Facebook Now Allows Politicians to Lie in Paid Ads | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Now Allows Politicians to Lie in Paid Ads

pastemagazine.com

156 pointsAlexandrB74 comments

Why do people expect to solve this problem on the distribution level instead of legal or political level?

I don't see how this can be practical unless there's a "ministry of truth" with an API that can check all the text for correctness. Even then, the issue won't be solved as the same actors can simply mask their lies with misleading statistics or fake ads.

Want to scare off people of mass immigration? You don't have to lie that Turkey is about to join the EU, you can post ads about cheap plane tickets from Turkey for families of 8 that are available as soon as Turkey joins the EU. It doesn't even have to be a fake ad, you can set up an agency that will indeed sell those tickets(but you're fine because Turkey is not joining EU anytime soon).

Yes, maybe the mass social interaction capabilities empowered people who were previously a laughing stock but I don't think that the way to counter this is fact-checking on a publisher level. Even flat earthers gain some traction despite the abundance of facts available.

I don’t really buy this argument that to do anything involving the accuracy of claims there needs to be some new dystopian “ministry of truth.” We already have really common well-accepted laws that involve the truth value of certain claims. False advertising is illegal. Fraud is illegal. Lying under oath is illegal. Am I to understand that people oppose all of these things?

You didn't seem to understand the argument, as the person you are responding to is essentially saying "this is already illegal, and that's where that should be solved"; the issue is that in addition to making it illegal, people also seem to believe it should be impossible, which requires not just "people can look at the ad, decide it is false, and then take the person to court and make it go very very badly for them" but also "Facebook should somehow manage to block these ads in the first place, preferably as immediately and automatically as possible", which goes above and beyond "it is illegal" and really requires the "API" version of truth.

I must not understand, because my understanding is that lying in political ads is absolutely not illegal.

Correct, you do not understand the argument. Even if it was made explicitly illegal, you can create your own "facts".

I understand that claims can be generated in such a way to make them difficult to verify or dispute. I agree with that part of the parent comment.

My criticism was not aimed at that part of the parent comment, but rather at the suggestion that an absurd “ministry of truth” with a “correctness API“ is necessary to have a system that recognizes that some claims are true and some are not.

How do you see the system working?

Slander is still a civil liability, though there is an understandably high bar to prove slander against a politician.

> "Facebook should somehow manage to block these ads in the first place, preferably as immediately and automatically as possible"

Nobody said that. Here Facebook know it's false but does nothing against it. It's not a question of efficiency at all.

Yes, but in that case it's not the TV network that gets punished, but the advertiser. The parent is saying the same should happen here.

>False advertising is illegal. Fraud is illegal. Lying under oath is illegal.

Cool, they're already illegal. What exactly do you want to be implemented then?

Doesn't false advertising only apply to commercial advertising?

The thing is we've never seen a distribution level as massive as Facebook before.

Lying politicians have always existed but plugging that into a distribution machine that is meant to push infinite content to people is bad.

There are obvious lies that can be easily fact-checked. Facebook just wants to accept ad money without bearing any responsibility.

FTC has laws that require advertising must be truthful. It probably just applies on TV and radio.

CNN refused to air ads from Trump recently. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/business/media/cnn-trump-...

But yes, you are right, this should be solved on a legal/political level.

There's been no progress on this. Not sure if it's lobbying by the tech companies or lack of tech knowledge by politicians.

CNN and Trump are openly declared enemies.

As uncouth as this sounds, it's basically true. Would downvoters care to explain their objections?

Exactly. And I definitely don't want Facebook to become the judge of what is the truth

Why not try to solve it at multiple levels?

For example, I’d heavily wager that just by Facebook changing this policy verbiage, a significant number of entities will try to distribute false ads that otherwise wouldn’t have even tried. Even just the appearance that the distribution channel will aggressively punish or reject false ads will have a big effect towards reducing them.

Yes, it’s not as effective as law. But it’s another tool in the tool box. Why wouldn’t we use it? Why wouldn’t we apply social pressure for distributors to use it?

I don't really understand the problem, Facebook is no arbiter of truth and also not the Police. If we as a society need FB to deal with lying politicians we have bigger problems.

In any case fact checking in Politics seems like a dirty game to me. I mean where are the facts in believing a certain policy will change things for the better? If only it were that simple we could just leave ruling our countries to fact checkers and a random potential-fact generating machine.

We have the bigger problems you mention.

Also, while companies are not required to attempt to do good and improve the SNR of (whether you like it or not) wide-reaching debates on their platforms, we should be disappointed when they decline to even attempt to handle the externalities of optimized engagement at scale.

Well, lets take climate change. Many people are 100% convinced of human induced climate changes affecting current day weather patterns. Although science may put it at about 99% (depending on the source!). Now what is a fact? What will happen with Trump denying human induced climate change on FB? It's going to be a mess.

Ads denying climate change should not be accepted by Facebook. That's a perfect example of untruthful advertising.

Agreed. I was reading about the Joe Biden story and according to multiple sources, it seems that he did ask the president of Ukraine for that prosecutor to be fired or else they would not receive $1 billion of loans. Also, it appears to be true that Joe Biden's son was working for one of companies being investigated by the prosecutor. Maybe it's not a proven fact but it does look suspicious and it's OK for an advertisement to point out this anomaly even if there is uncertainty.

Except that the reason the US government wanted Shokin fired was because he was not investigating corruption and companies like Burisma aggressively enough. And it's not like Biden was even the one who came up with the messaging; he was just the one to deliver it. So advertisements stating or implying that the action might have been done to quash an investigation into Burisma (or more egregiously, into Hunter Biden specifically) are not exploring uncertainty in good faith, but are rather intentionally misleading.

Edit: Which isn't to say I think Facebook should be responsible for making these calls.

This is such a lazy and illogical argument. It is Facebook’s problem when they continue to ignore user privacy concerns and requests. Moreover, Facebook also provides data for targeted ads. They’re providing the very tools needed to run effective political ads that are based on conspiracy theories and lies. Facebook literally helped invent this brand of political campaign.

How on Earth will facebook fact-check each and every advert on their platform. This is becoming ridiculous. We are expecting too much from facebook. Soon they will need to employ million people in order to police their social networks like a hawk. This is something that needs to be done by advertising standards authority of a country, not facebook or any private company.

Fair enough, it is quite difficult to do that (well not really if your net profits are ~20B and if you let convenience and speed of ad deployment suffer for quality and trust).

But the least they could do is increase transparency like how Snap has attempted with their political ads library.

Are you suggesting that facebook must fact-check each and every of their billions of advert? That will be to unmanageable. Facebook runs billions of adverts annually. Even with a budget of the United States, they simply won't be able to do it manually. Beside, checking if something is a fact or not is not black and white.

No, I'm suggesting that they make it slightly more difficult to create ads on FB. Why do we see much less fake ads on conventional media? Because it's difficult to be anonymous, the process is a lot slower and the publishing medium (newspaper, TV, billboard) will have some sort of vetting in place.

Maybe FB could do that and give us access to who's paying for the ad so that they can TRY to make it harder for fake ads to exist and we (as users) have more information on who is trying to influence us.

Gosh, the tone of the discussion here is such that folks... act like politicians lying is in fact a good thing and it was bad of Facebook to even imagine they could stop it?

It's weird go me because the vector of this speech is advertising, and in fact there are rather unobjectionable laws about false advertising. Why is political speech somehow different in folk's mind?

It doesn't really matter though, because what this story is very good at highlighting is that Facebook is essentially a machine to let rich interests have historically unprecedented insight into your interests and control over what you see. The more they do things like this, the easier it is to argue that there is no safe audience for facebook and everyone should leave it.

I'm thankful for Facebook Ads, they have successfully permanently drove me off Facebook. When literally every second post is an ad, you know that site is done.

Why is this even an article? Of course the Ad placement companies will put in the Ads anything you tell them too, I mean, how many weight loss, breast enlargement or penis enlargement Ads have you seen in the past 20 years? Probably more then there are humans on the planet, but that doesn't mean that ANY of then are actually functional. Many years ago, at least in my family, it was a common practice to avoid any and all Ads like plague, because they were considered a virus, not by themselves, but by clicking on them, you were exposing yourself to them.

> how many weight loss, breast enlargement or penis enlargement Ads have you seen in the past 20 years

Pretty much none, reputable sites don’t carry them, and spam stopped being a problem a decade ago.

NYT still ships these oddballs with their newsletters. I saw one where you drink just one cup of some weird substance before bed and you'd loose weight. The image had a coke being poured into some red powder.

Take off your adblocker one day, and see how the ridiculous state of internet advertising hasn't changed at all.

I'd be more shocked if the headline was "Facebook Now Requires Ads to be Truthful".

Its a little bit different tho; I personally reported few ads that claims were definitely untrue and were easy to debunk which I did when reporting to FB. They took these down within 5 days or so. Here you have situation in which Facebook basically saying: we know there is no proof of Biden corruption and all the evidence so far proves to the contrary, but we will let them continue to demean his name thru these false ads. This is clearly done for profits obviously - we are what? a year from election and Trump Facebook budget is at $1.5 million per week (!!). Its a serious money and Facebook is publicly traded company so morals, truth and character take a back seat :(

No proof of Biden corruption? How about the video where he brags about extorting Ukraine to fire the special prosecutor investigating the company his son was being paid by? "I'm leaving in 6 hours... if he's not fired, you're not getting the billion dollars." What evidence goes to the contrary?

A few things: - Even if Biden is guilty, what Trump is doing is clearly illegal, as said by everyone looking at the law - GOP was supporting Biden on this issue at the time - Even the remove prosecutor in Ukraine says there is no Biden story here.

You say "clearly illegal" like it means something, or it's true. At best, you could say that you think it is illegal. What law? Where is the violation? "by everyone looking" is another silly falsity. Lots of people looking at this see nothing even remotely illegal.

"It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election" - Ellen L Weintraub, chair of the Federal Election Commission

https://twitter.com/EllenLWeintraub/status/11393093949680967...

That's a fine law. However, there's a vast distance between that quote and convincing evidence of a violation in this instance.

> However, there's a vast distance between that quote and convincing evidence of a violation in this instance.

Of course there isn't any evidence that you'll accept. Nevermind that the whole world saw him solicit Russian assistance in hacking his opponent during the last elections and that the video evidence of him doing so is available for anyone to view at any time.

Biden's son served on the board of Barisma.. a company that was being investigated for corruption. When Shokin inherited the case, he did nothing with it. Just let it sit for a year+. He did that with a lot of corruption cases, which is why western leaders (EU leaders, IMF, and Biden) wanted Shokin removed.

Removing Shokin hurts Barisma.. Shokin was standing in the way of the case being prosecuted.

So if you think Biden was doing this for his son, the question is: why put pressure on Ukraine to remove the prosecutor that's preventing Barisma from being prosecuted? It makes no sense. If Biden wanted to help his son, Shokin was exactly the person he wanted in that position.

(Also note, Barisma was being investigated for actions taken before Biden's son was hired.. Biden's son was not the target of the investigation.)

1st hand account from Shokin: https://i.redd.it/wp66quhos4p31.jpg

parent quote source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urTk6O4c0mU

There are records in the Ukrainian prosecutor's office, and statements on the record by his colleagues and deputies that he did nothing with the case. In 2015 he literally took 0 actions on the barisma case. Literally nothing. He didn't even touch the file.

His deputy (Kasko) resigned in frustration because Shokin made so little progress in the corruption cases he promised to pursue.

And he says there were no complaints about him... but he refused to assist the UK in a separate corruption case against Barisma... the IMF wanted him gone; the ERDC; the entire G7; and the Obama admin (not just Biden) because he failed in his job.

There were protests in Ukraine demanding his dismissal: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-protest-prosecutor-shokin-di...

Shokin's statement (that you linked to in part) was made to help Firtash in a court case in Austria. Firtash is another Ukrainian energy tycoon being investigated for corruption, bribery, and money laundering. The fact that he's going to bat to help corrupt individuals avoid charges kind of says it all (the same people that as a prosecutor he would have been in charge of prosecuting--Firtash was also under investigation at the same time.. he did nothing on that case either).

Full statement: https://www.scribd.com/document/427618359/Shokin-Statement

Refreshingly well sourced article: https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/09/report-former-ukrainia...

I find it truly difficult to believe that you believe this so easily. It's preposterous. They closed the case immediately after replacing the prosecutor.

I know HN isn't really the place for this, but since you asked and I did a fairly deep dive into this just to know what's going on, here's what seems to have happened, complete with evidence to the contrary:

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Shokin:

> Shokin claimed in May 2019 that he had been investigating Burisma Holdings.[28][29][30][31] However, Vitaliy Kasko, who had been Shokin's deputy overseeing international cooperation before resigning in February 2016 citing corruption in the office, provided documents to Bloomberg News indicating that under Shokin, the investigation into Burisma had been dormant.[32] Also, the investigation into Burisma only pertained to events happening before Hunter Biden joined the company.[33]

I believe that's true, and the cited sources seem to check out, and predate this whole scandal. It's worth noting that a lot of these Ukrainian politicians are pretty sketchy and they have a big problem with corruption, so there are other geopolitical interests at play with these Ukrainian political figures.

To be sure I'm not being duped by Wikipedia, I find Google News searches for articles about the key players in any controversy that were published before the MSM started caring give a way clearer picture of what's going on. It can help you figure out who's spinning what.

It's helpful to know that Shokin was widely condemned for being a corrupt prosecutor that, ironically, wasn't pursuing corruption cases against political allies. From March 2016: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/eu-hails-sackin... It's pretty clear that Shokin was a known corrupt actor, for real reasons, prompting domestic and European outrage in ways that Biden would have had great difficulty manufacturing.

In May 2019, there was also a controversy in Ukraine that Lutsenko (the new prosecutor) was acting improperly by manufacturing allegations against Biden: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-13/ukraine-p...

By July, Trump's pressure was working: https://www.unian.info/world/10630023-lutsenko-shokin-help-t...

I don't read Ukrainian, so some of the local reporting isn't clear to me, but the English reporting from Ukraine seems like they're telling the whole story as they know it.

Also, from US reporting: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/10/02/donald-trum...

> Joe Biden said he has never spoken to his son about the directorship. Hunter Biden told the New Yorker that his father simply said, "I hope you know what you are doing."

Joe knows his kid is a fuckup that's trying to cash in on the family name. I don't think he would stake his reputation on doing something corrupt for his kid and then brag about it. It's far more likely that was Joe is just bragging about his own amazing diplomacy skills. In reality, he was just doing what the administration told him to do, after the groundwork to remove Shokin had been being laid by EU and Ukranian interests way in advance.

It's pretty clear that Hunter Biden was never being investigated, but the likely-corrupt gas company did have a prior history of being investigated for corruption issues. It's also clear that Hunter Biden has skated by his whole life on being Joe Biden's kid, and his moral compass may be lacking. There is no evidence that Joe was actually involved in anything corrupt.

Additionally, there's a raging debate on the left about how what Hunter Biden did is completely unacceptable, but not illegal: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/hunter-bid...

The unfortunate truth is that Hunter's actions probably were legal, and that's a real problem, but you can't condemn Joe for his kid trying to cash in on the family name.

So yes, the video of Joe Biden isn't great, but it's because he was bragging about how great he is at negotiating in a Q&A section. And really, he was taking credit for other people's work to remove Shokin, even if he actually was the final tipping point in making Ukraine take action. Not one of his finer moments, but it's not the admission of corruption you think it is.

Here's the full video at the time you're referencing. If you watch more of it, he's actually pretty informed about this whole Ukraine/Russia business: https://youtu.be/Q0_AqpdwqK4?t=3100

The bit you're referring to is at the tail-end of the Q&A and he's obviously loosened up a bit before he starts telling his likely-exaggerated war story about getting Shokin fired.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7523253/Photo-revea...

I'm not shocked that Joe and Hunter golfed together, or that Hunter's business partners were there too. But there remains 0 evidence that Joe did anything wrong, and even the daily mail says that in the article you linked.

Look at the level of effort and defense you needed to go to in order to try and explain this stuff away. We disagree on a few things, like, I do think it was an admission of corruption, but I agree that much of this can never / will never be litigated and certified as such in a court. The point wasn't to debate the eventual court decision, my point was that only in the Biden case does this type of evidence even exist. In the Trump case, there's only mind-reading and rumor.

FB has also said it would be disaster for them if Warren wins, and they would have to fight for their (or Zucks) life if that happens.

It is unclear if we can expect FB to be neutral if the election does involve Warren.

From what I can see here[0], her plan is to undo the mergers (so, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp would become their own companies once again).

And I believe you're referring to this audio[1], which I did not know about until now. Relevant quote:

> "You have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies ... if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. ... But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight."

[0] https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1179118101755039744

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/1/20756701/mark-zuckerberg-...

Mobsters will fight over existential threats too, and it doesn't make what they're doing appropriate or worth defending. I'm not sure I'd go so far as defending to the death Facebook's right to be a giant conglomerate eating up other companies. Isn't that exactly the point?

I don't see an argument saying 'companies must be ever bigger, infinitely, as a moral right'. The companies might think so, very passionately even, but I would suggest they're wrong and it's a bad thing to indulge.

> a year from election and Trump Facebook budget is at $1.5 million per week (!!)

what a colossal waste of money. and it's all going to FB :-(

(and I see a dead comment arguing that the other side should just do the same ...)

Most ads lie, or at least distort or omit the truth. Nobody should be using the web without an ad blocker.

Last time Facebook done fact checking on something, they got accused by the republicans for skewing news. If they started removing false political ads they would be in a whole new level of shitstorm.

It's not just the Republicans they'd have to worry about. For example, when the Washington Post tore apart Bernie Sander's claim that 500,000 Americans were bankruped by medical bills each year, he doubled down and demanded they retract the fact check - and a good chunk of the press sided with him on the basis that only Republican claims should be subject to this kind of fact checking. Some outlets even accused them of "partisan fact checking" and undermining democracy for not turning their fact checking into a partisan weapon.

This wasn't some minor detail either; he was suggesting his big expensive flagship policy could save hundreds of thousants of Americans a year from bankrupcy when it really couldn't. He stands by the bogus claim to this day. Now imagine what kind of headache it'd cause Facebook if they pulled a Sanders ad for using that or any other bogus debunked talking point...

> For example, when the Washington Post tore apart Bernie Sander's claim that 500,000 Americans were bankruped by medical bills...

Are you talking about this[1]? Have you read it? The Post makes several factual errors - like claiming that the study which was the main source for the claim was not peer-reviewed - and ironically commits the same sin of cherry-picking data that it accuses Bernie of by choosing to favour a much more conservative estimate that only includes "bankruptcy caused by a hospitalization".

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/28/sanderss-...

Yes, and of course I have. The big problem isn't that it's "cherry picked" or that it wasn't peer reviewed - it's that the research Bernie Sanders based his claim on doesn't even support his claim that medical bills are what bankrupted those people. (I believe there's also other research that shows medical bills are actually a really small proportion of the vast majority of those people's overall debt load at bankrupcy.)

And the calls for breaking them up dissipate accordingly.

Politicians lie all the time - during debates, during speeches, on TV ads. Isn't it just expected?

Yeah, but the "bad" party is lying now.

What's changed is that a politician's lies used to be public. Everyone could see them and respond. Facebook allows a politician to lie peer-to-peer, without the ability for critics to respond because they never get see these lies.

"Politicians telling the truth" would be an oxymoron though

When did politicians start telling the truth in any public circumstance, paid or unpaid? I'm getting old, maybe I missed this new development.

Wonder how much the service of those fact checkers costs.

People should understand that they cannot outsource filtering BS from everything. Advertising is a necessary evil to keep trade and economies going. But it's mostly the recipients job to filter information. Pre-filtering is patronising. While it's true that companies advertising their products with blatant lies should be held accountable, it's not the same for politicians.

In technology for example there are clearly defined standards and safety guidelines. Circumventing them with lies is punishable, and should be punished. But in politics, especially in rallies, there is no clearly defined code of conduct to make people vote for you. It doesn't mean that just anything is permitted. But there are no clear rules either. A lying politician who hopes to get elected will, or will not, get themselves elected, it depends on gullibility of his voters. A lying politician holding an office is again different, they are not permitted to lie in context of their work to avoid scrutiny and responsibility (no matter what Trump does, it's still wrong to lie while in office).

I think Facebook has made a very sensible choice. Fake ads and fake news are bad, lying politicians are a necessary evil and it's up to us to point out their lies and just not elect lying politicians into public service.

Companies should understand they’re not entitled to profitability.

Have you bought an ad in a traditional publication? The process involves an editor (human) reviewing the ad, which can be rejected or sent for rework for a variety of reasons.

Facebook automates away that human interaction, which enables it to operate at a scale, and with a cost structure, traditional publishers cannot. It also seems to enable a lower quality of advertising (possibly propaganda).

Maybe requiring Facebook to human review ads would suffocate its business model. That’s Facebook’s problem to figure out.

This is not about "Facebook allows politicians to lie" it's about taking down Trump's anti-impeachment ad.

The page claims it was debunked by "fact-checkers" but that in fact is a lie and it provides no reference to any of those fact-checks.

https://www.axios.com/joe-hunter-biden-ukraine-corruption-tr...

It's just a political pressure to suppress this ad and presidential candidate, as it's already happening across all platforms (Reddit limiting Trump's subreddit appearance on top page, Twitter "warning sign," Facebook posts up a message with captcha if you're sending a conservative news link on messenger, to name a few.

Besides, this shouldn't even be on HN.

In other news, for-profit corporations accept money for profit.

Sheep are easy to lie to.

Not surprising. As a society we've allowed politicians to lie whenever they want. There are more laws and consequences against lying about what goes into my cereal, than there are for what comes out of politicians' mouths.

Long overdue for that to change. "Consequences at the ballot box" simply does not suffice anymore.

Interesting

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