If it is what they say it is, I love it. It’s an easy PR move. People have bots promote disinformation not through ads. Facebook is different and without ads you won’t see the disinformation.
Is a shared meme of a candidate with devil horns subject to this? Seems like a good step, but won't have an affect on the sharing of fake news.
which raises another question. Is this just moral grandstanding and possibly a temporary move on Twitter's part? ban political advertising in 2020, then Trump loses to the Democratic candidate, and then in 2021 Twitter CEO comes back and says "well it was an interesting experiment, but we've decided to bring back political advertising because democracy dies in darkness" (or something to that effect) . . . or is that scenario too cynical?
Why is it about trump? It’s about new levels of disinformation (from many different directions, foreign and domestic). Amazing that we almost had a thread not about 45.
I’m with Yang on this , I think social media and some of these new online information networks need some guidance from the government . It swings both ways , maybe you can regulate to limit malicious advertising or things that present things falsely . But it’s not black and white , like you’ve said
paid political ads are a means of getting around social media censors, that's why they are being banned
do you prefer Facebook’s policy? They’ll run anything, any lie, unless they judge it to be “harmful.”
there's something to be said for what might be termed Facebook's "stance neutrality" . . . just as it isn't a library's job to censor, judge, ban works that its staff disapproves of, perhaps it isn't Facebook's job to engage in evaluative screening of what it dubs "appropriate" or "inappropriate."
I think it's a good move. Twitter is still the go-to platform for disseminating political speech. But campaigns will have to engineer "organic" spread of their information instead of just paying to promote it. I don't think it really stifles speech, you just have to pay your money to influencers instead of directly to twitter. It might cost more but the impressions you get might also be better quality because people are seeing your message from people they trust (though they probably shouldn't). I would have thought it would help Trump more than hurt him. He already has the biggest organic twitter base in politics. He doesn't need to pay to spread his message. Opponents will have to work harder to spread their messages. I think it is a good decision despite it probably helping Trump.
The library comparison would be better if we were talking about posted content and not advertising. I think Facebook, Twitter, and the library all have more responsibility for the speech they promote in exchange for money. It's one thing to put Mein Kampf in your stacks. It's another to put a poster on your door telling your patrons have wonderful Mein Kampf is. I might object if a library wanted to censor Mein Kampf by excluding it from their collection, but not if they refused to take money in exchange for its promotion. I don't want the library to be a two-bit w**** that'll do anything for money any more than I want social media or traditional media to do so. There's a big difference to my eyes between the user space of posting and the paid promotion space of advertising. I don't believe regulating advertisement -- especially in the social media context -- is at all the same thing as censorship.
maybe, maybe not . . . in ethics and criminal law "offense" vs "harm" discussions, there is often a distinction made real or genuine "harms" and "diffuse, and speculative and remote" harms. I think you're likely positing a diffuse and speculative/remote harm or harms. on edit: on the "speculative and remote" language, see e.g., https://books.google.com/books?id=u6ZA0SlPhsoC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=feinberg+speculative+and+remote+harms&source=bl&ots=2P7ZOiSfQi&sig=ACfU3U0DvZQSD1Lp0ySxPwzkx5-xkUQfCQ&hl=en&ppis=_e&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjLtJar8MblAhWIpFkKHTZTCDMQ6AEwAnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=feinberg speculative and remote harms&f=false also on edit: can't seem to find an online link to this as a pdf anywhere, and in a different (environmental) context, but I scanned a page from a paper by UPenn's Cary Coglianese about uncertainties surrounding "environmental harms":
It is a library's job to censor. Twitter is not banning things there staff disproves of they are banning all political adds. Why must your ilk always spin things, why can't you debate on the actual facts?
Someone seems os triggered by this good news. Surprisingly because most moderate Democrats are on board.
That does seem to be the distinction Facebook is trying to make -- advertising the wrong date of the election is a pretty concrete offense, while the harm of advertising that Zuck supports Trump is harder to certify. But, if they maintain that policy, people are going to keep hammering on it, simultaneously trying to find harmless things that will get censored and harmful things that will clear the censor. They're setting themselves up for more bad press and more Congressional hearings when operatives find the right combination to embarrass the company. Twitter seems to me to be on safer ground because they don't need to evaluate harm, they just need to evaluate political -- and 95% of that work is already done by the vehicle of incorporation that the advertiser has employed. I think their biggest challenge will be the use of political identity for selling products -- like Nike leveraging BLM to sell shoes.
