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Facebook Advertising The Almighty Buck Politics

Should Facebook Ban Campaign Ads? (techcrunch.com) 98

Posted by BeauHD from the arbiters-of-truth dept.
TechCrunch's Josh Constine argues Facebook, along with the other social networks, should flat out refuse to run campaign advertisements. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: Permitting falsehood in political advertising would work if we had a model democracy, but we don't. Not only are candidates dishonest, but voters aren't educated, and the media isn't objective. And now, hyperlinks turn lies into donations and donations into louder lies. The checks don't balance. What we face is a self-reinforcing disinformation dystopia. That's why if Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube don't want to be the arbiters of truth in campaign ads, they should stop selling them. If they can't be distributed safely, they shouldn't be distributed at all. No one wants historically untrustworthy social networks becoming the honesty police, deciding what's factual enough to fly. But the alternative of allowing deception to run rampant is unacceptable. Until voter-elected officials can implement reasonable policies to preserve truth in campaign ads, the tech giants should go a step further and refuse to run them. Facebook recently formalized its policy of allowing politicians to lie in ads and not be forced to verify their claims with third-party fact-checkers. In response to the policy, Elizabeth Warren decided to run ads claiming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg endorses Trump because it's allowing his campaign lies.

In a statement responding to Warren's ad, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said the company believes political speech should be protected. "If Senator Warren wants to say things she knows to be untrue, we believe Facebook should not be in the position of censoring that speech," the Stone said.
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Should Facebook Ban Campaign Ads? More

Should Facebook Ban Campaign Ads?

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  • The immediate effect will be... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SlideRuleGuy ( 987445 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2019 @08:10AM (#59308886) Journal

    If you ban overt campaign ads, people will simply begin running issue/policy ads, which will be clearly tied to specific parties and candidates. That might be a slight improvement, as it will force people to think for half a second at least. But it won't take the politics or lies out of FB.

  • So the people pass it on... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hiroshimarrow ( 5489734 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2019 @08:12AM (#59308892)

    You want every Tom, Dick and Harry to just be slathering their posts with their own links? That's the culture that would generate. Suddenly 100's of people would be posting links setup to 'donate' to a candidate or another. The lies would be a game of telephone where the inconsistencies would just get worse and worse from the original message as each person added their own flair. Suddenly a message of peace in the middle east would become a diatribe for why walls are needed... but link to contributing to the campaign of the same person.

    Politicians are shills... we know this. The least we can do is let the original message they endorse be put out there so that the message isn't twisted by people confused by their own narrative of the subject.

    • True. But that's already happening.

  • Yes. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 )

    Since they have decided that they will not hold politicians or their campaigns to any fact-checking standards, they should ban all of it because no official political information is better than official disinformation.

    • Why do you need to be told what to think and believe? Let them lie, loudly, for the whole world to see.

      • Because we are human. We really don't have the resources to fact check every topic. This is the core reason for the Democratic Republic which Americans live in. We are to elect people to represent our needs and desires and work out the details and compromises needed for the general running of a diverse country. We expect the people who are running to be explaining truthful information as they bring up their position on different things. But now we cannot trust even basic facts from candidates, and bi

        • If you can't quit FB because of some group you belong to or because you want to follow what your grandmother is up to these days, you could just do what Facebook is essentially telling you to do... , then ignore all political posts.

        • The current political climate is too stressful for the ordinary citizen.

          Then thank goodness for companies like Facebook that can protect the ordinary citizen from all that stress by banning speech that might confuse them. Will nobody think of the ordinary citizen?

    • Since they have decided that they will not hold politicians or their campaigns to any fact-checking standards, they should ban all of it because no official political information is better than official disinformation.

      May as well just take away the vote altogether then, if the people are supposedly just too stupid to vote correctly. Instead of having some star chamber decide what people can say, just have some star chamber decide who wins. Why keep it complicated?

      Nah, I'm with Churchill. Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Facts are shifty. On NPR this morning reporter said something like "Trump claimed Biden got Ukraine prosecutor fired to protect his son, which is not true". Well, that's not correct. I personally don't believe that Biden did that. There is no evidence that Biden did it but there's no concrete proof that that wasn't part of his motivation. I would expect a reporter to say something more like "Trump claimed..., but there is no evidence of this." and let me as a listener think to myself "yeah, sounds like Trum

  • A no-brainer.

  • Bandaids (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dbrueck ( 1872018 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2019 @08:19AM (#59308914)

    Assuming this part is true "Not only are candidates dishonest, but voters aren't educated, and the media isn't objective", then banning campaign ads is not going to help much, and probably has a bunch of unintended consequences as well.

    Also, turning to the gov't to provide a solution to every problem is a fool's errand, but that's another topic altogether.

    • Assuming this part is true "Not only are candidates dishonest, but voters aren't educated, and the media isn't objective", then banning campaign ads is not going to help much, and probably has a bunch of unintended consequences as well.

      Also, turning to the gov't to provide a solution to every problem is a fool's errand, but that's another topic altogether.

      I know, let's have a poll test! What could go wrong?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        I've long held that the ballot should not have any names on it. Just those blocked lines where you have to put one print character in each block. You'd vote for a person by correctly printing their name. Mispellings do not count. You have to get it 100% correct.

        WTF are people being allowed to vote when they're so disconnected that they can't even spell the candidates name?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )

      Also, turning to the gov't to provide a solution to every problem is a fool's errand, but that's another topic altogether.

      Huh ? What's the government's purpose besides trying to provide solutions to societal problems ?!?

      • Also, turning to the gov't to provide a solution to every problem is a fool's errand, but that's another topic altogether.

        Huh ? What's the government's purpose besides trying to provide solutions to societal problems ?!?

        Note I said 'every' problem - government can be a pretty good solution for some certain problems, and a reallllllly terrible one for many problems. :)

        • And they get to decide what is a problem they need to solve so they can perpetuate their growth and expansion.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        What's the government's purpose besides trying to provide solutions to societal problems ?!?

        To protect individual rights and contain externalities.
        There are other institutions besides government to solve most problems.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Matheus ( 586080 )

      This post isn't talking about Gov't at all.. the headline asks

      Should Facebook Ban Campaign Ads?

      SO yes, That's another topic altogether.

      • This post isn't talking about Gov't at all.. the headline asks

        Should Facebook Ban Campaign Ads?

        SO yes, That's another topic altogether.

        Yes and no. The article explicitly argues that this should be fixed by the government ("Protecting the electorate should fall to legislators") but suggests that since the government won't, the companies must do it instead. And all of this is in the context of campaigns like Warren's who are threatening to use the government to force the companies to do this (Warren recently said that Facebook "repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy").

  • Zuckerburg endorses Trump? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2019 @08:20AM (#59308916) Homepage Journal

    I am not so sure that IS a lie. People like that endorse whoever can help them personally. He probably is OK with Trump, especially compared to Warren. I'm sure he would be OK with Clinton too.

    • I feel that Facebook should be free to run ads for the politicians that Facebook owns.

  • What's way more troubling than any campaign ad is the utter cluelessness about the first amendment and why we have it.

    We can't trust anyone (especially the government) to be the truth arbiter of campaign speech, that's literally the whole point of the first amendment.

    I guess it's like a blanket that is too small ... when you pulled the 1st amendment over to cover nude dancing, you accidentally uncovered the stuff it was supposed to cover, political speech.

    • The point of the First Amendment is to prevent only the government from limiting speech. Facebook can ban whatever it wants. They're choosing not to ban ads even when they contain lies, not because they can't, but because they don't want to deal with the backlash.
  • Yeah, what about the USA Constitution -- it says that free speech is available to all.
    The USA Supreme Court has continually upheld that political speech cannot be restricted.
    Restricting political speech is both dangerous and unwise in a democracy. Regardless of how much or little one likes the candidate and their message, the political speech of a candidate and the political speech during a political race IS USA Constitutionally protected speech.

    • Facebook is not the only channel available when it comes to free speech. Restricting access to Facebook is not restricting free speech, they convinced you to think that's the case but it's not, get over it.

    • Re:USA Constitution? (Score:4, Informative)

      by andydread ( 758754 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2019 @08:51AM (#59309050)
      The US constitution says that GOVERNMENT cannot restrict speech. It does not say that YOU cannot restrict speech in your house, or that a corporation cannot restrict speech on their private property/platform. Only the GOVERNMENT is banned from restricting speech not you, me or Facebook for that matter which are private entities and are not part of the government. I hope that is now clear.

  • So if something isn't a campaign ad but it touches by "coincidence" on a topic that is relevant for a campaign, how will you know?

  • No (Score:2)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 )
    Why take that ad revenue away from any social media company?
    Politics is legal in most nations for the years until an election.
    Every party and person seeking to be elected might have something to "say" on topics.
    Groups in the community may also have topics they want to bring to city/nation attention.
    Should all that stop as one side of politics can do 'ads" better than another? Its not "disinformation" to see a political leaders words and actions again before an election.
    With the illness, lack of ability

  • Gee, i wonder what the answer will be.

  • I would go as far as to issue a lifetime ban for all politicians on ANY social network platform: that's a sensible measure.
    Well, if you ask me, I would even ban social networks themselves, because, you know, free speech predates Facebook and it was actually working much better in the pre-SN era.
    But that's just me

  • They are welcome to try. As political speech is some of the most rigorously protected, I am pretty sure that an attempt to categorically refuse to show campaign ads would be a no-go as far as the courts are concerned. I'm not even sure how they could frame the argument.
    • ... protected ONLY from the GOVERNMENT restricting speech. Read the actual text of the First Amendment.

  • ... to Betteridge's law of headlines [wikipedia.org].

    But I foresee this tactic winding up with Facebook in the courts and/or back in front of lawmakers on Capitol Hill in short order. Facebook et al. are working hard to have their cake and eat it too. But if "political speech" and patent untruths are protected equally, what happens when a politician posts a campaign ad claiming "As you know, tthere are only two genders, so vote for me in November and I'll make sure that this gets enshrined in law!" ... ? History tells us that the Facebooks, Twitches, and Twitters of the world want to be arbiters of speech, but there are still consequences that go along with being an arbiter ... and I don't think we'll see this double standard last beyond the current election cycle.

  • You think the dishonesty in social media is limited to politics? Or that dishonest political advertising is limited to social media? . Or that disinformation and misinformation is limited to paid advertising? The media has nothing to do with information.The reality is that commercial media is in the business of grabbing your attention for advertisers. It has been understood for at least a century you sell things by pulling peoples' emotional strings, not by informing them. Both the content of any informat
  • Who fact checks the fact checkers? The problem with "banning lies" is that in order to do so you need an objective truth. There are fact checking organizations out there that have proven to hold bias and/or simply be terrible at fact checking. In many cases they will say a fact is true and in its own research and support of their claim prove it is actually false, or vice versa. That is the level of poor fact checking. If a person references a study, that fact checker needs to have read that study, but they
  • So, I would not notice the difference. It is just like the robo calls for politicians. Don't answer the phone. It truly amazes me that people actually use Facebook for their news. Yes, I do follow media sites on facebook. LA Times, CNN, USAToday, CBSNews, Cleveland, Washington Post. BUT, I read the article on the media site and don't settle for the blurb. And honestly, I read those sites daily anyway. So, usually I have already read the article. It is fun messing with the posters though. But, for
  • Political advertisements, in particular, should be held to standards of fact. Recognized, apolitical fact-checkers, outside of Facebook, should be retained to vet any ads before they show. Any factual inconsistencies should be identified, in captions, on top of the relevant scenes. In the case of ambiguity, identify it, with references. If an advertiser doesn't want to submit to such vetting, screw 'em.

    • Political advertisements, in particular, should be held to standards of fact. Recognized, apolitical fact-checkers,

      There is no such thing. There's no money in doing it. The remuneration comes from furthering certain agendas, or pandering to an audience and getting more ad revenue. Kinda like network news these days -- it's goal is increasing viewership ("eyeballs"), not educating anyone on anything. They can't, because there isn't enough time to cover any story that way.

      In /. we call them clickbait.

      In the case of ambiguity, identify it, with references.

      So you want not just "fact checking", but "interpretation".

      Here's a test: "I have Native American heritage." Fact or f

      • Apolitical fact checkers do exist, though you seem to make the argument that the market will not for allow them. But, what I'm suggesting is that FB pay the checkers for their work. Ad revenues are more than enough to underwrite it, and the advertisers will still want to address an audience of that magnitude. So, it would remain to be seen if the remuneration spawned competition to provide the most accurate and credible service, or some form of abuse. The devil always resides in the details.

        In the case of

        • Apolitical fact checkers do exist,

          Name two.

          But, what I'm suggesting is that FB pay the checkers for their work.

          Then these would be contractors.

          Ad revenues are more than enough to underwrite it

          Are they? Do you have hard numbers to back that up?

          In the case of Native American heritage it is provable, disprovable, or ambiguous.

          Yes, depending on the factors I cited.

          Any determination has to be based on available evidence.

          It would be, but first you need a quantitative level of "evidence" before you can say such a statement is true or false. "I am 25% NA" is quantitative and can be determined to be true or false based on other evidence. "I have NA heritage" is a qualitative statement. Is 15% enough? 1%? Being abducted at birth and raised on a reservation?

          • Obviously, when making such a determination of fact, the fact-check would have to be transparent. Indeed, this is all about transparency, which tends to illuminate the facts of a situation.

        • Apolitical fact checkers do exist

          Don't keep us in suspense. Are they robots?

  • Let the propaganda flow, do not think a compelling reason to single out Facebook. Ads should be properly labeled paid for by source. FB should make a reasonable attempt to detect and deter foreign interference so U.S. registered PACs. same for other mediums.
  • The true problem is SCOTUS (1976) Buckley v Valeo's wrongful conclusion that "Money == Constitutional Speech" (and more Money is therefore more equal than speech, because money scales and speech does not). Until elections are solely publicly funded, they and their results lack liberal democratic legitimacy, and if you don't believe me, just look at the last 43 years of democracy in the United States. Just look at it. It's utterly corrupted and destroying society, civilization, and the world.

    • The true problem is SCOTUS (1976) Buckley v Valeo's wrongful conclusion that "Money == Constitutional Speech"

      As a fact, you are wrong. If burning a flag is 'free speech', then using money to buy flags to burn is also free speech.

      (and more Money is therefore more equal than speech, because money scales and speech does not).

      Again, incorrect fact. Were you correct, please explain the increase in advertising prior to an election. That's a clear demonstration of "scaling speech", and if it didn't work it wouldn't happen.

      Until elections are solely publicly funded, they and their results lack liberal democratic legitimacy,

      Liberals always question the legitimacy of elections they don't win. "Solely publicly funded" creates a huge taxpayer liability, or Constitutionally unacceptable limits upon some of the most imp

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ... platforms, period.

    Social media has a core competency -- to bring people together -- and injecting money-making news and political ads and political scams is not something social media can control. Therefore, social media should abandon the goal of asymptotic revenue gains for stakeholders and shareholders and return to the task of being a carrier of cat videos, meal photos and selfies.

    All that other shit is available by the bucket load elsewhere.

  • ... is the real problem. What we're talking about is permission to scam voters. Get the political ads out of social media.

    Even better, #DeleteFacebook.

  • In response to the policy, Elizabeth Warren decided to run ads claiming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg endorses Trump because it's allowing his campaign lies.

    And she'll no doubt be waybon board to breaking it up.

    Just remember, don't piss off the king. What first amendment?

  • I don't want ANY political stuff on my newsfeed or my timeline. I have quite a few FB friends I know from school who are using FB as a bullhorn for politics/SJW and nothing else. I don't post anything political on my timeline yet they never acknowledge anything I put there. I stopped following them long ago because I don't want their bullhorn tirades on my newsfeed. I occasionally peek at their timeline and everything they post is STILL politics. I am going to unfriend them.

    When I get friend request

  • This is just because it's against the law for FB to run the ads it's running in Canada and in Washington State and specifically in Seattle, and they're going to lose their shirt over their own actions that they knew were illegal.

    Lock them up.

  • Yes. The answer is, "Yes." They should also be banned from Tele. We should only find out about candidates from debates, formal party announcements, and publications showing citations for a candidate's claims, legislative record (if applicable), and a full curriculum vitae. All campaign ads do is cloud understanding and manipulate the naive.

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