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
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?
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...
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.