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Comment by EastLondonCoder | Hacker News Reader

Because in order to make an informed choice in a democracy there are regulations in place to ensure spending limits and puts an identity on political advertising.

An example of what you don't want is the heavy investment in Brexit and Trump by Russia

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Heavy? I thought it they only found ~$20 million ad spending by Russians. When either side spent a billion dollar.

How do you know, if there isn't transparency?

I don't know what the breakdown is for Brexit spending, but $20m would be heavy in a UK context. The official Leave/Remain campaigns could only spend £7m each.

I don't care who invests in advertising. If someone has something to say, they should be allowed to say it and I as the reader can decide for myself if I agree or not. I don't need to government doing that for me.

Do you think advertising works, to influence outcomes? (There are a lot of people betting enormous sums of money that it does.)

Should hostile nation states be allowed to advertise anonymously to influence electoral outcomes?

Do you think the people should get a say in whether hostile nations get to influence electoral outcomes?

The government is the agent of the people.

And if a politician makes specific political promises to specific populations which are contradictory? Or if an ad company sends you lies proportional to the amount of bullshit you are analytically predicted to receive? Or if a foreign government with clear malicious motives want to spew chaos by posing controversial chaos and inciting arguments between two populations?

Everything that you've ever encountered has made some tiny impression on you. Advertising is a "weaponized" process that aims to force a set of impressions on people where the agents behind it think that they know how those impressions will alter their behavior. Even if you think that you are not influenced by advertising -- though you certainly are in some way, since you are experiencing it -- you have to see that unregulated media platforms are magnifying all kinds of kookiness.

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