Facebook staff demand Zuckerberg limit lies in politcal ads
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Election-related ads are a cash cow for their ad department, and attack ads get far more engagement and shares than milquetoast "I'm ___ and I believe in ___, vote for me". Metrics for those ads look terrible and will drive away future customers.
If we don’t demand candidates themselves tell the truth, how can we ask ads to be truthful from those same campaigns.
In any case it’d be tilting at windmills.
Honesty is a virtue for a reason: it is exceedingly rare and hard to find in a world that refuses to deal with truth.
If it's not important, then Facebook is fine — and newspapers, TV and radio can relax their fact checkers as well. If it is important, then the fact that it's allegedly infeasible for Facebook is not a defense.
Are they going to vet all these ads? What if I’m in Mexico, can I place an ad to target US likely voters with a pro-USMCA candidate? What if I belong to a Union and buy pro union ads but don’t bring up a candidate but my union endorses some candidate?
Do we put a minimum on ad buys so that there are fewer to vet? Maybe the minimum is $20,000? Does that sound democratic?
Given that last election they took large sums of foreign currency for political ads, had representatives in cambridge analitica’s HQ / war room, happen to profit astronomically from increased engagement due to division and disinformation, and their own employees with insider knowledge are also calling the stance out.
It seems wildly strange in that context, when Facebook could easily take the stance that it’s hard and they might not get it right but will try anyway, instead of bogus misinterpretation of free speech that is Zuck’s current stated position.
Now you're getting it!
Because not getting it right can actually be worse for society, because at that point Facebook is picking and choosing who gets to run political ads. This should be terrifying considering that some of these tech companies have so many oopsies when it comes to certain political leanings. What do you think the calls will be like about Facebook when it turns out that one side in politics tends to not get to run their ads on Facebook while the other side can?
Having a policy of allowing all lies and providing tools for sale to microtarget users so that people can’t validate truth only favors politicians pushing lies and not people viewing them.
Facebook not removing ads with blatant lies is bad enough, but their product is now positioned as a disinformation tool.
Instead of using targeting to match people who need products with those product ads, they’re openly announcing their product as a tool for corrupt politicians to target voters with disinformation.
You don’t need a cambridge analytica to steal Facebook data for targeting when Facebook is offering that same service directly
Of course they're pushing back for cost reasons–That's "the bottom line"–but I doubt if it were easy they'd have done it "for free." Businesses, in my experience and observation, won't lift a finger they don't have to. The "right thing" doesn't merit a mention, let alone an allocation, unless it's coerced by the public, or by employees.
I mean, suppose they offered a 100% automated health clinic that misdiagnosed and killed 10% of the patients: "We'd like to hire actual doctors, but that would cost more than we'd wanted to spend, so there's literally nothing we can do to fix this problem. Sorry!" That wouldn't fly. Well, neither does this. Facebook today absolutely sucks at advertising. They're good at the cashing the checks part of the process, but horrendous at the actual implementation.
[1] 27.26% margin, according to https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FB/facebook/profit...
But it's not a room full of people. Facebook doesn't only exist in the US and I doubt that people from the US will be good at vetting political ads in Poland.
What's even worse is that at that point you're asking Facebook to censor political ads based on what Facebook thinks is right. Do you really think that Facebook wouldn't be labeled biased and there wouldn't be even further demands from them?
This is easy to do in the example of a health clinic, because there is a right and wrong answer, but in politics that's not the case.
You're drawing a false dichotomy about censorship. There's a normal, accepted middle ground between oppressive censorship and anarchy, often referred to as "ad checking" or "editorial review". Right now I can use an automated system to buy an ad saying "Trump Eats Babies" or "Obama Isn't a Citizen" or other flat-out lies. This is wrong. There should be a human in the mix who does at least minimal verification.
This is entirely about the fact Facebook and Google make a ton of money from running political ads, so they want to run them even if they might harm the democratic process.
[1] https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/vt-hfa062419...
Not that that's any better. Kind of worse, actually.
Banning pork[0] for all meals being one of them, or maybe something like being forced to wear a burqa[1]?
I mean, if there was a pro-trump activism rally in your workplace and seemingly the majority of workers were pro-trump, would you be silent? I would.
(FWIW I'm playing devils advocate, suggesting that not all activism promotes social justice or advancement of society)
[0]: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3936/denmark-bans-meatbal...
[1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10323303/I-was-for...
I was suggesting that a good number of things that happen are a byproduct of activism.
All that said, it cracks me up that HN does a vote down on such basic sociological things. What a culture.
But in general, this policy _could_ be good. I think politicians should be responsible for the claims they make and making clearly false statements should at the least be a fine-able offense. Other examples of crappy advertising are "X cures Y" without evidence to prove so, overtly sexual advertising, etc.
Internet-based advertising does need to step its game up, perhaps threatening "regulate yourselves, or we'll regulate you" could work as it does in the UK (at least for big tech). I guess that it mostly works in the UK because many of these media companies have a license/legal consequence on the line also.
If one Dehomag worker had engaged in "activism" to stop their collusion in the Holocaust, she'd have disgruntled 5,000 "silent" Nazis.
The fact is, Facebook's algorithms mediate our cultural superstructure. They either do so publicly, and explicitly, or privately–and then we're subject either to their whims, or an unknowable, unpredictable black box.
One cannot disappear the room by covering one's eyes.[1]
While your choice of comparative examples is patently absurd, you're actually arguing for a principled approach to governance rather than an activist one. And on that we agree - I think decisions should be made based on principle rather than based on who yells the loudest.
As for Facebook "mediating our cultural superstructure", this is a completely untestable and probably ideological claim.
To the contrary, there's been quite a lot of research indicating that Facebook has an outsize influence on culture to the point that it's substantially affected elections (and not just America's). Google "facebook influence research" and you'll see plenty of interesting results.
"Cultural superstructure" is a term ripped right out of Marxist literature, so it's already so burdened with ideological implications as to be inappropriate for serious research.
Another question would be - how are the 'lies' to be limited? Are the posts hidden, or marked with a "fake news" indicator? What if 80% of the content in an ad is true but the other 20% is unsubstantiated? Does that get tagged as well? "Partial fake news"? If Facebook implemented something like this, would they be open and transparent about how their site goes about verifying claims in ads so that the users can go straight to the source(s)?
With all of Facebook's missteps and mistakes in the past, who really wants them to be the arbiter of truth? Would people even trust them to be the arbiter of truth? Or would Facebook's efforts to mitigate or limit certain ads embolden the political side represented by that ad? (Not to generalize, but there are certainly some out there who are immediately dismissive of claims of truth when they come from Fox News/CNN, depending on their political persuasion).
It would seem more logical to me for Facebook to fund and coordinate some kind of 'awareness' campaign on the site in which it guides its users as to the level of skepticism to maintain when seeing political ads and how to go about verifying the veracity of claims in political ads they might see.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190613/03172142391/once-...
How did Newspapers, Radio and then TV handle this for the past 1200 years?
Yes, I disagree with dishonest political ads, and wish they didn't run on Facebook. But I don't see the need to change Facebook. As long as their terms of service are honest, I think they should be allowed to do whatever they want. If people don't like it, they can leave.
In order to solve this whole kerfuffle, we'll have to tackle that head-on. That people are misinformed, disinterested, and downright apathetic. You can ban political ads on Facebook tomorrow, and it won't solve those fundamental problems. It's just kicking the can down the road.
What if it's always been a problem? What if it's gotten worse by being able to segregate audiences painlessly? What if in the past there's just never been a single entity that could largely solve the problem? What if this single entity could fix a long-standing political problem and as a result make the outcome of politics better for everyone?
In 2008 and 2012 social media advertising was lauded as essentially "just another tool in the war chest to deploy on the campaign battleground". How that we've seen how things can go ... not as planned, people are looking for an out. And that's okay. Two things can be true: it was a new and interesting approach in 2008/2012 but now we've had enough of it and think there needs to be a correction. I still reread this[1] from time to time to remind myself how much things have changed. The article is spot on, but not in the way that the author I'm sure expected. All of these predictions came true, it just wasn't the utopia they bargained for.
>The John McCain campaign, for example, originally said that Governor Sarah Palin opposed the so-called bridge to nowhere in Alaska, Ms. Huffington said. “Online there was an absolutely obsessive campaign to prove that wrong,” she said, and eventually the campaign stopped repeating it. >“In 2004, trust me, they would have gone on repeating it, because the echo chamber would not have been as facile,” Ms. Huffington said.
>“There will be a lot of collateral damage coming to grips with the fact that we’re in a reality TV series, ‘Politics 24/7,’” Mr. Newsom said. >That’s a good thing, Mr. Trippi said. “This medium demands authenticity, and television for the most part demanded fake. Authenticity is something politicians haven’t been used to.”
>“When Congress refuses to go with his agenda, it’s not going to be just the president” they oppose, Mr. Trippi said. It will be the president and his huge virtual network of citizens.
[1]https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-interne...
As it happens: Facebook allows tailored, targeted advertising that leaves no trace. So lies on the platform are especially damaging because they cannot be disseminated.
And additionally it's a single platform, seemingly a single voice, so they have much more social responsibility than a fragmented assortment of publications which have different views and opinions.
-- Newspapers tend to have a lot of actual story, and the stories themselves are subject to certain laws regarding truth. The ads themselves are rarely political, usually it's the stories that are.
A combination of the perceived effect Facebook has had in elections over the past half decade or so and the fact that an election is coming up that many Facebook staff has an interest in, among other things.
How did Newspapers, Radio and then TV handle this for the past 1200 years?
I can't speak for all jurisdictions and certainly not going back that far, but in the USA, FWIW, there are federal regulations around the ads you're asking about that don't exist for online ads. Whether these regulations affect how truthful the ads are is certainly up for debate.
Traditional Hierarchies are struggling because hyper-connecitivity within the org and to the outside world have increased exponentially. This diffuses power at every level within a hierarchy. You can't have power over someone 2 levels down if their network is as influential as your own.
Most boom industries go through this. Then you get bad times, the fat gets trimmed, and a couple of lay offs later the employees realize that they are indeed fungible. Add a couple decades of maturity and they get a much more realistic view of work rather than "work is my life, and my life is work".
And sure, there may be a handful of essential staff, but the odds that you are a political activist masquerading as an employee while also being essential are nearly zero.
I mean, good luck doing that at Oracle or IBM for instance.
> You can't have power over someone 2 levels down if their network is as influential as your own.
Yes you absolutely can. If the employee refuses to cooperate it's called insubordination and it's ground for firing. Now of course the employee can spin it anyway he wants and use his network of influence to make the employer look bad, but it has limits.
Money = power. If FB workers are valuable, they have political power they can use. There are many employees who are close to "Fuck you" money and many more who can just walk out and get similar job almost instantly.
If your company constantly touts values, thought leadership, big ambitious ideas, etc, you can't respond with surprise when employees do the same.
For instance, if your company visibly and heavily promotes LGBT causes, civil rights, etc., and goes so far as to seek employees who are actively involved in such fights, don't be surprised if they turn around and form unions, or advocate for a more left-friendly workplace hierarchy. When you get a politically-motivated workforce, you can't pick and choose which parts of their politics they'll bring to the workplace.
Because being an employee means you are expected to have a subordinate relationship with your employer in exchange for a money. Even in countries with strong worker protections, questioning management decisions that are completely unrelated to work conditions or legal matters is 100% ground for getting legally fired.
Now if it was the "culture" encouraged by management then I'm all for it, if it is done with the employer's blessing there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In some businesses it's perfect acceptable to discuss partisan politics at work, wedge issues, and employees can voice their opinions as to who the business should have as a client or not...
But internet outrage and strongly-worded letters are a lot easier than actually organizing grassroots campaigns and getting people elected to Congress.
It's disingenuous of you to tell them to "hit the streets", I think that's basically what they're doing at their place of employment that has a significant impact on our elections. I'm not sure what more you want from them.
But more importantly your post misunderstands the fact that "free speech" for purposes of the constitution has nothing to do with free speech for purposes of running a social media site or free speech for any other purpose.
Isn't that exactly what these employees did? They organized and are trying to get the internal law (aka company policy) changed.
With that said, I'm rather surprised at how poorly constructed this letter is. If you're going to trot out trivial platitudes, you might as well go full bore and craft a persuasive polemic.
Instead this letter reads to me as a mealy-mouthed, mushy argument crafted by people who self-evidently favor paternalistic oversight when their letter does little to persuade me these are the people who should have any oversight over anything at all.
Ironically, if a politician of a favourable political persuasion linked to this letter in an ad I'm not sure how it could not be labeled as "misleading". It posits things that directly render many of the underlying "solutions" moot. The argument is broken almost immediately after it begins.
The best treatment of Citizens United I've seen is by Laurence Tribe - who no one of any merit would consider an apologist for Republicans or a textualist - in his book "Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution". The actual decision itself reads well and is worth everyone's time.
If memory serves, Laurence talks about his thinking on the case with Charlie Rose here: https://charlierose.com/videos/10259
EDIT: Now we see the parent comment being the most downvoted in this thread; with no one engaging with the content of the comment. Quite a sad state.
This is true, although an amendment could :)
How much of their revenue is based on political ads?
This is the first thing I found; take-out is, the flak they get over the whole political ads controversy isn't worth how much they make on them, comparatively. I'm inclined to believe them.
Remember when the ONDCP spent billions of dollars on "anti-drug" ads (including millions for a single super bowl spot)?
These were paid for by taxpayer dollars and ostensibly a public-health message. But we all realized that they were political and meant to defend an unpopular government policy by conjoining it with another slightly more popular policy (the "war on terrorism" as it was still called in 2002).
So what ads are "political" and what ads aren't?
Imagine as a baseline that we say that any ad for a candidate, paid for by a campaign, is political.
Well, then, how about an ad for a candidate for paid for a Super PAC? Still political probably, right?
OK, well, how about an ad depicting a particular policy outcome, ("Build the wall today!"), encouraging people to join a political action committee. Still political?
How about an ad from a 527 that says "We need medicare for all. Please donate if you agree."? How about an ad from a 501(c)(4) that says "Help support independent drug research."?
Where do you draw the line?
At the end of the day, we need to stop using platforms that rely on a central authority's revenue from advertising. That's the core problem here.
I guess "Less than 1% of FB employees demand Zuckerberg limit lies in political ads" doesn't have the same ring to it. I guarantee you can find more FB employees who believe the earth is flat, or are 9/11 truthers than the percent that signed this letter.