Facebook and Google Helped Anti-Refugee Campaign in Swing States | Hacker News Reader

Facebook and Google Helped Anti-Refugee Campaign in Swing States

bloomberg.com

89 pointsJumpCrisscross129 comments

> “It’s a tricky issue,” she says, because once the companies decide they’ll do hands-on work for political groups, “it’s hard for them to say we’ll help these groups, but not others.”

Exactly this, if you help one you gotta help all of them unless it's against the law for them do to so (banned parties).

Stop with the stupid policing of "hate speech", this will just lead to anything even remotely questionable getting deleted/flagged (see current youtube ad issues, where basically everything gets demonetized and you have to appeal that to maybe get it back)

> The issue gets thornier when it comes to working with groups on the fringes of the political spectrum.

NO it does not get thornier/worse or anything like that, just let the parties advertise like any other party would be able to. Voters will decide if they want that party to represent them - that's not up to media or other any entity.

Edit: formatting, clarification

It’s absolutely not against the law for Facebook to decide who it wants to help or not help. It’s a private entity.

Of course they'd be allowed to, where would we end up though?

Just from a moral standpoint a huge company, like google and facebook are, should not discriminate who they give advertising space to (in the context of political parties during an election)

From a moral standpoint, discriminating against racists is fine.

Having opposing political views does not a racist make.

Should people never make any assumptions about what motivates political views, even when it is obvious?

They should not actually, it's a gross disregard for personal borders.

Agree with me, disagree with me, don't try to poke in my head.

Actually I can't think of a worse form of bigotry than attributing motivations for behavior of others.

Really? Nothing worse than that? How about, I dunno Jim Crow laws.

Without derailing the discussion by saying why, I'm anti-mass immigration.

Not an ounce of racism motivates it. I absolutely despise the BNP and the alt-right.

You thinking it's obvious I'm a racist shows how close-minded people on both sides of the debate can be.

I made an abstract statement, I didn't enumerate the views I think are obviously motivated by racism.

Opposition to refugees (modest numbers, carefully vetted since decades, coming from real crisis situations) is at least motivated by dimwitted xenophobia. Opposition to mass immigration would be a different category.

What level constitutes "mass"?

Does this include foreign spouses? Students?

In the US, more immigration is a no-brainer. It's good for the US economically. https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2017/09/05/the-very...

P.s. discussion isn't bad if conducted in good faith and not a vehicle for propaganda. It's the lies and hate-mongering in the ads that are bad.

But then you have to define racists, and this prevents people who are not racist from speaking out of fear of being discriminated against. The cure is worse than the disease. Discrimination is bad.

That is a rock solid gold final sentence.

Like, I don't know if that was a carefully thought out zinger or an accidental numbnut of a line but bravo. Bravo.

Secret discrimination is bad.

Clear arguments from your core principles for why not allow something is nigh and day different from the chilling effects that blanket labeling has.

Yes, the problem is clearly very nasty, and yes it will inevitably have some marginal effects.

But the disease is ignorance, the cure is exercising discrimination AND providing the information to help ignorance. AND of course allow the debate of that information.

The debate can be as simple as the 60 piece twitter story about that Viking textile fragment with Allah that turns out to be not Allah. (Where the scholar pointed out that the dating is wrong, the person that claimed that the text is Allah is wrong because there was no space on the textile for that. End of story.)

And in case of the Holocaust, yes, there's probably a 0.000000001% chance that we're being bamboozled by the New World Order, but that's almost the same as end of story (because we have more pressing matters).

Is that really true? Is it OK for a doctor to refuse to operate on a racist or a police officer to refuse to protect a racist? What about a grocery store refusing to let a non-actively demonstrating racist shop in their store or a school teacher to educate their children? Racists are humans too.

However, you don't have a moral obligation to help a racist send their message. Otherwise, treat all people as people.

God, the moral equivocations you have to go through to get to such a puritanical humanist outcome must be quite something.

'Treat all people as people' is exactly the culture that allows these assholes to become POTUS. By not acknowledging the danger of some views you allow it to fester and, ironically, become a great threat to the safety of other humans/people.

It's actually even worse than you say... It's not just that failing to acknowledge hate allows racist threats to fester. Failing to acknowledge hate allows outside groups -- whether other countries or the very wealthy -- to inflame hate to achieve their quite different goals (weaken liberal democracy, tax cuts for themselves).

And acknowledging hate apparently allows the haters to become POTUS, and subsequently "weaken liberal democracy, tax cuts for themselves". You have to admit, that skews the calculation somewhat.

I’d argue the danger of shutting down conversations you don’t agree with is much worse in the long run.

It doesn't take any moral equivocations at all. Immanuel Kant points it out as one of 3 moral principles that are always true, regardless of conditions. [1]

Once you accept a moral system that justifies no longer treating human beings as people, you've allowed yourself a system that can justify anything. Look at every genocide of the past century; they all start with classifying a group of people as sub-human and worthy of discrimination.

That is a view to be fought, not descended to.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#The_Sec...

> Look at every genocide of the past century; they all start with classifying a group of people as sub-human and worthy of discrimination.

Seems like those 'other' groups were generally defined by biological characteristics, not ideologies, no? I guess the 'anti-communist' movement would fall under ideology, not biology, but the majority of examples I can think of that you're alluding to have to do with biology, no?

> biological characteristics, not ideologies, no?

No. "Jewish" isn't biological, although there is some correlation, and America's red scare was soundly ideological.

"I guess the 'anti-communist' movement would fall under ideology"

I would think that's your 'red scare' unless you're talking about something else.

The "jewish" one - thinking specifically of ww2 - it definitely was more of a biological component, as "how much" you were jewish, and from what lineage, made a difference. "jewish" is both cultural and may have a racial/biological component (imu).

The Cambodian genocide had a definite ideological side, as well as the repression of Kulaks [1]. I'm not sure why it's not traditionally listed as a genocide since it's effects would squarely place it somewhere in the top 5.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization

The "cultural revolution" and Cambodia's "Year Zero" were explicitly ideological.

> Once you accept a moral system that justifies [slippery slope]

Quick question: does anyone defending the racists, sexists, homophobes, etc., have any other argument than "SLIPPERY SLOPE!!!"?

How do you formalize such acknowledgements? Majority vote? Appointed thought leaders?

Doctors, police officers, and teachers are individuals hired to do a particular job. They have responsibilities at those jobs. If they cannot or do not want to do them, they are free to quit, switch careers, or face the consequences of their actions. Outside of that job, they are free to associate or not associate with anyone they choose.

A grocery store is a private entity. Outside of banning someone for being a protected class, they are free to refuse service to anyone. Even if someone is a protected class, they still can be banned for valid reasons (i:e; stealing, threats, etc). Being a racist is not a protected class. Nor should it be. The grocery store has the right not to do business with them.

Facebook and Google are private entities. They can refuse service for any reason (with some restrictions). They have no ethical obligation to give service to everyone. No one has any obligation to use Facebook or Google's services either.

TL;DR: Outside of a few legal requirements, no one has any obligations to associate with anyone.

So how do you feel about Christian bakers?

> Is it OK for a doctor to refuse to operate on a racist > or a police officer to refuse to protect a racist?

Sure, why not? Racists want to deny people their rights; why shouldn't people get the equal opportunity to deny racists their rights?

> Racists are humans too.

Racists see other humans as lesser. I think that automatically disqualifies them from being considered human.

Define racism. If it's "discrimination based on skin color" then things like BLM are also racist. Is that what you want?

C'mon, you get to a position of equating anti-oppression movements with oppression only as a result of the most tone-deaf and pedantic mental gymnastics, by stripping out context completely.

BLM opposes discrimination based on skin color.

There have been a number of instances where people who claim to be involved in the movement, that is activists and not necessarily leaders, who have posted comments equating to suggesting harm should come to white people, how white people are evil, etc... There have been a number of them who have had their Twitter account banned because they did those things.

I have tried to pick my verbiage carefully. Members of a group, for better or worse, are representative of that group but not in totality. Thus, generic statements are often not easy to make and leads me to point this out in response to your statement.

Also, I'm part black, if you're curious. I'm definitely not in the group most would expect to point this out. My white genes are a definite minority. ;-)

At any rate, some people who claim to be involved in BLM have made very, very racist statements that absolutely are discriminatory. Some have even gone so far as to suggest acts of violence. A search of 'twitter bans BLM member' should turn up some results, if you want citations.

Only racists? What about other forms of bigotry? And who defines which bigotry is unaccepted and which is accepted?

That's why FaceBook, having became so big, should maybe be regulated a bit (like banks, like press, like transportation, etc.)

Sorry but it does not seem like regulating banks has done much to improve the financial system. Why do you think regulations are the solution?

> it does not seem like regulating banks has done much to improve the financial system

Are you sure?

To me is looks like this:

Loosening the regulations on US mortgages was a strong contributing factor to a global financial crisis.

Since then, tightening regulations on global banking has led to banks being much less likely to fail and trigger another crisis.

> Since then, tightening regulations on global banking has led to banks being much less likely to fail and trigger another crisis.

you are in for a big surprise the next time a crisis hits the market. And even if your statement were true, only a few banks crashing would lead to a catastrophic domino effect, because everything is very largely inter-connected. What we have done since 2008 is largely insufficient to consider the current financial system as robust.

Regarding banks, non-regulation isn't a solution either, though.

I don't think we have even tried non-regulating the banks for several centuries or even more. Bank regulations have a very, very long history.

Well, as far as serious regulatory controls are concerned, we tried going without between 1830 and 1914 in the US; so 103 years ago.

Also, regulation doesn't magically fix the problem. But good regulation will fix the problem. The goal is to come up with the right regulation.

With regards to financial regulation, I think transparency and data reporting are hugely important. Much regulation can be done by counterparties if they can have better transparency.

Regulation isn't binary, as in something is either "regulated" or "unregulated".

The quality, timeliness and enforcement of the laws that establish regulation will determine the outcome.

Current regulation is weak, but society is better off with it than it was without it. A brief look at the history of the US financial system and its "crashes" may shed some light over this, perhaps even demonstrating that, if anything, regulation needs to improve (both in terms of coverage and enforcing).

I don't know how much you know about the history of the financial system, but it appears not to be a lot if you don't think regulating banks has improved it.

It is a private entity causing harm to society by facilitating the dissemination of lies and hate speech.

The point is that this should be regulated and/or disallowed, much in the same way that you (fortunately) can't go on TV to call for violence against specific groups of people or to run false advertising, or, in a developed/civilized country, you'll be facing consequences.

One way of doing this would be for FB and other media to be forced to provide authorities with official (and validated) company information regarding the entities that are using their service for this end, much in the same way as would happen to a company running false advertisements on TV.

> causing harm to society

I wonder if you know that under Stalin, you got executed for being "enemy to the society", and then your children were officially "children of enemy to the society".

Because, as maps say, "You are here."

I'd venture in saying that under any dictatorship, dissidents are referred to as enemies of the state/party/country/society, to justify their silencing. Still, I have no idea where you get Stalin out of my previous post.

I don't believe this story concerns citizens fighting for their freedom from opression, it's actually related to private entities fearmongering and spreading falsehoods, and media companies (FB) facilitating their work. Maybe you'd need to have a referendum to be convinced, but I think most people will agree that hate speech and lies are damaging to virtually any society, especially because these tactics are well known throughout history.

Why you are conflating those two issues is beyond me, perhaps even beyond you, but I decline the bait...

As someone who grew up in Germany I can tell you that banning some hate speech does most certainly not lead to "anything remotely questionable getting deleted/flagged". Holocaust denial and racism are not normal political views, and pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

While I agree with your sentiment -now-, it is a slippery slope. As recent as what...50 or so years ago, racism was a 'normal political view' so to speak, in USA at least...depending on your definition of normal. What's to say that someone in 2070 saying 'Speaking out against communism and AI leadership are not normal political views'. Normal is always going to be a 'moving target', and banning everything outside of 'normal' doesn't seem conducive to a free environment.

There’s a false dichotomy here between the status quo and banning ads. My preference is for letting anyone run whatever, provided it must be publically accessible for anyone else to view and debunk. Political ads before the Internet weren’t necessarily more honest. Their dishonesty was just more-openly debated.

I’m not dead set on this proposal (if one can call it that). I was hoping for that discussion more than this cake or death.

But nobody is suggesting banning "everything outside of normal". This is not an all-or-nothing proposition, there’s no reason for the slope to be slippery. You can ban holocaust denial and nothing else, or ban hate speech that fits a very specific set of criteria.

Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres?

If only.

> Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres?

No, it led to people calling for the resistance to the WWI draft being imprisoned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

> This is not an all-or-nothing proposition, there’s no reason for the slope to be slippery.

I think that if you draft your country's constitution to say, "We have freedom of speech, except for calling for genocide and/or denying the Holocaust," then that can work reasonably well, and it won't necessarily turn into a broader ban. If you actually write a short list of exceptions into your constitution, then that can work.

But the US constitution isn't written that way. We have very broad freedom of speech, and the only way to curtail it is via the Supreme Court deciding that certain kinds of speech are somehow an exception to rules. Libel and slander are, of course, exceptions, but they're ancient ones with a lot of case law explaining exactly what's forbidden. There are other exceptions, mostly involving things like angry mobs.

But if you want to start saying, "This speech is forbidden because it promotes bad ideas," then you need to fundamentally change how the Supreme Court interprets the first amendment. And once we go there, then we have no idea where we're going to wind up.

> Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres?

No, because we never banned shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater; the idea that such a thing was unprotected speech which could be banned is non-authoritative dicta from a Supreme Court ruling which did, however, uphold he criminalization of core political speech in the form of protests against the WWI draft, which has since been overturned and is widely recognized as a major failure when it comes to free speech. Which was worse than a content-neutral ban on all speech in theaters.

Shouting "Fire!" isn't hate speech, it's basically a kind of social fraud: as a member of society, if you scream that some emergency is happening there is an expectation that such an emergency actually exists or could have been believed to exist. Especially in a case like this where the response is likely to injur people.

Free speech is about being able to state your oppinion. The person shouldn't "Fire!" in your example doesn't have the oppinion that there is a fire.

There are no easy answers like 'just allow everything'. Should Facebook be sending embeds to 'legalize child porn' groups to help them focus their ads? What if they call themselves 'remove the restrictive and undemocratic age of consent laws' groups?

Embeds to 'make the US a purely Christian nation' groups, if they call themselves 'allow "traditional" values in the court room' groups?

You can't just wave your hands and say second order effects don't happen. There's not a slippery slope, just one long slog of difficult moral decisions, and we'll get some wrong and some right according to our inheritors, but you still have to engage and try to find the actual balance.

I fall on the side of allowing all speech that is not expressly illegal. It relies on the reader taking the time to educate themselves but it also allows for greater freedom of expression.

Yes, I'm well aware that deplorable people would be given a platform. I'm okay with that. I don't agree with them, but I can't justify not allowing them a platform to express themselves. No, Facebook is not legally obligated to provide that platform.

If it isn't expressly illegal in the host country, allow it.

Speech we approve of needs no defense. It was once offensive to suggest women should be allowed to vote. To think we are the apex of morality is hubris. So, I default to allowing everything that is not expressly illegal - as a moral view. I don't actually control the choices at the media giants or anything.

> Should Facebook be sending embeds to 'legalize child porn' groups to help them focus their ads?

Why not? I know it sounds horrible, but unless the ads explicitly serve child porn, a platform for legalizing child porn is merely a political position and covered under the first amendment.

You can go to a city hall, and start making your case for legalizing child porn and they can't do anything to prevent you from doing that (legally).

I know you're using this example as a rhetoric, but in US simulated child porn (like anime) is already legal and protected under the first amendment.

> Embeds to 'make the US a purely Christian nation' groups, if they call themselves 'allow "traditional" values in the court room' groups?

Either you don't live in America (or recently moved here) or you live in a deep bubble. I have seen ads about making America a Christian nation, similarly ads about putting traditional values in the courtrooms (check out the whole ten commandments in courtroom controversy).

It confuses the idea of child porn with literal child porn, similar to hate speech/depictions of violence with literal violence, neo-Nazis with literal 1940 Nazis, historical statues with racists. Free speech makes on sense in this regressive mindset.

A simpler way to say your accusation is that 'it confuses the sign with the signified', and I didn't.

I feel like this thread got a little lost.

There's a difference between something being legal and being societally encouraged. The original article is about companies working actively to help groups. I think 'age of consent' people should be allowed to shout it from the street corner of their choice, but I don't believe we as a society have to then applaud or patronize people who make a business out of selling them bullhorns.

"Some people say" Google refusing to run your ads or host your site (which I guess we've now slipped to from 'sending employees to help grow your business') is censorship, but that's only the case if you're a protected class.

And nope, born and raised in the good old midwest, and in fact had write essays on the ten commandments controversy in grade school.

> As recent as what...50 or so years ago, racism was a 'normal political view' so to speak, in USA at least

It still is. Never went away.

That is a pretty daring statement considering Germany just passed far-reaching anti-hate speech legislation with no precise definition of what hate-speech is, leaving it to social networks to interpret.

The law does not refer to vague "hate speech" (or a translation thereof) or extends any definition of illegal content. Instead it lists specific types of content for which there is decades of legal precedents. It extends the liability of platforms (which makes them more eager to delete borderline cases) but does not change anything about the legality of content itself.

(FWIW, I see many problems with that law and it should never have passed but there is so much misinformation being spread that it gets tiring to correct.)

No, now you are blatantly spreading misinformation yourself. The law has extended and modified the penal code.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

Just check 'verabschiedetes gesetz'.

You misread the Wikipedia article. That section compares a draft with the final law. Between those two versions the list of laws that social networks need to watch out for has been changed. The law has not modified the Criminal Code, nor was it ever planned. Please read carefully before accusing others of spreading misinformation or you will do it yourself.

Here are the full four pages of the law as passed: https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Gesetzgebungsverfahren/Dokume... and this is an English translation: https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Gesetzgebungsverfahren/Dokume...

But wouldn’t people still have those ideas? My worry is that preventing their discussion you never know how many people think a certain way until it is too late.

I think it's disingenuous to claim that's all that's being removed from Facebook in Germany, even today. My wife is German and she's seen pages/profiles get banned that are just generally anti-immigration.

I’d love to see proof of that

Remember how in Josh Green's book on Bannon, Green describes how Bannon and Breitbart specifically targeted young tech employees for divisive propaganda? Bannon saw tech workers as a productive demographic to incite hate in.

The ultimate useful idiots: highly intelligent but generally insulated from and disinterested in the world around them.

> Exactly this, if you help one you gotta help all of them unless it's against the law for them do to so (banned parties).

Do you? That's kind of like saying that 'if you donate to one party, you gotta donate to all of them'. Sure, it opens you up to attacks of being unfair, but as far as I'm aware, there's no case for asymmetric support of a political party by private entities being illegal.

Bit of a non story - they offer the same services to any well funded ad agency regardless of political leaning. What would have been more concerning is if they rejected the agency - as this would show that google exercise political bias in who it chooses to collaborate with and target ads for.

It’s a non story legally but I’m sure a lot of people will rethink whether they want to continue to contribute to facebook’s bottom line by remaining on the service.

I would prefer if facebook/google would not decide which political party is worthy to advertise on their services or not.

Once they start policing that it'll lower the bar for further blocking and we might end up with personal taste playing a role down the line.

> I’m sure a lot of people will rethink whether they want to continue to contribute to facebook’s bottom line by remaining on the service.

You don't get it. We're now at the point where Facebook decides whether we contribute to the bottom line by keeping us on the service.

I stopped going on fb last week. Sure, they still have a page on me, but I'm not watching their ads anymore. They're getting less ad revenue through me. If enough people were to leave, they wouldn't afford to run. Three letter agencies only run on govt revenue.

As yes, don't leave Facebook because of the addictive mind-prison it builds around you or the creepy stasi-esque dossier it keeps on you. Instead quit Facebook as a way of social-signalling your authoritarian left-wing values. That isn't to say I'm not glad of the result either way.

Allowing lies is a non story? Inflaming division and ultimately putting an autocrat in the white house is a non story?

A reckoning over the use of social media is coming to the US. At minimum we're going to need to have full ad disclosure and a means to restrict lies.

Do you know what an autocrat is? It seems like you might be getting some lies in your daily sources of news...

It seems that the president, if not being an outright autocrat, he does show rather autocratic tendencies.

For example : Musings about reigning in certain news sources if he doesn't like what they report.

There are other examples. But is the most blatant.

What?

Maybe you missed the stories from David Frum, former GW Bush GOP speechwriter and neocon, in the Atlantic? These are major major articles, critical to American public debate.

From Feb 2016: "How to Build an Autocracy The preconditions are present in the U.S. today. Here’s the playbook Donald Trump could use to set the country down a path toward illiberalism." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-...

Atlantic, Oct 2017: "The Autocratic Element Can America recover from the Trump administration?" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-aut...

Also Newsweek, Sept 2017 "TRUMP IS LIKE AN AUTOCRAT FROM GERMANY IN 1933, FORMER BRITISH AMBASSADOR SAYS" http://www.newsweek.com/trump-autocrat-germany-1933-former-b...

> ultimately putting an autocrat in the white house is a non story?

Democrats are free to pay google to signal boost their own content, and almost certainly will have.

This is only a story if Google denied the same services to Democrats. We would have already heard if this was the case.

No one should be allowed to buy Facebook ads that contain lies: Democrat, or Republican, or Russian spy agency.

At least not if we want to keep a democracy in the US. Democracy depends on honest public debate.

Whence this assumption that FB and Google are politically neutral?

https://www.recode.net/2017/4/21/15384416/facebook-google-dc...

There was a thread yesterday (on working at google) where one former google employee commented on how some google leader got on stage and cried about the election result.

How does this fit all together?!

Most media companies, like most foreign governments including Russia, gave heavily to the side they expected to win.

That side didn’t win.

Google publicaly claims to penalize invasive and annoying ads such as interstitial ads while also encouraging their ad platform users to enable them on their sites. Google is large enough of an organization now that it can no longer coordinate a cohesive strategy.

I can’t speak for Facebook, but given the bad and deceptive advice Google’s ad representatives give, perhaps this story should be applauded.

I cried too.

Surely isn't so much an issue of political bias, but the fact they happily helped circulate an ad designed to provoke hatred and fear through clear falsehoods.

Thank you - exactly the point. Both inflaming division and lying are bad.

Moreover, because the ads were narrowly (in terms of ideological cross-section, not numbers) screened, our societal defenses (debunking on the news, the Internet, et cetera) never had a chance to be triggered.

Yes, the first thing we need is transparency. There's a bill in Congress now to do that. (But that's not ALL we need. Baby steps first though.)

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/18/facebook-ad-disclos... "McCain signs on to Democrats' Facebook ad disclosure bill"

> clear falsehoods

Its usually not clear whether these ads are based on falsehoods or not. If they're targeted well enough, the intended audience won't report it either. And no, its not enough to evaluate content on the basis of "everyone knows". There are many things that "everyone knows" but are demonstrably false - for example, gun control laws are unlikely to change the number of people who die every year due to firearms. [1]

[1] - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mass-shootings-are-a-ba...

What are falsehoods here? Is "in 30 years our country will be changed for worse with global warming unless we change" non-falsehood, while "in 30 years our country will be changed for worse with muslim influx unless we change" falsehood? Say who?

> What are falsehoods here?

>> “French schoolchildren were being trained to fight for the caliphate, jihadi fighters were celebrated at the Arc de Triomphe, and the ‘Mona Lisa’ was covered in a burka” [1].

[1] TFA

Isn't that a glimpse in hypothetical future of France?

Don't say you can't imagine global warming clip where Arc de Triomphe will be a partially submerged pagoda and Mona Lisa is accessible by gondola

and "French schoolchildren were being trained to fight for the caliphate" - I bet some of them already are. Where else ISIS fighters from EU countries come from?

> Isn't that a glimpse in hypothetical future of France?

No.

Campaigns shouldn't be discriminated on their political leaning, but there certainly is a responsibility for Facebook to moderate content that is patently false (e.g. the Islamic take-over of France) or could lead to the harm of others (e.g. hate speech). All sides of politics are guilty of sensationalism and distortion, but that's distinct from outright lies.

Facebook and Google could be forgiven for not having their eyes on all content that goes through their systems, but in this case they've actively assisted and paid special attention to questionable content. Microtargeting is a relatively nascent form of political persuasion and has it's own unique problems, foremostly that is largely opaque. It stands in contrast to the national conversation playing out on just a handful of television and radio stations. There's no easy way to police the integrity of political campaigning when no one can see the larger picture.

There needs to be protections by the law, or perhaps clever hacker technologies, to protect people from being relegated to their own cul-de-sacs. For instance, there's no way for me to know for sure that everyone who visits this comments section is able to see what I've written. This is a fundamental problem that the internet is facing and we all should be worried.

> patently false (e.g. the Islamic take-over of France) or could lead to the harm of others (e.g. hate speech)

"Islam take-over of France" & "hate speech" are both conceptual interpretations & difficult to claim as false or true, other than through the lens of an ideological system. Many people disagree with Sharia Law & it's relationship with non-believers; seeing it as a threat to their own culture & even to their safety.

Claiming that this is a false threat is akin to telling a woman that a seedy man cat calling her is not threatening, as most men who cat-call do not physically harm women on the street.

Humans have a finely tuned sense of what is threatening regardless of the reported statistics (also subject to interpretation & modeling errors); it's what has kept us alive.

There's also an integrity problem with media. Many people simply do not believe what is being reported to them, depending on the source. This happens on all sides. What we are seeing is a bifurcation of reality, leading to different notions of true & false; even different interpretation of facts as the definition of "fact" is loosely used.

> There needs to be protections by the law, or perhaps clever hacker technologies, to protect people from being relegated to their own cul-de-sacs

This is a tough problem as it's in nature, a cultural & biological problem, subject to interpretation. Making somebody open-minded toward a worldview that is in opposition (incompatible) of one's own is not necessarily something that would be desirable; as in the case of "Stockholm Syndrome".

> "Islam take-over of France" & "hate speech" are both conceptual interpretations & difficult to claim as false or true, other than through the lens of an ideological system. Many people disagree with Sharia Law & it's relationship with non-believers; seeing it as a threat to their own culture & even to their safety.

Look at the article. Watch the video. Tell me what's not false:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=41&v=xIJVoumWYtQ

> This is a tough problem as it's in nature, a cultural & biological problem, subject to interpretation. Making somebody open-minded toward a worldview that is in opposition (incompatible) of one's own is not necessarily something that would be desirable; as in the case of "Stockholm Syndrome".

As far as I'm aware, even if you want to opt-in to non-targeted advertising, you can't do that. Simply having that option would be a simple start.

> Look at the article. Watch the video. Tell me what's not false:

It's art. Parody. You may not like it, but I can guarantee to you that some of the art & parody that you like is not liked by other people. The question is, are you going to act like a fundamentalist for you belief & demand that this "sacrilege" be censored? If yes, then will things that others find offensive that you don't be censored as well? Where does it end?

That aside, maybe you missing/ignoring the frequent attacks by Islamists/Migrants or large parts of Paris becoming non-French & non-Western.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Js8wntdk4

Demanding that all nations become "multi-cultural" is xenophobic against the host nations. See the definition of Colonialism...

> As far as I'm aware, even if you want to opt-in to non-targeted advertising, you can't do that. Simply having that option would be a simple start.

Are you talking about ads over the internet? I'm talking about life in general. You can't ignore or target certain things like who your neighbors are & if your worldviews are compatible with your neighbors. You also can't ignore the weakening of culture & families in favor of a nihilistic prevailing culture. The people are unhappy with the trend. You can opt-out of the information or pay attention...

> It's art. Parody.

> That aside, maybe you missing/ignoring the frequent attacks by Islamists/Migrants or large parts of Paris becoming non-French & non-Western.

This video in question was being shown in the US. It's a blatant stereo-type I use, but one that has been tested time and again, but the typical U.S. citizen is naive to the rest of the world, and it would be fair to say that the average person in any western nation outside Europe has little conception of what Paris is meant to look like. My parents, who are elderly and not well-travelled would easily be convinced.

Given this, it's not hard to see how people encountering this video in their Facebook feed might be confused for thinking aspects of it are real. And for those that do see it as parody, might still think it plausible that the crescent moon would be a-top the Eiffel Tower.

I think this kind of distortion happens on all sides of politics, and I think it shouldn't be tolerated on any of them.

> Demanding that all nations become "multi-cultural" is xenophobic against the host nations. See the definition of Colonialism...

I'm not sure you understand the definition of Xenophobia.

xenophobia n. dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries. (source: google search)

At last check, France is predominantly caucasian of at least one French-born parent 86% (75% of both)* and French-speaking 86%#. Anyone born overseas, and whose first language is not English are clearly not even close to the majority.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France#Births_...

# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_France

> Are you talking about ads over the internet? I'm talking about life in general.

And I'm not. But I take you're point, there's a lot of people that don't look and behave like you entering a country you love, and you're concerned by this. This wouldn't bother me, but I can share some concern in the rise of militant extremist Islam and could see how this might cause you to view all immigration as problematic.

The video you linked looks like the 'multicultural' district of any city I've been too. There's people of all walks of life visible, not overwhelmingly Islamist. It's also run down, like every multicultural district which usually finds the place with the cheapest rent and access to facilities. I strongly doubt this scene represents the whole, or even a majority, of Paris, but I haven't been in some 10 years, so I couldn't know.

Edit: Unfinished sentence about xenophobia

The irony of my non-partisan post getting downvoted...

Regardless of whether or not the companies helped, there is no historical precedent for this kind of "speech": enormous concentrations of wealth combined with super-effective targeting.

Even if you were royalty or a pope in history, your speech was not magnified like this.

Techmeme Summary: Bloomberg: Sources: Facebook and Google helped Secure America Now, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group, target ads for an anti-refugee campaign in swing states

>Unlike Russian efforts to secretly influence the 2016 election via social media, this American-led campaign was aided by direct collaboration with employees of Facebook and Google. They helped target the ads to more efficiently reach the intended audiences, according to internal reports from the ad agency that ran the campaign, as well as five people involved with the efforts.

FB did the same thing in Russia, when they were still trying to flirt with the regime, naively believeing that they can come out with net benefit from such relationship. The regime never treated them any much differently from any other of its pawns.

FB was openly taking money from Russian/KGB campaigners round 2010, dispatching campaign consultants and overall treating them as their first tier clients. Same was true of Google in Russia when they still had hopes of somehow greasing hands with the establishment. They evacuated the most valuable staff out of Russia around 2015 to Switzerland, when they finally gave up on Russian market. I still do remember them quitely delisting online resources with corruption exposures circa 2007, that were reappearing in search with simple reversal of word order.

KGB may've been just "probing where the water is shallow" and gaining experience with online propaganda in 2010 by buying "seemingly innocent" think tank drivel and consulting contracts from FB and Google, and then they went full throttle when it came to sabotaging the US elections.

American top C-Levels, officials, 3 letter agency employees, and other American beau monde all have that "smart, sophisticated, brilliant, but damn naive" note in their personalities. Such types look the same to me as people who are trying "to win in a casino," while having "I know what I'm doing" look on their face. They can't win anything there in any sense.

Americans must overhaul their political establishment and institutes of power with virtuous and competent people. If I was a US congress, I would've put it very square, if a dot com like FB actively conspires with Russians, and then pretends that they didn't, then everybody along the chain of command down to founders, c-levels, and major financiers (with their own respective boards) are detained, subject to criminal prosecution and given prison sentences.

I used to not really buy the ‘regulate them as utilities argument’, but now, reading stories like this, it seems to be the only way. The influence these platforms have and the conflicts they create for the owners and operators need to be clearly managed externally.

The irony is that they are acting exactly like a utility is supposed to, offering their services to anyone, regardless of their politics.

> “It’s a tricky issue,” [Wendy Moe, professor of marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business] says, because once the companies decide they’ll do hands-on work for political groups, “it’s hard for them to say we’ll help these groups, but not others.”"

The water utility can't legally refuse service to the Trump campaign, and neither would the Facebook utility.

What you're asking for, is for Facebook to act in way they're specifically only able to act because they're not regulated like a utility.

Or for a quick lesson is public choice theory, consider exactly who would be writing the regulations a regulated Facebook would be regulated under and ponder whether that's going to end well.

I can also use public records laws to get a great deal of information on what my utilities are up to. That transparency is not present with the tech giants.

The water utility doesn't send highly-skilled consultants out to help people poison the water supply.

Bizarre how only one political opinion is assumed to be appropriate and correct.

Lies are ok? (No Sharia law in France)

Inflaming divisions is ok?

Throwaway is appropriate for this post.

From straw man straight to ad hominem.

That's what the last 8 years have led up to. Having different political views is now a completely normal reason to stop talking to someone entirely. This leads to everyone in the US existing in a political echo chamber attacking strawman versions of the other side.

Most Democrats think people who voted for Trump did so because they are racist or sexist. That's it, no room for reasonable discourse when out of the gate someone is assuming the other to be irrational.

> Most Democrats think people who voted for Trump did so because they are racist or sexist.

Most that I know, myself included, don't think that about people who voted for Trump. I do however think that voting for Trump makes you racist or sexist. Voting for Trump wasn't necessarily a result of it, but it sure was an indicator or turning point.

>People who voted for Donald Trump didn't do so because they were racist or sexist >But voting for Trump makes you a racist or sexist Not sure I understood your comment.

Basically, causes are different than effect. A person may have voted for him because of economic promises, but because they thought the tradeoffs on race and gender mattered less than those economic promises they are acting in a way consistent with racism.

And so the goalposts keep moving. How soon until not giving up your job for a poor minority is considered racist? At what point do we draw the line and say it is ok to have your own self-interest in mind, rather than that of the outgroup? At what point do we stop responding to the bludgeon that is the word "racist"? Eventually you are going to push people into doing actually racist things if you keep trying to deny them the means to self-sovereignty.

> Most Democrats think people who voted for Trump did so because they are racist or sexist.

If you're 100% ok with an avowed racist and sexist being elected, you must at the very least be sympathetic to those beliefs and what's the difference at that point?

Maybe because right now in America, there is a certain political opinion that loves to push outlandish conspiracies, like the imaginary Sharia law in France mentioned in the article.

There is only one party whose national politicians and media outlets publicly peddle conspiracy garbage like:

* The birther conspiracy about Barack Obama

* Pizzagate

* Jade Helm, where, they claim, President Obama was preparing to invade Texas and force everyone into concentration camps

* Claiming the Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooting was a government operation

* Claiming the Las Vegas elementary school mass shooting was a government operation

* Agenda 21 - Imagining US citizens are being mass murdered by the UN for population control

* Claiming Sharia law is implemented in Illinois (ironically being pushed by Alabama Senate candidate Moore, who was twice removed from the a state court bench for forcing his religious views in the court)

The list goes on and on. After decades of spewing so much propaganda through right-wing media outlets like AM talk shows, Fox News etc, while simultaneously painting education or sourced information as "elitist", "mainstream media", the GOP has unhinged a huge section of their base and separated them from reality.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/20/us/mosques-targeted-2017-t...

It's difficult to draw a direct line between any one campaign and any one incident, but this kind of lie-based Islamophobic material is basically radicalising material for domestic US terrorists.

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