I think one of the things that makes it more difficult in the case of facebook is that the ad targeting makes it possible to serve specific ads only to very specific groups.
This means that if the ads say untrue or damaging things, most people will never know, as opposed to newspaper or TV ads. In my mind this argues for at least as strict controls, if not more stringent.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...
TV networks are required to air even untruthful ads as not to run afoul of regulations governing political ads. It's also likely that campaign laws requiring all political ads to be true would be unconstitutional.
Either way, the very fact that the Elizabeth Warren campaign is promoting a fairly blatant falsehood (and many people are happy to parrot a false talking point in the name of truth) is a symptom of the same problem that would force any reasonable entity to make the same decision Facebook just did. Truth isn't very popular, especially in politics and people (on every side of most political issues) would lose their mind if falsehoods were strictly banned.
A whole bunch of comments here are along the lines of: how come Facebook isn't required to abide by the rules that other media companies have to follow? But this is the exact opposite of how things are - small media companies can adopt whatever standards they want, but the broadcast networks have to air even false political advertising, because these types of regulations are more about protecting fairness and free political speech than about the truth. This is an example of Facebook subjecting themselves to the highest possible standards, instead of making arbitrary editorial decisions that smaller actors can get away with.
Again, the point is that the standards followed by broadcast TV are higher than the standards followed by, random media companies that aren't regulated. And what Facebook is doing here aligns closely with how public institutions that are held to the highest standards operate. The general principle regarding the freedom of speech is that the closer you are to being a public institution, the more open you ought to be in terms of the types of speech you accept.
So the criticism here isn't merely wrong, it's exactly backwards.
To me, that opaqueness separating one filter bubble from the next is an important quality. It may raise the effectiveness of propaganda campaigns significantly.
That can't possibly be true. The cornerstone of democracy is informed voters.
Also, it's important to keep in mind that the Trump ad in question does not make claims that are easily proven to be false - they are merely BS claims that are entirely unsubstantiated. I don't think they'd be taken down even if a rule against false claims existed and was properly followed. There's no evidence given for such claims, but not all claims without evidence are false.
Basically Facebook needs to make the whole process maximally transparent, and claim it is just a telephone line, and only people telling the lies are responsible for the lies.
[1] E.g. https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...
Basically a smart version of a banner ad.
For sure...
"I don't want to see political ads from a local election across the country."
They should be targeting eligible voters. If a local election is taking place across the country, then, of course, you shouldn't be seeing the ads.
"There's also no reason for me to see an ad for the Republican primaries if I am voting in the Democratic primaries. Etc"
No, this defeats the purpose. We should be trying to expose people to more viewpoints - not creating more echo-chambers.
Now we can expand on those rules to dictate who can see what, but no matter who views the ad, it would likely be bland, and confer no new viewpoint at all. Lest it fall afoul of FEC rules.
What we're really talking about with FEC rules, is a return to the middle, because extremist views can be shut down by pointing out misleading content in the ads and subsequently rejecting them. Whereas the bland, meaningless stuff will always be free of any misleading content, and be subsequently approved.
I'm not sure what media you consume, but TV and radio ads always seem filled with misleading content about political rivals.
> Surely there are some parameters that would make sense? I don't want to see political ads from a local election across the country. There's also no reason for me to see an ad for the Republican primaries if I am voting in the Democratic primaries. Etc
I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. A couple factors need to be balanced: the ads need to have the minimum targeting to not be wasteful and pointless, but they can't be so narrowly targeted that oversight by the media and voting public becomes difficult.
I think the right balance is something along the lines of: 1) coarse-grained geo-targeting allowed down to an MSA at the narrowest and 2) no targeting based on interests, demographics, or ideology.
There are some parameters that make sense, for example targetting congressional districts.
What I'm mostly against is zip code, ideology/interest, racial/sexual/etc factors being taken into consideration.
I see this sort of paradoxical mindset all over the place: X breaks the rules but X is just so successful, or so full of potential, so shouldn't we just bend or break the rules for it? But the fact is that X is probably successful or full of potential in large part because it's been breaking the rules, and the rules exist for a reason.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...
From that perspective, Facebook deciding to censor untruthful political ads would be much more akin to ignoring the rules.
It would be easy enough for Facebook to classify ads as political/non-political and for political ads have more scrutiny over what they decide to air. And have strict penalties against those who choose to mis-classify their ads.
Or make political ads visibile publicly for anyone to search for details as to who created them, how much they paid, how many people were targeted.
All these are valid solutions to the problem, but Facebook doesn't want to do it, because if they can get away with what they're doing right now, they can make a ton of ad money.
I doubt it is as easy as you think because not all political ads look like "vote for foo!"
They will evolve to look like governor foo paid company xyz which sells home security products to make an ad about how unsafe the country is...while governor foo runs on a platform all about reducing crime rates...etc
Look at some of the propaganda during the 2016 election era for instance
Isn't that already the case? You can already search all political ads and see who ran them, how much was paid, and the number of people who saw the ad.
And it was dealt with poorly. My whole life, minorities (persons of color esp) have been scapegoated in elections in ads on TV, etc. So, yes, political ad censorship has been dealt with by media, and the "deal" was that victims would be minorities.
In a sense, Facebook just makes it fair. Now anyone can criticize anyone, everyone gets to suffer equally. Those who don't like it should have spoken up decades earlier.
I'm posing anon for obvious reasons. My hope: Lets let Facebook win this round, so we as a society come up with decency rules that help all of us, rather than just defending protected groups.
Do you have any sources for this?
What if you said this? What happens when Bernie Sanders run a dozen ads saying the “rich” haven’t been “paying their fair share” and what standard would allow this to be consider truthful, or will the ad need to define words like rich and fair (good luck on that 2nd one)?
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...
The regulations exist in the exact opposite direction as you claim - TV networks are required to air even untruthful ads as not to run afoul of regulations governing political ads, which means Facebook's policy is closely aligned with the actual regulations as they exist.
Also, most newspapers at least online are are outsourcing part of their ad placement to third-party ad tech companies so I'd be shocked if there was any editorial control.
I keep getting mailings in Ohio indicating that if I sign a petition to put a certain issue on the ballot The Chinese Will Know Where I Live And Come Get Me. It's a completely idiotic campaign, and of course, it's all blatant lies. (similar ads appear on television)
This place you're living sounds relatively pleasant though.
Note well: I'm not saying that Facebook should be treated like the mail rather than the newspaper. But, given that they can target ads to individuals, that aspect seems more like the mail, at least to me.
Direct mail is not a public forum. Moreover, who would accept or reject a direct mailing campaign?
But I wish I could reject direct mail campaigns...
Math doesn't work that way or bitcoin would be toast.
That means that the only thing "...then we can just say democracy is a failure" accomplishes today is give you a clever-sounding way to avoid thinking about a hard problem. That's not a good thing.
Council democracy does not require politicians to try to appeal in absentia to hundreds of thousands of voters they ostensibly "represent", for example.
Yes, that's pretty much my point.
American democracy? Oh yeah I've absolutely given up. Candidates I like never even come close to winning. Often they don't win ballot access. I'll still vote, but I'm done contributing to campaigns or being optimistic about the outcome.
I would expect most of the ads in question here fall into one of two categories. One of them is considered false by one side, but an argument can also be made by the other, because each side is probably cherry-picking some data, looking at different contexts with different values, etc. I honestly don't think FB can do this at scale without bias, arbitrary judgment calls that don't seem fair and take too long to resolve, etc. So let's say they just let all those cases slide. The other category is things that are what we on HN would call blatantly false, where there is no supporting evidence, tons of evidence to the contrary, and it just violates common sense. Are we saying that we trust people who fall for the latter, and do no independent research before basing votes on things they see in FB ads, are people we should still trust to judge national economic plans and foreign policy in the debates? I'm sorry if this is defeatist, but I just don't think so. Those aren't people I even want to be on a jury of my peers. I'd rather just be judged by the man with the law degree and years of experience. Maybe this is a step in the right direction, but I just don't even think it's a drop in the bucket. With so many people who lack basic knowledge of civics but have the right to vote, I think we're just past the point of no return to idiocracy until there's some major collapse and we start from the ground up.
But the mere fact that we're having this argument is beyond me. After every election, which ever side loses goes grasping at straws. With Obama it was the birthers. With Trump it's social media ads. With the last 2 Republican presidents it's been the electoral college. I mean I'm sitting here watching the 49% (concentrated in a few dense areas), claim they have more of a democratic mandate than the 48% (spread out in very culturally distinct areas), when most people don't even vote. I see both parties as being inappropriately quick to judge and legislate matters that they're completely unfamiliar with. I'm pretty individualist, but US democracy seems to just be a constant race to a tyranny of the majority, with the legislature having abdicated many of their responsibilities to the executive. Violations of the law by the government just seem to get ignored because that's the way it is now. So if I did get to pick what we replace the current US democratic system with, I'd far rather go for at least a parliamentary system where instead of me thinking I have a representative for my geographic area, my party gets a share of the power and has to figure out a way to share power with the other parties. It's less direct, but if I don't get to be as self-governing as I want to be, I don't want to be governed by a bunch of people who fall for Facebook spam.
1: https://cpj.org/blog/2019/05/qa-taiwans-digital-minister-on-...
The problem with what you are saying is, if we accept that there can be any curbs on free speech at all, "how could anyone be stupid enough to believe that?" is not a useful guiding principle for setting the threshold at all.
The classic example of speech that is not covered by the First Amendment is crying "fire!" in a crowded theater. Of course it's rather crazy for everyone to trample each other trying to escape a fire that does not exist when they do not even smell smoke. That is completely beside the point. We govern the speech based on the damage it does, the intent to do damage, and the utter lack of any redeeming qualities to the speech.
(Although I believe I share the OP's sentiment that the whole thing is not a sign that democracy is in great shape...)
I mean, sure, newspapers have policies for acceptable ads, but don't they try to keep editorial and advertising separate?
Example:
"The Minnesota Daily at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, houses its news staff and advertising staff separately and does not hold meetings between the groups."
https://splc.org/2018/10/student-media-guide-to-publishing-p...
Is this something that congress could (technically, not politically) fix themselves, or do they really depend on a nomination from the executive branch?
You could have any vacancy for more than X-days be filled by the minority party. (i mean even nominating an acting member -- you don't need to get an approval)
Either way, I don't believe anyone would claim that in case of false advertisements, the responsibility falls on the publisher of ads, not the advertiser. It's not generally possible to evaluate the claims made in advertisements - if I were to say, something I'm selling will work for 10 years and will offer replacements if it breaks in the next 10 years, how would the ad publisher know if I would honor the claim several years later?
I'm not sure I would describe them as bland: https://youtu.be/LcjEe9guEIA?t=435. I bet the bland ones are by choice.
> a question of whether or not Facebook should submit to FEC regulation or not
There are official political ads by campaigns, and then there are non-official political-influencing ads/articles/etc. A new challenge will be defining how "political" something has to be for it to be considered a "political ad".
Snail mail and email also get exemptions.
Let's not pretend like there was some overarching architecture for all of society's communication.
Because it's not apples to apples.
Facebook is like NBC but it's also like Comcast. Comcast doesn't have an editorial board screening all the content that its product indirectly facilitates.
Newspapers basically are content creators and curators at the core. If newspapers stopped doing that, they basically wouldn't exist. If Facebook eased up on ranking, filtering, and promoting, it would just be the old thefacebook.com.
> But overall, it’s inaccurate to say that "most networks" will refuse to air an ad by Trump with a lie in it. We could find no evidence that most networks reject false candidate ads.
So I’m not sure that the boards have done their job.
I’d certainly call bs on them, and that’s on ads from my own party!
Only for political advertising related to federal elections. That's a subset of all political advertising.