Elizabeth Warren targets Facebook's ad policy – with a Facebook ad | Hacker News Reader

Elizabeth Warren targets Facebook's ad policy – with a Facebook ad

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46 pointsrm288918 comments

Facebook could just ban political advertising for a year. They don't stand to lose a lot of money, just political influence. It would be a smart move though that would shut the mouths of their rivals in the press.

I dont think you realize how much money is in political ads.

That money will be useless if facebook is destroyed by the next government.

Trump and Clinton spent $81M on US election Facebook ads in 2016

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/

and

https://www.vox.com/2018/10/23/18015228/facebook-top-politic...

I think you overestimate how much money is spent on FB political ads. FB had over $16B in revenue in its most recent quarter. Trump and Clinton raised a combined $2B in their 2016 campaigns. If they dumped all of that into FB ads, it would still be only about 3% of FB's annual revenue. Obviously they spent far less, but I don't know what PACs spent.

https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...

If the goal was just to make a point-- why not make some gonzo claim that virtually no one would believe and which wouldn't obviously benefit their campaign when anyone does believe it? Something along the lines of "Mark Zuckerberg pregnant with space alien baby!"

This seems like it's playing into the hands of political opponents who might accuse the campaign of being dishonest.

I would argue that the ad, as it is, proves her point well. Political ads tend to make claims/conclusions that tend to be believable or within the realm of possibility.

Nobody believed it though, not even the_Donald. If that was the point it failed quite spectacularly. Hope her campaign tosses it as a silly idea and not make any more fuss around it.

Facebook's reputation wrt political influence is so bad that a claim like this would be much more plausible to the opposition.

It's become a standard refrain in political discussion that [media outlet, platform x] is behaving non-neutrally to help your opponents.

If trump ran a campaign saying that facebook was colluding with warren to manipulate outcomes many trump supporters would believe it-- perhaps it was facebook sucking up to prevent being split up-- and many warren supporters would disbelieve it.

If I heard that Mark Zuckerberg endorsed Trump's reelection from someone I trusted (rather than from a political ad), I would have absolutely believed it. ... but then again I don't particularly care for either facebook or trump.

At the end of the day the Warren campaign has effectively admitted that its willing to run overtly false adds targeting companies that they've previously taken issue with. They had a justification for doing so, but that justification may ring pretty hollow for people who are undecided in supporting the campaign.

Trump supporters often justify many of trumps' more obviously untruthful statements with excuses like you're not supposed to take his words literally. Unsurprisingly, many people are not convinced by this position.

I'd think every politician is going to have a Facebook strategy. It probably aligns with age demographics.

They probably need Twitter, etc. for other demographics.

Fight fire with fire

-- James Hetfield

I'm surprised that Warren takes this approach. Did she or her campaign really think this trough?

It seems like Trump successfully turned 'fake news' into mush where people can't distinguish between different categories of speech. Even Dems get confused and can't think starting from first principles. They are asking FB to sensor political speech.

Do you in USA have some kind of protection of politicians being deflamed?

In Poland (but just during elections) you can sue other politicians with fast line process that takes I think 24 hours

I think she should aim to regulate ads on social media by some kind of institution, not make FB have more power

> Do you in USA have some kind of protection of politicians being deflamed? [sic; defamed]

We do, but our Supreme Court has ruled that, under the First Amendment to our Constitution, a public official (or candidate for public office) must prove that the defamatory statement was false AND that it was made with "actual malice," meaning that the accused libeler / slanderer either (i) knew the statement was false or (ii) recklessly disregarded whether or not it was true. [0] This is a pretty tough burden of proof for the plaintiff to carry, so most politicians don't bother suing for libel or slander.

[0] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan

The point is that you can’t trust what you read on Facebook. It looks like they’ve made the point very effectively...

First, the ad itself makes the point viscerally through a bald-face lie. Second, by generating publicity around the ad, greatly multiplying it’s reach.

I suspect that she was hoping for this ad to be banned so she can get some political talking point out of it. Facebook have a long-standing rule against claiming or implying endorsement by them in ads because it's a favourite tactic of scammers.

That's probably the reason why i think Warren is the only likely candidate to beat trump. She takes a page from his book which imho proves she s more cunning than the other candidates. Her campaign motto is Make the middle class Great again or something (emphasis on RE-build). She has already found her scapegoats, instead of "china" and "mexicans" she has "big tech". And she s good with sticky slogans like 'i ve got a plan'.

No they are asking to enforce a standard of "demonstrably false"

That's the problem. You ask company decide what is "demonstrably false". Not courts, just commercial interest.

Religious beliefs are for me demonstrably false, for example. If I were running FB and politicians would ask me do moderate that would not fly. This could work in reverse in FoxNews controlled media. No TV-ads with climate change message for example.

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