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Comment by metastart | Hacker News Reader

"The fact that Facebook could easily throw the election by selectively showing a Get Out the Vote reminder in certain counties of a swing state, for example, was a running joke."

Woah. They're asking to be regulated.

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I think they should be, once they get to the point where they are ubiquitous enough to be considered an official identity and information provider (in the way that newspapers and TV have been), something which they've brought upon themselves in advocating a "real name" policy.

The idea that UI/UX can change the outcome of an election, though, isn't terribly new. Consider 2000's butterfly ballots: http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html

Though of course it's a different thing when a county inadvertently affects vote results by unintentional bad design, versus when a centralized entity intends to have an effect.

Exactly, like newspapers and TV channels. Oh, they are already in good hands...

Broadcast media can't microtarget like that. At best they can cultivate a certain audience, but it's an extremely crude tool in comparison.

Sure, but broadcast media is regulated by the FEC and FCC:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11...

https://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/item/if-tv-stations-w...

https://sunlightfoundation.com/2015/11/10/everything-you-nee...

Indeed. Zuck was forced to backtrack his denials following the election, and is now committed to tackling fake news. They sing a very different tune now.

Not a very good joke. I'd have considered it a moral imperative to act on that impulse.

As soon as Facebook takes a political stance, the other half of the population will leave.

It is sad that voter participation is a partisan issue in the United States.

The idea was telling only those voters in certain counties (who predictably would vote a certain way) to vote; i.e., a less-blatant version of telling exactly the subset of people who are registered to vote for a given party, to go out and vote. That is a partisan action.

That was what I meant, although I have to agree with the parent that Facebook really should show everyone a get out and vote message.

If they did it would still be seen as a Democratic-leaning message.

So Republicans don't want people to vote?

Real question, I'm in Australia and don't know.

That's correct. Get-out-the-vote efforts are seen as partisan. I volunteered to help register people to vote (as a non-partisan without any messaging at all) and was verbally abused by Republicans on the street.

Republicans also regularly impose laws to disenfranchise voters. An example is Georgia's law where voters are purged from the rolls every 3 years. Minority voters often only vote every 4 years.

The list goes on and on. These voter suppression tactics are very, very targeted at minorities and Democrats, often to the point that the Supreme Court has to strike them down as unlawful.

Yeah, basically if everyone always voted, the Democrats would generally win. That's why Republicans don't want to encourage voter turnout and also want to suppress ease of voting which usually harms poorer people who tend to be Democratic.

Perhaps, but it'd then just be on the same level as any other broadcast medium that puts out such a message. I presume the more partisan of the cable news channels are still allowed to say "hey everyone, vote!"?

Maybe they did?

They didn't use it themselves, they sold the tool to political campaigns.

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