Slightly off-topic - why doesn't FB just ban all political ads? Is it really worth continuing to display them?
Either have a coherent policy that the CEO can explain or just don't do it.
Either have a coherent policy that the CEO can explain or just don't do it.
- candidates can be serious or not so much, but it’s unclear where the line is between the GOP and Vermin Supreme.
- PACs represent the bulk of “political” spending: it’s also unclear where you set the line there; clear attack ads are not the same as a more generic charity defending the environment and supporting a candidate; you can’t ban one without banning the other, or you have to define clear rules that allow “Vote for a candidate that supports your values” but not anything more specific, where using the same symbol, colour, font, as a specific campaign becomes a problem.
- If you ban any communications about the environment, gender equality, etc. commercial companies who bolster their ecological credential or empower women are becoming liminal and problematic when they really shouldn’t.
- None of those questions can accept a US-centric answer: Facebook hosts political ads from 190 countries, where all of the above is slightly different. What counts as controversial in other countries would definitely surprise you.
What counts as true, another argument in that debate isn’t clear: a lot of political promises like “we have the budget to pass that reform” can seem… “very bold and optimistic” to some fact-checkers. Facebook has struggled with fact-checkers in the past and felt it was preferable to downplay their role, given that previous scandal.
Well, they're PACs. Political Action Committees. So if you're banning political ads it would be trivial to ban organisations that are registered as a 527 organisation. That seems like a screaming flashing bright red line there.
More generally, you would see a lot of people unwilling to provide documentation that they are not a 527, or a foreign entity.
Overall, election spending has been very strictly controlled.
One of the problems is recently people have being getting around this with hard to trace online campaigns - using "national funding" and effectively locally targeted online campaigns.
I'd like to see people being properly sanctioned for breaking the rules. In my view there are few things more serious than trying to subvert democracy. It shouldn't be normalized like it is in the US.
But what about e.g. "awareness" campaigns about e.g. refugees? What about ads pretending to promote products to the LGBT community but targeted to be presented to conservatives / right-leaning people so that their bigotry will only increase?
You can affect people's political affiliations and their voting behaviour in really insidious ways. I wouldn't be surprised if agents are active on HN that operate with that in mind.