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Comment by ythn | Hacker News Reader

Won't this just lead to "laundering" platforms like what happened with Whois?

Not necessarily. Twitter has the power to deny anyone they want from purchasing ads from them. WHOIS is not centrally controlled in the same way. Twitter could easily block "laundering" platforms from functioning simply by not allowing them to purchase advertisements.

The laundering will work the opposite way. Instead of hiding behind one big entity, political advertiser's will hide behind a multitude of smaller entities to make themselves look like grassroots organizations.

You won't see "promoted by [Koch|Soros], who spent $8.5m on ads this year", you'll see things promoted by "milualkee citizens for freedom, who spent $1500 this year". But the money will be coming from the same place.

If you give advertisers more space, they'll figure out a way to use it effectively. Even if the point of that space was to try and keep them honest.

Right, but those groups also have to disclose their donors.

yes. Added friction is still typically good in an adversarial problem like this one. This won't fix the problem forever but will weed out certain actors due to extra effort.

In other words, it's a step in the right direction, good for twitter.

yes good for twitter, it is a positive change. not sufficient by a country mile, like it or not there will have to be some legislative remedies if we are to avoid dire consequences.

This ad was purchased by Americans for America.

At least that's something you can research, unlike now where you have no information.

I want to be optimistic about this ... but it's not like people particular care who is feeding them this stuff. They will complain about shadow government fake news in one breath, while at the same time sharing loads of drivel from `UberPatriotEagleGuns News`, or to be fair, `SocialistOther96PercentDemocratHose`

I agree that people don't care (broadly speaking) but people who do care still have a chance (my original point) and perhaps more importantly, journalists can investigate and publish articles that can be read by the middle segment of people who care enough to read the news but don't care enough to investigate themselves.

"This add paid for by Real Americans, No really! We're Real!"

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