and as luck would have it, this just came across my desk (well, not exactly across my desk . . . flitted across my screen perhaps? whatever, it's kind of my Friday). An upcoming essay in the ethics literature about "moral creepiness." I haven't given this a lot of thought, but the authors talk about the "harm" that is inflicted by "moral creeps." And one of the examples they use is the "creepiness of white supremacy." The relevant excerpt: In our forthcoming paper in Ergo, we focus on what we call “the moral creeps” – an emotional response to creepy people (i.e., creeps). “Creep” is often used to refer to misogynists who harass, stalk, or otherwise abuse women. However, those are not the only creeps. For example, we discuss the movie Get Out at length because, we think, it conveys the utter creepiness of white supremacy, a creepiness which deserves more philosophical attention. Furthermore, we think that vegans who are creeped out by the common and casual endorsement of industrialized torture and slaughter of animals are on to something. So, we offer an account of creepiness that vindicates many victims’ experiences of the creeps and shows why it is an important moral emotion in its own right. So here is another illustration of the difficulties in defining a term like "white supremacy" and trying to locate the center of the harm: is white supremacy always a harm or is it more like a mere offense that simply creeps us out? The authors discuss the idea of "moral sensitivity." What do we do when different people in a society have different levels of moral sensitivity? i.e., what do we do about the fact that some people are probably more morally sensitive (in both the simple descriptive sense of that term as well as the more pejorative sense of being overly "morally sensitive") than others in society? these are not easy questions to answer. Again, haven't processed the notion fully nor have I read the paper, but I do think it's interesting to think about. Here's the link to this piece: http://peasoup.us/2019/10/moral-age...remy-fischer-a-scary-offering-for-ar-october/
some more sites are picking up on this theme https://reason.com/2019/10/31/twitt...ll-help-incumbent-politicians-maintain-power/ excerpt: Let's get the most obvious response out of the way first: Twitter is a private platform and should be permitted to set up whatever rules it wants to run political ads or to ban them entirely. If Twitter wants to deal with all this controversy by bowing out, that's their right. They have no ethical or moral obligation to serve as a platform for political advertisements. This decision was preceded by Twitter's similar choice in France—when the country attempted to force the social media platform to report information about political ads, they refused to run them altogether. That said, this hand-wringing about some sort of distorting impact of political advertisement is ignorant claptrap oblivious to America's long history of freewheeling (and often misleading) campaign advertisements in every communication form that existed prior to social media. Furthermore, the decision will make it harder for less connected candidates and political organizations to reach people in the first place. Nobody really likes political ads. But they do serve important purposes to advance democracy, particularly for those challenging the status quo. Incumbent politicians have a massive advantage not just in money raised but the fact that they have years of "earned media" over the work they do. Incumbents are operating with a much higher level of name recognition among their constituencies. With very few exceptions (almost always very rich citizens), anybody who seeks to challenge incumbents or our more powerful political organizations starts off at a huge disadvantage. more at the link
and another Althouse observation on the Facebook issue: October 31, 2019 "Are we really going to run an ad that claims Kamala Harris ran dog fights out of the basement of a pizza place while Elizabeth Warren destroyed evidence that climate change is a hoax and the deep state sold meth to Rashida Tlaib and Colin Kaepernick?" The famous screenwriter Aaron Sorkin imagines the Facebook chief operating officer saying to Mark Zuckerberg. From "An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook isn’t defending free speech, it’s assaulting truth" (NYT). The funniest part of the op-ed is all the corrections... I'm sure Sorkin thought he was writing true things and the NYT editors let it by. That conveniently shows why Facebook doesn't want to take responsibility for the truth of all the ads. It's too hard! And trying to do it gives the false impression that you've done what you've set out to do. That could be more anti-truth than standing back and announcing that we're not checking anything so smarten up Facebookers, because you're on your own. Posted by Ann Althouse at 1:47 PM Tags: advertising, free speech, Zuckerberg
A legitimate question I dont see whats so wrong with political ads. Am i.missing something. I understand the fake news concern but we aren't talking news
Does the ban apply to ads that aren’t paid for? I assumed people can still share links to commercials or other media advocating for a particular candidate. It’s just that Twitter won’t accept political ads for money. In that case, I don’t get the argument that this somehow hurts lesser known candidates that don’t have as much money. If they have grassroots support and good networking, they can still benefit from social media platforms spreading their message. It actually helps them, because they wouldn’t be able to outspend bigger names on political ads, anyway.
Last sentence hit the point. The more established or rich candidate has more money and more ads buying power. The idea that this hurt lesser known or poorer candidates might be true in isolated cases, but relatively it’s not in their favor. Social media level the playing field more. Yang wouldn’t be on the radar without it. Social media can potentially be a completely leveled fields for all political candidates if all political money, direct and indirect are removed from it. Banning political ads is a start. Paid bots, influencers, and pusher should also be banned. That would be a good next step. And tagging clearly fake content as fake by independent source (see wiki model) should also be a step. All these will help level the playing field.
What is so hard to understand about banning all political ads? I have never witness a political group with so much victimhood mentality.
Neutrality isn’t possible with $$ pushing message. True neutrality does not “give” favor to those with spending power. Facebook should simply get out of the political business if they want a true neutrality platform.
thanks, @Commodore . sincerely always appreciate your perspective, even though we often see things differently. personally think Twitter has a stance much more fair than facebook’s. But we’ll see. I still believe there are objective truths. I also don’t want tech billionaires determining what is “harmful.” example: I think ads that suppress voter turnout are harmful. Yet, some political groups have this as a clear political aim. They clearly do not see that as harmful.
Why did you not post the actual oped. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/opinion/aaron-sorkin-mark-zuckerberg-facebook.html
Martin Weigert weighs in on not having an opinion: ______ Not having an opinion Social media is optimized for tapping into the natural urge of having opinions, which is one reason for why social media, at scale, has become so toxic. https://medium.com/not-having-an-opinion-f5fb78f91854
The hypothetical posed to Zuck on the hill was: what if someone ran an add that listed the wrong day for voting? He said Facebook would take that down, as it caused "harm." Some parties, however, really want to suppress turnout and there is ample evidence of that. They would not see it as "harm," and indeed they apparently see harm when lots of people vote. EDIT: a very very smart man, the German physicist Max Planck is someone who thought having lots of normal citizens vote was a very dangerous thing, and he blamed the rise of fascism on all that voting during the Weimar years. So I'm saying, in a very dark way, I can sympathize a bit with the view that tons of people voting is not necessarily good.
Twitter has now apparently backtracked, and it sounds like a mess https://www.wsj.com/articles/speech-and-sanctimony-at-twitter-11574033978?mod=hp_opin_pos_2 Speech and Sanctimony at Twitter Banning ‘political’ ads, Dorsey throws himself into a political thicket. By The Editorial Board Nov. 17, 2019 6:39 pm ET Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey saw an opportunity last month to please the political left and embarrass a competitor. Now he’s stuck with a jury-rigged ads policy that will damage confidence in his company and do nothing to improve political discourse. In October Democrats and the press were pummeling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for refusing to take down a Donald Trump campaign ad against Joe Biden. If Facebook did not fact-check and censor politicians, they said, democracy would be undermined. So Mr. Dorsey tweeted on Oct. 30 that he would “stop all political advertising” on Twitter. “This isn’t about free expression,” he insisted, but about protecting “democratic infrastructure.” The press feted Mr. Dorsey as a hero compared to the democracy-destroying Mr. Zuckerberg. But once the anti-Trump high had worn off, progressives started to realize that a Twitter political-ad ban could block their speech too. Some climate activists, for example, use Twitter ads to find an audience. Now Twitter has backtracked from Mr. Dorsey’s promised blanket ban on political ads. The policy Twitter announced Friday allows some political ads but not others. Ads from candidates, parties and PACs are banned, but individuals, corporations and nonprofits may still pay to promote political messages (though their ability to target ads to users will be restricted). For those that can advertise, Twitter will impose convoluted political controls. Ads can’t mention politicians, elections or legislation and also “should not have the primary goal of driving political, judicial, legislative, or regulatory outcomes.” Sounds comprehensive, right? But wait. Twitter says it will allow “cause based” ads that “call for people to take action in connection with civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship, or social equity causes.” Meanwhile Twitter’s “issue ads” policy covers “abortion, civil rights, climate change, guns, healthcare, immigration, national security, social security, taxes, and trade.” Apparently ads can take a position on such issues so long as Twitter’s ad police judge them as not aimed at driving political “outcomes.” What a mess. It’s no wonder Twitter is already saying it expects to “make mistakes” in enforcement. If the NRA Foundation runs an ad campaign on the right to bear arms, is that an issue ad or is it advocacy for a “judicial outcome” and thus prohibited? What about a Planned Parenthood ad supporting abortion rights—is that impermissible advocacy for legislation or is it an issue ad about health care or “social equity”? The main effect of the policy is to give Twitter wide discretion to either approve or ban political content. This opens the door to bias. Even if the company tries to be neutral between right and left—and we’re skeptical, given Mr. Dorsey’s political opportunism in ordering the ad ban—it will be accused of bias when it blocks ads on grounds advertisers can’t understand. Meanwhile, the company’s outright prohibition on candidate ads is a gift to established politicians or those who make outrageous claims. Mr. Dorsey intoned that political messages shouldn’t be “compromised by money” but ads are most valuable for speech that wouldn’t otherwise find an audience. Conceived in sanctimony about Mr. Trump, Twitter’s policy could end up benefiting incumbents like him even as it pulls Twitter into a political thicket. Better if social-media companies recognize that, whatever their engineering expertise, it doesn’t extend to designing elaborate systems for controlling political speech.
Wow... I just don’t understand word one of this pissed-off, injured tone. Loses me from word one. As if only trump would ever use political ads. It just makes no logical sense that Twitter was appeasing leftists. It’s simply another attempt to navigate a very difficult problem in an era of political flat earthers (of many stripes, less we forget that Russian trolls backed Jill Stein, and so on).
