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  The amendments aren't god's laws passed to George Washington on Mt. Rushmore. We can change them if we feel it's appropriate. Commenter isn't making the case that the action is illegal, he's saying it's dystopian that the Government is making such blatant use of targeted media. And I agree.
  - delichon 1y ago
    To change the first amendment such that it no longer applied to the speech of political parties would amount to a revolution. Even if it were somehow accomplished without violence, it would deeply change the form of government.
    - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
      I think it's a reasonable thing that the political parties shouldn't be able to use targeted online advertising that makes use of distressing amounts of demographic information to spread propaganda. Granted, I'm biased, I think we should ban targeted advertising altogether but still.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      Revolutions are the norm in the American setup. The first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another is sometimes called the "Revolution of 1800". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidentia... Every constitutional amendment changes our government. The people who wrote the mechanism in expected this. I doubt they expected us to just... stop amending.
      - delichon 1y ago
        To say that every election and amendment is a revolution may be true in some sense, but it isn't near the colloquial definition. Neither, strictly speaking, would removal of political speech protections by the approval of 38 out of 50 states be an actual revolution, but that's a lot closer. And I doubt it's possible.
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        I certainly doubt it's going to happen - too many vested interests in power opposing. But it seems less impactful than, say, "women can now vote" in the spectrum of constitutional changes.
  - normalaccess 1y ago
    But they are the best set of laws invented by humans so far for self governance. No kings, no popes, no dictators. As flawed as the current system is, the laws are good even if the people executing them are trash. You can change lots of things much higher up in the system without taking away our God given rights enshrined in the founding documents to fix these kinds of issues.
    - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
      Hell of an assertion to make when the laws have given rise to an administration that, by virtue of loading the courts, have effectively mimicked the exact sort of power plays one expects from a dictator, up to and including allusions from the leader about not having the next election.
      - normalaccess 1y ago
        The constitution is not a list of rights the people have, it's a list of rights the Government Doesn't have. You want to add government to fix government? Or take rights away to support your own chosen party? That's a fools errand. It's easy to spot a problem, but very hard to get the right solution.
        ToucanLoucan 1y ago
        Your entire assertion seems to boil down to "government bad" with no further analysis or theory. "Add government to fix government" is effectively how representative democracy works, at least in theory. The amendments we are currently discussing in fact fit the description of "adding government to fix government" quite literally; they were ratified additions to the Constitution. And like, yeah spotting problems is easier than giving right solutions, but what you're discussing here feels a lot more like just giving up on it entirely, which seems a horrific practice when the entity in question literally runs your society?
        normalaccess 1y ago
        The amendments to the U.S. Constitution generally limited the power of the government as time went on. Less government is *almost* always better. I'm no anarchist but I do believe that we need to massively trim the fat from time to time. And I also believe that America has the best foundation to build upon. I have yet to see better founding documents.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    The last thing that ever needs to happen in the current US political climate is a Constitutional convention. The worst people on the planet would love for an opportunity to carve up what few remaining rights people have left in favor of enshrining their power for centuries to come.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
    We actually can't pass new amendments, it would require the red states to cooperate and there's more of them because they vote by land instead of by person Same reason we're stuck with gerrymandering and the electoral college and the Senate and the misapportioned House and a generally dumb implementation of elections
- normalaccess 1y ago
  This is true, it's an unfortunate race to the bottom of the attention economy. The only real solution is educating people about the trash tactics that are used to manipulate them.
  - delichon 1y ago
    Knowing how, why, when, and about what you are being manipulated unfortunately does little to prevent it. Knowing that encourages people to do the same to others in self defense. I'd love to be wrong. If you can find evidence that learning the techniques provides some immunity from them, I'd be happy to see it. I'm well aware of how I'm being manipulated with regard to the murder in Charlotte, yet it still presses my buttons. The same is true when a beautiful women asks me for anything. Self awareness has little effect on primal motives.
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    > The only real solution Do there western countries have the same problem as the U.S.? Are they doing a better job at what you suggest?
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Displaying ads might be constitutionally protected speech. But, other parts of the process, like running a giant surveillance network, doesn’t seem to be particularly protected. If anything, running a giant surveillance network would be a violation of the fourth amendment if it were done by the government and the fourth amendment were interpreted as broadly as the first couple.

everdrive 1y ago

This makes me wonder why people put up with targeted content whatsoever. I actually have a friend who works in game development, and he has a real chip on his should regarding the current attitude that the discoverable customer base has. For instance, he sees a lot of people who think developers are pushing things down people's throats, are making games bad or annoying on purpose just so that users get frustrated, etc. It's pretty disheartening to him since from his perspective everyone is just doing the best they can, sometimes with quite poor results given the constraints of the market. But ultimately, they really just want to make games that people love and are really try to do so. My personal theory is that people broadly are becoming very thick skinned with regard to content being pushed on them, but at the same time it has not occurred to people to simply disengage. (ie, they're getting frustrated by the pushers, but aren't leaving forums, social media, youtube, etc. so that no one can push anything on them) I think in some of the darker corners of the web, you currently see this associated with the term "slop." I assume we're all familiar with metaphor. Most of our waking lives (assuming we're on normal platforms) someone is out trying to twist your arm to get your attention, to get you outraged or jealous; anything for attention. I really think it's breeding an incredible amount of unthinking cynicism, and at least some of the negativity you find online is just related to all the different wars for attention. As noted, it's quite surprising just how many people won't step away from this crazy attention marketplace. It's easy to do in principle: Put down your phone, your computer, and read a book or take a walk. In practice, it's more like overeating; people were never built with impulse control against novelty and social outrage, and lacking the fundamentals most people fail this test.

n8m8 1y ago
Good point. Has me thinking: In any field, over time, there's R&D for it to become more effective. How this progression might apply to marketing: 1. Printed ads, newspapers, billboards, magazines -- You can explain your product and show a picture of what it looks like to demonstrate the value to customers 2. Television ads, black and white -- We can demonstrate the value to customers so well! 3. Wait a minute, if we put music in the TV ads, the songs get stuck in peoples' heads, this is good for our brand 4. Color TV Ads -- We have all the previous benefits but can get more attention with color! 5. We can target regional TV ads in different parts of the country! 6. Oh, we can target any ad based on demographics on social media? This will be effective 7. Ok, now we want to keep targeting ads, but we're gonna A/B test multiple versions of the ads in real time to maximize effectiveness 8. Ok, I need to maximize effectiveness of this ad, let me generate an AI mockup of the product I'm selling to create an illusion of the lifestyle my brand represents My point is, marketing has been optimized over time and will continue to optimize for profit in the future, and the result has been a divergence in the actual goal of marketing: We've gone from "Demonstrate the value of our product" to "Create an illusion of our lifestyle".

sixQuarks 1y ago

There’s always one side that is lying, gaslighting, and deceiving. I’m surprised more people still can’t see what’s going on

normalaccess 1y ago
I always assume it's both sides (no matter the topic) to some degree.
- loudmax 1y ago
  Yes, but not to the same degree. The disagreement is on which side is worse.
  - normalaccess 1y ago
    They take turns.
    - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
      Ah remember when Obama sent soldiers into US cities to soft launch a civil war, good times
boxed 1y ago
[flagged]

NickC25 1y ago

It's very sad, and very telling that our biggest corporations have become suckups to the reactionary side of the right wing and continue to carry the water for the most degenerate and attention-seeking members of said right wing. None of these nutcases offer true help to society (note: neither do the extreme leftists, just so we're clear that I'm not team red or team blue), and it does no good that our corporations are actively picking a side.

jerrygenser 1y ago
Corporations are picking the side that's in power. If team blue is in power they would pick blue. Corporations are (usually) not moral or inherently politically motivated other than to the extent of optimizing short term shareholder value.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  You are being reflexively downvoted, but I am not certain as to why. The assessment strikes me as accurate. Few corps I worked for were willing to go on a limb 'for a cause'. The exceptions were smaller companies where owner had a much bigger say and could effectively align goals with their beliefs.
everdrive 1y ago
The extreme flip-flopping of the major tech companies provides a few small possibilities that don't paint a good picture no matter how you look at it: - They never believed in progressive causes, and were just siding with what they believed was the social majority. (and so when they perceive the social majority has changed, they immediately follow and would follow _any_ social majority.) - They don't agree with the current anti-progressive social movement (ie, they still hold their old beliefs) but none of them have any backbone whatsoever, and are getting in line with virtually no resistance or fight. - All the tech company CEOs just happened to be radicalized at the exact same time. I'm sure that #1 is the most reasonable answer, although perhaps there's a dash of #3 in there. In any case, you'd have to question whether a party-in-power (from a social movement perspective) wouldn't just encourage this trend when _they_ were the ones winning.

gchamonlive 1y ago

At this point, whoever opposes big tech regulation is in favor of these kinds of abuses happening. Here in Brazil there is a big discussion around this regulation but for other reasons, like the social media algorithms pushing child abuse content to potential pedophiles. The criticism against these regulations are all valid and need to be discussed, because we also don't want to create these mechanisms at the government level only so the next authoritarian president can use them for their own personal agenda. But all this discussion should be in the direction of how these companies are going to be regulated, not how they aren't.

cjs_ac 1y ago
> we also don't want to create these mechanisms at the government level only so the next authoritarian president can use them for their own personal agenda There's nothing stopping this hypothetical authoritarian president from creating this after they come to power.
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  It requires less political capital to repurpose an existing system than to introduce a new system for a specific purpose. See for instance the number of times Chat Control has failed to become law.
- molszanski 1y ago
  It’s much easier to abuse existing oppression machine than to build it from scratch
- gchamonlive 1y ago
  Which is why the democratic system relies on checks and balances. If the democratic institutions are strong an authoritarian governor will at worse face incredible pushback from the judiciary, if Congress and executive powers are taken over. If one of the three powers remain independent, there is hope to recover the democratic stability without a violent revolution.
armchairhacker 1y ago

dizlexic 1y ago

[flagged]

RandomBacon 1y ago
It sounds like you're saying that you believe money is more important than morals. You're not alone, and that is a problem.
- dizlexic 1y ago
  I believe an individual is responsible for their own opinions. I also believe that people should spread their own opinions however they can. Personally, I think my outlook is much more moral than someone who wants to silence others. Objective truth is very rare, but differences of opinion are everywhere.
  - layer8 1y ago
    Propaganda isn’t the same as mere opinions, however. It is often deliberate lies and misrepresentations designed to deceive, lies that those who disseminate them don’t actually believe themselves.
    - dizlexic 1y ago
      yeah, propaganda isn't inherently lies or misrepresentations. It is biased, but are you advocating the removal of all biased advertising?
  - titzer 1y ago
    So let's get this straight. You admitted you make money off ad revenue which is 100% a business of using a platform for one thing (the thing people want) to instead allow random people with money to force information on other people to get them to think and do things (when said target people would, almost by definition, prefer not to think or do those things), selling people's attention and interrupting their lives on the regular, subtly coercing them using whatever deceptive tactics work best (the kinds of psychological and neurological vulnerabilities that exploit unconscious mammalian behavior), and seem to think that nothing in the social contract constrains you from vetting what garbage lies people put in the ecosystem, as long as you are making money. Hard disagree on that being "moral". You let people put ideas into other people's heads because they pay you. And we're not talking "good" ideas like education and facts, but usually vapid consumerism crap at best and viral lies and propaganda at worst.

pen2l 1y ago

Reddit is one of the most potent places where opinion-shaping has been happening. I've been getting ads for Reddit everywhere recently (even thought I've been a reddit user for about 20 years). r/worldnews is pretty tightly controlled, it's a default subreddit meaning 50+ million people see the posts submitted in this subreddit, and most critically, the ensuing conversation in comments which goes only in one direction. Frankly I'm impressed this all was pulled off so seamlessly.

jimbohn 1y ago
And a lot of lead-generating subreddits are gatekept by admins/mods, sometimes for money. Also, there are russians offering services to promote (spam upvotes and fake comments) your product, and for some of our competitors it's very obvious when that happens, somehow reddit doesn't notice. Same about twitter, somehow super tight checks for normal users while some spam is somehow unfiltered. Social media is a destructive force.
adhamsalama 1y ago
That sub is pretty much controlled by Zionist. If you criticize Israel in any way shape or form, you'll get a permanent ban.
- bhouston 1y ago
  This post from today on r/worldnews was hilarious -- all the top comments where deleted (and their authors probably permanently banned) because they didn't hold the party line: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1nc65sx/israel_is_not_committing_genocide_in_gaza_uk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1nc65sx/israel_i...
- albulab 1y ago
  "controlled by zionists" Interestingly, every place Qatar doesn't pour billions into spreading propaganda sewage suddenly becomes "controlled by Zionists."
  - bjourne 1y ago

ehnto 1y ago

It is a disservice to yourself and family to not block ads. You shouldn't let these companies have a conduit into your life. I don't think it's amorale to use the service for which you are blocking the ads for either. If they don't like it, they can try a new business model. They don't protect you, why should you protect them.

philipallstar 1y ago
[flagged]
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  Stealing a physical thing = the previous owner can't use it. Copying a thing or accessing a platform = the previous owner can still use or sell it. Even if you consider it unethical access, the comparison to stealing really misses the mark.
  - jpadkins 1y ago
    ok, call it theft of services. You used the service but blocked how the creator makes money on the service. Is it really different from someone who runs out of a barber or restaurant?
    - snapcaster 1y ago
      yes, the barber doesn't wield enormous power over society duh
    - fragilerock 1y ago
      the restaurant spends resources (both physical and human) cooking and serving you the meal, likewise for the barber. a better example would be showing up late for a cinema showing so that you deliberately avoid watching the adverts and trailers... which i would guess most people would agree is morally fine?
      - 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

chpatrick 1y ago

The Orbán government here in Hungary is one of the biggest ad spenders in the EU. You literally can't open a YouTube video without seeing propaganda with just plain lies, increasingly with AI-generated video. I find it really hypocritical that these allegedly progressive companies are willing to sell millions of dollars of brainwashing to the most hateful toxic regime in the EU.

ceejayoz 1y ago
> allegedly progressive companies… If the last ~9 months has demonstrated anything, it's that this was never the case.
- chpatrick 1y ago
  Hence "allegedly", but I think it's pretty telling that the people who work at Google and Meta are okay with this.
  - arethuza 1y ago
    I'd imagine those big salary cheques buy a lot of acceptance of what these companies are actually doing.
  - helqn 1y ago
    Should everybody who works at Google and Meta be progressive?
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      You don't have to be progressive to be not "okay with this".

jpadkins 1y ago

> Google did not pro-actively vet the truth of Israeli government claims It is really scary that people are pushing for Google and Meta to be the arbiter of truth. I don't think people realize what they are asking for. Western civilizations have a tradition of liberal free speech, and allowing the courts to sort out the specifics of what speech causes harm to what parties (libel, etc). There are already laws on the books for false advertising. In the US, the FTC is one who prosecutes those laws, not Google or Meta! full disclosure: I work on Ads at Google. You really don't want to privatize the prosecution, judgement, jury, and execution of speech laws to mega corps (and I am usually pro-privatization on most topics).

_Algernon_ 1y ago
We do put additional editorial standards on news publications. This puts legal responsibility for the published content on the publisher. It doesn't seem like that big a step to apply a similar standard to advertising platforms. Advertisers have failed to selfregulate the ads they choose to publish and it is infeasible to use the court system to judicate every false ad (that would be millions of court cases). Ergo you do the obvious which is to make the advertiser name a human editor who holds legal responsibility for published ads (on behalf of the company). Now you can sue the advertising company (eg. Google) for millions of false advertisements at once.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  Actually we don’t put any responsibilities on news publications beforehand. They can be sued after the fact for libel/slander.
  - etchalon 1y ago
    Yes, but you can sue the organization itself. However, our laws mean that Google, Meta, etc. are not legally responsible for the content of the ads they run. The creator of the ad is. And it is shockingly easy to construct a legal entity that is unaccountable.

basilikum 1y ago

[dead]

axegon_ 1y ago

That's (initially a small-ish) part of the reason why I've gone from "no ad blockers" to "block absolutely everything". That said, that is only part of the problem. Take tiktok for instance, which is a clean cut, self-installed direct link to the ccp. And not just tiktok: why do you think products such as this [1] exist? And they are dirt cheap too. If you think these aren't selling like mad, boy are you in for a shock. While griefters do exist, the dictators of the world absolutely love these opportunities. [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Android-Phone-Farm-Server-Box-System_1601459019294.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Android-Phone-Farm-Se...

nataliste 1y ago

It seems everyone is missing the forest for the trees by focusing on political motives, because the system is working exactly as designed. An ad platform is an auction-based machine for changing human behavior at scale, and a state actor is just the ultimate power user. They have a clear objective, an unlimited budget, and are willing to pay a premium for high-value keywords. To the ad exchange, a bid from the Israeli government to show an anti-UN ad is indistinguishable from a bid from Nike to show a shoe ad; it's just a high CPM impression from a client with a good credit line. The entire infrastructure is optimized to find the highest bidder for a given set of eyeballs, not to make a moral judgment on the message. You don't need to control the newspaper anymore, you just need to outbid everyone else for the ad space next to the article. It’s propaganda-as-a-service.

mediumsmart 1y ago

Everyone here including the author and me have been raised on propaganda and the mantra of the true alcoholic - this time its going to be different Regulating the corporations or their shadow, the government is both fine I guess and with that out of the way: lets discuss this!

talkingtab 1y ago

Ads are propaganda. Propaganda is Ads. Ads = propaganda. Propaganda is a tool to persuade people. Are ads an attempt to persuade people? So is it news that people are using ads/propaganda to persuade people? No. Will Google, Facebook, Amazon or Apple do anything that will harm their revenue as propaganda platform? No. Do Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple use propaganda? Yes. This is like reading an article about how weapons from weapon companies are being weaponized.

bjourne 1y ago
Yes, water is wet and all that. The harm done by Google and others by running ads for casino sites is probably much greater than the harm done by running Israeli propaganda. However, that battle has already been lost, in a way, and Google won't stop running casino ads because they make so much money on them. But perhaps they can be persuaded to stop running propaganda from genocidal states such as China, Russia, Israel, North Korea, etc.?

lyxsus 1y ago

UNRWA is compromised as hell, ofc it must go, so it's a pretty good use case for ethical ads usage. Definitely not a reason to enforce an additional censorship.

adhamsalama 1y ago
Is Israel your source?
- lyxsus 1y ago
  Is Hamas and Iran yours?
- albulab 1y ago
  I just read the Guardian report noting that UNRWA fired nine staff members to “preserve the integrity” of their mission. They weren’t punished for refusing to participate in any wrongdoing—instead, they were let go because investigations suggested they might have been involved in the October 7 attack Comments that suggest this was some kind of cover-up or rewriting of history only hurt their credibility. Implying that an entire group is spinning the past—even two years on—comes off as divisive. Let’s stick to the facts, not broad-brush accusations. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/05/nine-unrwa-staff-members-may-have-been-involved-in-7-october-attack?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/05/nine-u...

tensor 1y ago

Ads have long been weapons. It's time the west woke up to the threat of propaganda. And no, addressing this is not incompatible with "free speech." Propaganda is not free speech. The person paying for the propaganda has a voice they can use, that is their free speech. Whenever did it become somehow a "right" to be able to pay for large scale propaganda? Oddly enough this right is not afforded to those without the funds to pay for it.

j45 1y ago

It's profitable to let two sides of a topic run ads. After the pressure from the outcome of election influencing, there seemed to be new rules come in place. For other topics? Not so sure. Maybe it's something to look at before it has an election type response. There's parallels to this I suspect in other industries affecting the world.

daveguy 1y ago

Don't forget about the entirety of regular social media -- Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, etc, etc, etc. Planting follow bait and switching to propaganda memes is a pervasive tactic. At this point propaganda mongers only need processing investment not direct ad investment.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

albulab 1y ago

This article brings up important questions about digital influence in wartime, but it's hard to ignore how one-sided the framing is when it comes to Israel. There's barely a mention of the October 7 massacre, where over 1,200 Israelis were murdered and hundreds taken hostage some of them are children. That’s the context behind Israel’s messaging. Leaving that out gives a very distorted picture of why these campaigns exist in the first place. The article criticizes Israel for running ads that target UNRWA, but completely skips the fact that more than a dozen UNRWA staff were accused of actively participating in the massacre and holding hostages, That allegation was serious enough for countries like the US, Germany, the UK, and Australia to suspend their funding. That’s not “disinformation,” that’s a real international response. There’s also zero mention of Hamas’s own propaganda operations. No discussion of how they use Telegram, TikTok, or social platforms to push graphic and often fake content to manipulate global opinion. If we're talking about the weaponization of information, how is that not relevant? Instead, the article spends thousands of words dissecting Israel’s side while ignoring everything else. It presents only one narrative and wraps it in a moral argument that conveniently excludes key facts and context. A fair critique would examine how all sides are using digital tools in modern conflicts, not just the one the author disagrees with politically. Otherwise, it’s not an analysis. It’s just a well-written piece of propaganda in itself.