Facebook Says Political Candidates Can Use Paid Memes (axios.com) 21
Facebook said Friday that political candidates, campaigns and groups can use paid branded content across its platforms, a clarification prompted by a move from Michael Bloomberg's campaign to pay top Instagram influencers to post memes on its behalf. Axios reports: Its policy didn't explicitly state that it was OK for candidates to use branded content posts, but after hearing from various campaigns about the issue, Facebook moved to clarify its stance. Facebook has agreed that branded content should be allowed to be used by candidates, as long as the candidates are authorized and the creators disclose paid partnerships through branded content tools, according to a spokesperson.
Facebook previously prohibited political candidates and campaigns from running branded content by default because it wanted to avoid any risk that such actions could be viewed as accounts giving monetary contributions to campaigns. It's tweaking its approach now -- only in the U.S. -- because it believes that this is no longer a concern, given that it doesn't provide payments as a feature of its branded content tools. If a campaign were to buy ads to boost its branded content, then it would be subject to Facebook's advertising policies. That paid promotion would then need to be included in Facebook public, searchable political ad library for seven years.
Facebook previously prohibited political candidates and campaigns from running branded content by default because it wanted to avoid any risk that such actions could be viewed as accounts giving monetary contributions to campaigns. It's tweaking its approach now -- only in the U.S. -- because it believes that this is no longer a concern, given that it doesn't provide payments as a feature of its branded content tools. If a campaign were to buy ads to boost its branded content, then it would be subject to Facebook's advertising policies. That paid promotion would then need to be included in Facebook public, searchable political ad library for seven years.
So far that's working out great (Score:4, Insightful)
And yeah, Facebook has shown it'll do anything as long as the check cashes [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
for Bloomberg [vox.com]
As much as I'd like to throw some Schadenfreude Bloomberg's way, I hardly think that drawing ugly comments from the Internet counts as proof of anything. You can find ugly comments on videos of returning soldiers being greeted by their dogs.
But it's certainly credible. I think Bloomberg is a kind of guy a lot of us here probably know: genuinely smart, but on some level clueless because he treats people as something he can understand with *metrics* and therefore manipulate as if they were *things*.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You do realize he owns a major media corporation (Score:1)
Bloomberg is definitely doing it for money. He entered the race to stop Bernie Sanders from taxing him and forcing him to pay for his employees to have healthcare. There's more than one way to skin a cat, and more than one way to suck money out of the US economy without adding real value.
Re: (Score:1)
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear (Score:2)
And he's greedy. You don't get to be a billionaire without a level of greed that is impossible for regular folk to imagine. You don't get $61 billion without faustian levels. Otherwise you end up stopping after your first few billion and going and doing something else with your short life span.
Re: (Score:2)
His major accomplishments are things you'd expect an engineer to have better success tackling than, say, a lawyer: transportation for example. His biggest failure was stop and frisk, the kind of thing that might seem like a good idea if you look at the hard numbers without actually thinking about the people those numbers represent.
Bloomberg has decades of racist comments (Score:1)
Frankly, I'm tired of guys like Bloomberg, Biden & Buttigieg stabbing me in the gut, twisting the knife, and them somehow I'm supposed to be ok with it because they smiled when they did it and said nice things.
Re: (Score:2)
His controversial racist remarks really amounted to this: the statistics told him everything he needed to know.
Re: (Score:2)
Trying to create memes by force never work.
They grow "naturally".
Isn't this great? (Score:4, Insightful)
Boy, now we've got a private company deciding what is and isn't OK in our politics. The future sure is amazing, isn't it?
Did you hear that the media is giving Bloomberg's ugly history of sexism a pass? [gq.com] This in addition to his racism, saying that blacks can't be trusted not to kill each other.
Re:Isn't this great? (Score:4, Funny)
Boy, now we've got a private company deciding what is and isn't OK in our politics. The future sure is amazing, isn't it?
Did you hear that the media is giving Bloomberg's ugly history of sexism a pass? [gq.com] This in addition to his racism, saying that blacks can't be trusted not to kill each other.
You do realize you're ranting about a cat video platform, right?
Try the Onion for more factual information.
It stops being just a cat video platform ... (Score:2)
You do realize you're ranting about a cat video platform, right?
It stops being just a cat video platform when it carries something other than cat videos - especially when it carries them to millions of eyeballs.
It becomes a censor when it makes decisions about what can and can't be, or remain, posted, rather than posting all comers.
It becomes of concern when it controls a significant fraction of a class of channel, when a lot of the information input to a lot of people is biased by the censorship choices.
Th
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize you're ranting about a cat video platform, right?
It stops being just a cat video platform when it carries something other than cat videos - especially when it carries them to millions of eyeballs.
It becomes a censor when it makes decisions about what can and can't be, or remain, posted, rather than posting all comers.
It becomes of concern when it controls a significant fraction of a class of channel, when a lot of the information input to a lot of people is biased by the censorship choices.
The politicians and other "movers and shakers" understand, and use, this. Many of them try to get the operators of these channels to censor and bias the content to promote their interest. They do it because they believe it works. And some of them (like Bloomberg) are experts in the subject.
I suspect you understand that, to, as you try to deflect others from being concerned and active in supporting Facebook in its efforts to AVOID being forced to take sides in political campaigns.
Lighten up and get your bearings.
Social media is an online game.
And you're being gamed.
No, they are deciding what is OK on one platform (Score:2)
Boy, now we've got a private company deciding what is and isn't OK in our politics.
Only for one platform, there are many ways to advertise to reach people. Facebook is just one of money, and not even the best one.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, just like there was only "one platform" that decided that uttering the name of a person involved in a major national news story was verboten. One could just jump over to one of the other vertical monopolies dominating the online public square and say whatever they wanted. oh, wait!
But who needs access to platforms that makes millions of views of your content possible, when there are mailing lists? It's practically the same thing, really.
How nice of social media (Score:2)
As users of social media.
Rather than have a social media brand approve the publication of political content in the USA...
As censors and editors of content.
Unless the art is too funny? Too political? Staff dont "like" the politics of the meme, art?
Shill (Score:1)