Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

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?

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?

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?

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