Facebook to publish data on Irish abortion referendum ads | Hacker News Reader

Facebook to publish data on Irish abortion referendum ads

theguardian.com

42 pointsAnatMl250 comments

Despite the fact that transparency is a good thing, what will happen now ? Every time someone loose an election the will blame Facebook (or Google or anyone) ?

I understand that when the result are tight it’s important to be fully transparent, but the election looser always have an excuse (It’s FB, it was too sunny so people went picnic, etc...)

I’m speaking generally, not on this specific election. Just wondering what future elections result will be

There's a quote in the article from the leader of the Irish green party, Eamon Ryan, that to me underlines why this is important, "We want transparency about online political advertising so hidden funding does not distort the democratic process."

It's that hidden funding that scares me. Whether it's massive spending by mega-corporations or targeted ads by foreign intelligence agencies. We can't understand how our democracy is being affected unless we know who is behind the money.

I'd take this concern seriously if we weren't 50 years or more into carefully chosen and promoted intentionally divisive issues shaping what everyone thinks of politics.

What does that mean?

Abortion is exactly the kind of issue that has zero impact on those in power, who can always go to another country, but influences elections.

In terms of shaping views, welfare was designed to allow single mothers to stay home and raise their kids. Yet by twisting the issue people no longer support the idea.

Unions are no longer seen as something that helps 'you', they now help 'other' people.

Are you saying they don't actually care about the issue?

Clearly some people care about the issue and many say they care about it. But in terms of overall importance the tax bill for example got vastly more support. So, I suspect actual support is rather low.

In other words people might vote yes, yet at the same time prefer it not come up for a vote.

I'm not sure I get where you are going. It might be a divisive issue but saying that simply because it comes up and you think something else is more important doesn't mean it is being used just to be divisive.

It doesn't "simply come up"

Tens of millions of dollars keep it in the forefront of your brain. There is no accident here. There is no "simply comes up"

So the amount of money spent means people don't really care or it's an illegitimate topic or something?

I'm suspicious of some topics and the support they get myself, but your approach here seems much too fast to dismiss a topic that maybe you don't like. It's way too easy to just say something is not organic or illegitimate when the issue is unpleasant rather than really deal with it. I don't know if anyone has a good way of getting their finger on legitimate, or topics that are more "important" than others in a democracy.

I couldn't care less about abortion on a personal level. It has zero impact on my life and never will.

But it's very clear to me that it's an artificially promoted issue that plays on people's emotions.

Divisive issues are not accidents. They're focusgrouped and marketed with extreme care.

>Divisive issues are not accidents.

I don't think I understand what you're saying. There can't be divisive issues?

My point is actions speak louder than words and their actions paint a very clear picture.

Really, it's more than just being divisive that's at issue. At core you need to consider two factors.

  1. Strong minority support vs general but weak opposition
  2. Minimal direct impact

Assault Weapons Ban is a similar thing. Something people really care about, but can go months or years without thinking about it.

The point is these things both provide support and distractions. But, when one side gets into power they don't actually try and change much.

  what will happen now?

Presumably the first use of data will be to figure out whether the problems people worry about really exist.

For example, maybe we're worried foreign governments / billionaires are using facebook ads to influence our elections. Maybe the data will be good news, proving that this hasn't happened.

And if the evidence shows it has happened, we'll be in a more informed position to discuss fixing it.

As you said, the losers will always have an excuse for why they lost if they want one. This doesn't really do anything to impact that.

But targeted online advertising is a brand new thing in the political world. Data like this will be essential for academics to study the effect of this kind of advertising on an election.

> I’m speaking generally, not on this specific election.

Well, with regards to this specific "referendum", there was a landslide in favour of repeal (of the 8th Ammendment to the constitution, which blanket banned any and all abortion under all circumstances). All polling and subsequent analysis suggest that there was nothing untoward with this result.

However. This was a hugely divisive topic, as you might expect, and it attracted a huge amount of attention from oversees.

Complaints have been made on both sides of the campaign about interference by foreign actors, in particular well-funded ones buying and targeting ads.

That Facebook gave an undertaking to stop running ads, came to naught since they continued to run the ads because who can say no to that kind of money right?

What Irish people want to know is "who" and to what degree outside forces were trying to interfere with the democratic process here. How much money was being spent, and, to understand definitively which side was doing more meddling, because there's been a fair amount of mudslinging the last six months or so.

Increased transparency and access to data about the process will also keep people from blaming the platform.

This is great news. However, I saw the most ads on Youtube; it would be great if Google followed suit and released similar data.

I hope this sets a precedent for publishing ad spending in future referenda too.

It says in the article:

Under pressure from Irish politicians and activists, including the non-partisan Transparent Referendum Institute, Google banned all referendum-linked advertising on its sites.

Did this only happen part way through? Or were people still advertising, Google just claimed they weren't?

Presumably they went under the radar.

It happened about a week or two out from the vote, in a campaign that had been officially been running for a couple of months (I can't remember how long exactly), and had seen low-key unofficial campaigning for easily a couple of years at that point.

I think really there's been a lot of campaigning going on since it was first enacted back in 1983. Even the Attorney General warned of unintended consequences.

The supporters of the 8th are highly organised, and motivated (as anyone would be if in their head they actually equated any and all abortion to killing of actual babies), and any revisitation had been continuously thwarted.

However, it's really in the last 5 years since the Death of Savita Halappanavar [0] that the issue took hold in the public consciousness, and campaigning really began in earnest.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar

Using the banner of "transparency" to stifle political advertising is just censorship through other means.

We should instead explicitly allow and protect unlimited anonymous political messaging.

That just gives the party with the money the upper hand. Thats an awful idea.

Money in politics actually does little for the candidates. Please review Freakanomics on this. As a recent example, Trump won with a great deal less money than what Hillary used. Had he used more, we would not hear the end of how money influences politics. But it doesn't. People have tastes, convictions, prejudices, etc that no amount of ads will change. Ads affect a small number of people and help to cement in the voting block, improve turnout, etc. Swaying votes is much harder. The media is in charge of that.

Money in politics past a certain amount does little for the candidates. The difference between 600k and 100k is significant, politically.

How does it change which party has more money? They can already advertise, it'll just be tracked with their name - how does that change with anonymity?

Wouldn't it instead make you actually look at the content instead of knee-jerk this party good, that party bad?

Why? Surely that means that the winners of every referendum or election will be those with the deepest pockets?

Or those with the most convincing messages?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely against advertising, but I don’t discriminate; if you argue that political advertising is bad because it biases the voters and hinders the optimal choice, surely the same can be said about commercial ads and consumers as well.

It doesn't matter how convincing your message is if it never reaches anyone because your opponents are paying more than you for the same keywords / etc.

Many places do say the same about commercial ads, for example, banning advertisements for cigarettes.

A key difference in many cases is that my life and the world are much less affected by me choosing to go to KFC instead of MacDonalds, than they are by a large country being run by a parties of different ideologies.

There’s a limited amount of time in each day. A limited part of that day, you spend engaged with social media. A wealthy party can buy out all this prime time advertising and control the only narrative you get to see.

But it obviously is, this is the whole point of advertising, and why advertising messages don't focus on information but on emotions.

This is why many things are not allowed to advertise in many countries (not only topics like cigarette or alcohol but also form of advertisings), and why advertising is regulated.

Political advertising on the other hand should be much MUCH more regulated because they can cause major market disruptions. A brand advertising can maybe change one very specific market for some time, but political advertising can change the WHOLE market for a very long period.

To be honest I don't even understand how it is even a debate given how the US democracy is completely failing to tackle that particular issue.

Can you explain what you see as a downside of this? The data is anatomized so I assume I won't find your name in it, so how is this affecting you or your political group?

I can see a political group could be affected if they spend undeclared money or if they support a cause that don't want to admit publicly(and this is a good thing IMO, the groups should not support causes that they don't want to admit they support).

I think that the people making those arguments are either those who have the money which enables influence or whose living is dependent on the previous group’s ability to continue doing so.

Admitting that mass mind control through advertising may not be in the people’s best interests is simply not in theirs.

"We should instead explicitly allow and protect unlimited anonymous political messaging."

Richest party wins? Is that how democracy should work?

It seems to be the way in the USA. The two best funded parties blow all other political discourse out of the water.

Well "democracy" already has a problem if voters are so vacuous and easily swayed by paid advertising.

There's a reason that advertising works ... they tap into the deepest human instincts and urges. As much as anyone wants to believe they are too smart to be swayed by advertising, it's only hubris.

Any data/citations on this? I feel like myself and most people would not change their views(especially on abortion) based on a few seconds looking at an ad on facebook.

With regards to political views, the point isn't in any way to change your view, it's to use your view. By taking out ads that stoke someone's feelings about abortions, they can get them to follow a FB page, which can then in the future be used to promote other things (like specific political candidates), or to spread propaganda (like, "hey look at this fake news over here").

And thus, by association ... your views can certainly change.

> "If this person/page that I agree with so strongly on abortion (or whatever) has this other opinion over here, I should probably give that a second consideration"

Increased transparency is not at all equatable to censorship.

On the other hand, unlimited unaccountable anonymous political advertising that stifles everyone else is exactly what causes the censorship of actual legitimate views and opens up societies to manipulation and abuse from internal and foreign actors.

I'm thoroughly confused by the problem you see. You are positing a case where the richest people would feel like they can't speak up? I'm more concerned with people who aren't even affected by the issues (perhaps because they don't live in the nation state) having undue influence on the outcome.

I don't really see the issue with transparency.

As a EU citizen, I'm very much in favour of both transparency and I'd go as far as identity disclosure.

If you're willing to spend money to sway society in a specific direction, surely you wouldn't mind that people know your stance?

as long as it remains anonymized I see no problem with revealing the money. it is when it becomes public who donated that issues arise. at most I could see revealing country of origin

I wonder if this is going to be a one-off, or if perhaps this is a test for larger elections/referendums to come.

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