Facebook promised to fix political ads on its platform. It hasn't | Hacker News Reader

Facebook promised to fix political ads on its platform. It hasn't

cnn.com

107 pointsMilnerRoute36 comments

In 2014 there was a mini scandal in Sweden about Facebook allowing a page titled "Vitmakt neger slakt" (roughly translating to "White power nigger slaughter") dedicated to what you expect a page with that name, with absolutely no irony attached, be dedicated to stay up despite multiple reports of hate speech [1]. A spokesperson from Facebook Sweden had to explain himself and he said that the reports were sent to a team in Dublin to be reviewed. When asked if the page was viewed by any Facebook staff who can read Swedish at any time during the review process, since it is clearly hate speech to anyone with half a brain, he couldn't say. The page was taken down a few hours after media ran the story.

I have a hard time feeling sorry for Facebook about all this work they have to do now to make sure the political discourse on their platform isn't bonkers. They're killing off a lot of media companies and now they're shocked, shocked, that all those ethical demands people made to the media industry is being directed at Facebook instead. What the hell did they expect?

[1]https://www.metro.se/artikel/facebook-plockar-inte-ner-neger...

I wouldn't expect them to fix anything. When you have the ethics of a company like Facebook it's much easier to claim you're going to fix something and then keep doing it. You can't cut off the money faucet if that's all you care about, especially when you know you're not actually going to get in trouble for it.

And it's in CNN's best interest to keep pumping out stories that they aren't, because Google and Facebook are the two monsters taking all of the ad revenue from the once lucrative news trade.

That's why I take what the media says worth a grain of salt. They'd love to become the sole source of news again. They're actively looking to make these new age ad platforms fail.

Unless you have actual proof that someone is or isn't doing something, it's better to just assume you're missing context.

> I wouldn't expect them to fix anything. When you have the ethics of a company like Facebook it's much easier to claim you're going to fix something and then keep doing it.

For companies, if there is no punishment there is no solution. Even when there is a punishment. If the punishment is cheaper than to not break the law companies chose the later.

Harsh on companies, keen with people. That is the way. But the system works in the opposite direction. Human beings go to prison for light misbehavior while companies get a way just with a warning when they put the entire country at risk.

Exactly. The past couple years have been an exercise in the inadequacies of the honor system. There are no consequences; we can't expect either industry or government entities to self-regulate out of basic human decency. Their efforts to fix the problem amount to nothing more than a cynical PR move. They halfheartedly assuage doubts until the news cycle shifts again. There are no consequences for anyone.

I guess you haven't heard about the fees and penalties levied against companies who fail to conform to FTC regulations and government mandates. There's plenty of regulation. It's simply a hard problem to solve.

The media just wants to spin the story so people will stop looking at FB and Google for news and pay their subscription fees.

> I guess you haven't heard about the fees and penalties levied against companies who fail to conform to FTC regulations and government mandates. There's plenty of regulation. It's simply a hard problem to solve.

I've heard plenty about them. The fees and penalties are often so small compared to the revenues of the companies they're levied against that they seem more like a cost of doing business than a punishment that could actually change behavior.

Can't they just make money while selling 0 political ad space? The whackamole infrastructure and the toll it takes on literally everyone and everything involved has got to be worse then not selling political adspace at all. Imagine a Facebook where you didn't have to feel rage at your stupid uncle sharing some dumb, over-simplified text graphic. Might actually be a net positive.

Facebook is a platform where you can promote your business or political agenda and still reach a large amount of people regardless of your budget. The media doesn't cover all of the good that digital advertising does for people who are trying to make a difference and wouldn't be able to afford an ad in a major news paper.

The person you are responding to was talking specifically about political advertising. Your response is defending all advertising?

As somebody who left Facebook several months ago and has been skeptical about its public utility for longer, I honestly wonder if this problem is simply too large.

Even if they have some super duper fake news detection mechanism, surely it will generate false positives due to the sheer volume of political ads?

CNN is claiming neglect. They are probably right. But I think FB is overwhelmed too. Especially now that they have news vultures like Vice dunking on them post-Cambridge Analytica.

The media is in direct competition with Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Of course they'll dunk on them every chance they get.

> CNN is claiming neglect. They are probably right. But I think FB is overwhelmed too. Especially now that they have news vultures like Vice dunking on them post-Cambridge Analytica.

Who would've thought making billions of dollars mean overwhelming amounts of work to stay professional?

>I think FB is overwhelmed

Then perhaps they should stay out of political advertising.

I agree.

> But I think FB is overwhelmed too. Especially now that they have news vultures like Vice dunking on them post-Cambridge Analytica.

Would you prefer everyone just let it slide instead, to avoid "overwhelming" Facebook?

No way. By "overwhelmed", I mean to say that I think Facebook dug themselves into a hole, and now they're kicking themselves for it. They grew too big too fast. Turns out "connecting the world" was a bad idea.

Can the center of a black hole dig itself out?

Until these corporations are properly held accountable we can expect the same old.

It is indeed a hard problem to solve.

I guess more traditional news media are not free of such problem as well. Who knows if every single ads on their site is not problematic, or if their reporters are not secretly sponsored by problematic sources

I guess more traditional news media are not free of such problem as well.

Traditional media is more hands-on and face-to-face. There are salespeople involved, and better money trails. This is largely because the salespeople get a cut of the money spent.

Since Facebook decided to cut the salespeople out and automate the ad buying process, there are no gatekeepers. There is no salesperson wondering why an ad buy for a local congressional race is paid for with a check from a Russian bank.

Facebook and others are trying to build makeshift gatekeepers through AI. But AI, while very interesting, is still not up to the task.

The traditional media also pumps out loads of fake news, FUDs, and Ads by super-pacs. The only thing the traditional media isn't doing is selling enough ads to have a world scale impact, because they're a dying form of media compared to social networking and the search.

When I'm on twitter I see a nice mix of utter crap and useful information. When I read the NYT it's just a carefully curated selection of total crap.

What? You mean it's more fake than the well researched reputable journalistic services provided by FreedomEagle2AdForever on social networks?

When I read the NYT it's just a carefully curated selection of total crap.

Based on that statement, I have to believe that you don't actually read the New York Times. You read a very small subset of NYT articles, probably online, that appeal to your anger response.

If you actually read the entirety of the New York Times, you'd feel differently. Or at least foolish for making such a sweeping statement.

I think it's equally problematic if you simply trust everything you read on New York Times (or any other media)

I have a weekday subscription, so I do read it regularly.

Traditional media also run 3rd party ads on their platform. CNN for example, has Google ads on its website and complains when I visit the website with an ad blocker.

Even with sales person involved, and better money trail, the problem is not gone.

Also, traditional media have their own political bias. Even if they don't make obvious fake news, carefully selecting the truths to report on can also have major influence on people's opinions.

Somehow print media doesn't have this problem. It's because they have a process and humans involved in placement.

What if the humans are not reliable

What if the algorithms are terrible and think people named Jared who play lacrosse are the best picks for hiring to the exclusion of other factors?

Even if some humans are not reliable, it's still better than having no gatekeeper whatsoever.

They just need to stick a banner above all of them saying watching this Ad is injurious to your mind.

If its up to me that would be on every news website and tv channel too. Along with a live ticker on how much revenue is being generated through ad sales.

So kind of like Prop 65 warnings that are everywhere so people just learn to ignore them?

Expecting a company to self-regulate itself to stop a certain sub-population of potential customers from buying its services is, not surprisingly, ineffective.

It's not self regulation. You're misinformed. There are millions to billions in penalties that the FTC and other agencies can give out to organizations for all sorts of crap.

> billions in penalties

And yet, Facebook is still solvent, because surprise, surprise, the non-self regulation isn't happening.

Self regulation is all that's left, and it is, not surprisingly, ineffective.

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