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Comment by tathougies | Hacker News Reader

> As an individual I don’t feel like I can do anything about this.

Welcome to living in a liberal democracy where we don't get to force someone to stop saying something because it makes us mad.

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FTA:

> Facebook’s position on political advertising is “a threat to what FB stands for,”

2 points I'd like to make:

(1) Facebook is a tool for mid-30s people like me to share pictures of their kids and vacations with friends and family. We are on it because we're platform locked with logins across various services, and because there's too much critical mass with the generation before us to migrate away.

(2) It shouldn't "stand" for anything, nor should any other communications medium. We did not elect a sect of silicon valley developers to decide what is proper communication and what is not.

But we can because it causes measurable harm, such as influencing the electorate to make decisions based on falsehoods.

We already have special rules for political advertisements on TV, radio, public posting, and print. Facebook is claiming that the rules everybody else follows don't apply to them.

Those special rules are more permissive than what these employees are asking for. The trump ads aired on most TV networks except for CNN, who objected because the ad called them "fake news".

Nobody is asking Facebook to ban Trump ads. They are asking Facebook to ban ads with explicit falsehoods.

Trump pretty clearly uses "fake news" as an insult, not a claim of fact.

Contrast with ads with false claims that Facebook has approved, like "Pope endorses Trump" or "Lindsey Graham voted for Green New Deal". No TV network would run those.

Really? I'm under the impression that TV networks _have to_ run ads even if they're not truthful:

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...

> Broadcasters are bound by [Section 315 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934] and therefore can’t reject a presidential candidate’s ad, even if contains false information. (The candidates do have to abide by disclosure rules to make it clear who paid for the ad.)

Ummm Mark Zuckerberg has a billion times more power than I do.

But does not his vote count at +1, the exact same as your's does?

It does not, as well anyone without an axe to grind should know. He can influence other people's +1; even if only fractionally, that adds up.

There's a reason Murdoch is feared by UK politicians, why Berlusconi had such leverage even in the face of scandal. Media controls perception.

Zuck's social status and financial position enables him to influence way more people than most individuals can. As the parent of this thread stated, he has way more power.

So how do you all propose to quantify, define and draw a line on "power" and where to much must be quashed, i.e. "way more power"? If you have more friends and acquaintances who respect your opinion (and so can be influenced) than I do then do you have more 'power' than me, since your vote now can count more? How can/should I counter that so we are 'equal'. Oh that wonderful term 'equal' and how some of us wish and long for all of us to be perfectly equal.

Its not the individual vote so much as the difference in effective power. Who cares how many votes he gets if he can spend billions of dollars to get what he wants. If he had the same sized speech as any average individual then who would care what he has to say about anything.

Voting is not about 'getting what you want'. It's about getting a legal system that works. Getting what you want (within the framework of that legal system) is completely 100% your responsibility

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