Hacker News Reader

Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

Just ban them completely or don't bother, I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims as it's perfectly possible to make an add which is 100% made up of technically correct statements but presents a misleading narrative.

Then it comes to the question is there is such thing as a true narrative to begin with as narratives are subjective in nature, this is a can of worms that Google shouldn't open.

So yeah a full ban sure but not this, if they want some sort of a partial ban they should probably have an interface that allows local electoral commissions to vet advertisement and the most important thing I think Google must do is to disable targeted political ads if they continue to allow them in any shape or form.

View on HN

Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that claims you have a problem with your bank account and links you to a fake bank login page that steals your credentials?

Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that falsely claims that a certain candidate has dropped out of the race, or that the election date has been changed?

Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that falsely attributes words or actions to a certain candidate? (e.g. imagine an ad that falsely claims "Candidate X has changed her position on issue A.")

If you have different answers for some of these questions, then your view is more complicated than "I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims."

I don't think it's correct, the first one is facilitates a defined criminal activity the 2 others are not necessarily criminal (they might be in certain jurisdictions).

There is a huge difference between an "ad" that is designed to compromise a bank account through phishing and a ad that is designed to sway political opinion even if it's untruthful.

In fact out of those 3 the former isn't even an advertisement necessarily despite the fact that it might be presented to the user through "google ads".

Whether an ad is illegal is something that Google would need to determine.

Banning them would just further extend the isolation/echo chambers created by social media.

If you have a political message, it makes sense to force you to tailor that message on very broad terms. Hearing something you might disagree with is part of life and very important to critical thinking.

This is not intended to be an opinion on false statements in political advertising.

> Hearing something you might disagree with is part of life and very important to critical thinking.

I believe this is 100% true. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do not have the skills to handle this. Look at the anger that appears on this site when certain topics are brought up.

So people have a hard time dealing with ideas they disagree with, but I doubt that forced interaction with those ideas will improve the situation.

We can see empirically that the most common reaction is to double down on your own ideas, get defensive, and generally react in a very self-centered and egotistical manner.

That's the current situation. Would banning political ads make this problem worse? I think I can see the logic here - people will only seek out what they agree with.

But it's not like political ads are the only way that they might be forced to see something they disagree with. The only way to do that these days would be to be completely off grid somewhere and never to see anyone else.

It's also the case that political ads probably provide the worse kind of perspective of views you disagree with.

The solution to the problem is to find a way to get people to break out of their ego-based thinking. A lot of magical things can happen when people are honestly committed to finding the truth, instead of protecting what they think the truth is.

> Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do not have the skills to handle this.

I would suggest that this is change, not a norm in the last few decades.

So, unfortunately, the vast majority of people no longer have the skills to handle this.

> ... double down on your own ideas, get defensive, and generally react in a very self-centered and egotistical manner. > ... find a way to get people to break out of their ego-based thinking

Yes. I think at least in western society (and I start to see this in Asia too) the self-importance crept in, replacing self-reliance.

How did we get here, and how do we "break out"?

> How did we get here

Everything about modern American culture; a nation of throwaway everything. Throwaway food, throwaway tools, throwaway friends, throwaway jobs.

> and how do we "break out"?

I dunno but maybe listen to and work to solve the things people complain about?

Income inequality, global warming, healthcare including mental health, education, penal system, politics

All good causes but I think it’s tangential.

People who are unaffected by all that haven’t “broken out”.

> I would suggest that this is change, not a norm in the last few decades.

Propaganda is not a new thing and the reason it was and is widely used is because it works.

"But it would not work on smart people like me, but only on millenials or ...". Hint: If everybody considers themselves smarter than average...

> I would suggest that this is change, not a norm in the last few decades.

I am not so sure that we changed so rapidly. It would also make sense that this is not new, and it has just become more apparent in the last few decades, as people have been increasingly communicating with with more other people than ever before.

I think the vast majority of people never had the reason/opportunity to acquire critical thinking skills. It has been discussed by philosophers hundreds (if not thousands) of years ago, so I think it's safe to assume it's not new.

But regardless, I believe the real issue here is that we are not doing much to teach people to think critically.

What makes you think this is different? I think this process is baked into the structure of our brains and is part of the inherently biased way our brains operate.

I don't think there is a change in skills to handle this. I think that what happened is that now information travels so quickly while the variety of information sources people consume has decreased.

Before people had time to think about news and talk to people with different views and get push back. That additional friction slowed the spread of misinformation and guaranteed it would mix with the information. When given both, a sufficient portion of the population was able to determine which was which. Then these people could moderate the discussion with targeted persuasive arguments. Sure, a lot of people still believed the misinformation, but they were less confident about it.

Now the information and misinformation travel separate channels. By the time they meet odds are the people involved are already emotionally invested in one or the other.

>Hearing something you might disagree with is part of life and very important to critical thinking

hearing one or two things you disagree with is part of life, hearing 100 things you disagree with a quarter of which are paid for by super PACs or in rubles isn't, that's a recipe for losing your mind.

'echo chamber' should become the unword of the year or something because apparently the free speech mantra has now turned into a license to shove opinions into other people's faces, a good portion of which aren't even authentic.

> Banning them would just further extend the isolation/echo chambers created by social media.

I'm not sure this is true. I know I don't see ads from all sides. In my experience the targeted ads just reinforce the echo chamber.

Paid adverting artificiality maintains and promotes ideas backed by money rather than having ideas become widespread solely based on validity.

If we believe in the "market place of ideas" where validity and accuracy are the sole determiners of success then none should have artificial support. So all ads should be banned. If an idea fails in this market place, then it is reasonable to assume it is a bad idea. Leveraging it is just as bad when done by Soviet approved posters or Exxon paid for ads.

The echo chamber is an example where paid ads will actually _worsen_ the situation: Ads are aimed at target audiences driving them into more extremes by seeing exaggerated or false statement they would not have seen if there were no ads. Also, those echo chambers backed by moneyed interests will thrive and expand while those not money backed will fade. So instead of at least having some hope of uneasy balance between two extremes, you get head long plunge into just one of them.

> If we believe in the "market place of ideas" where validity and accuracy are the sole determiners of success then none should have artificial support.

The "market place of ideas" makes no mention of the speed, likelihood of transmission, or intended audience. The best candidate with the best message still needs to get the message out in a timely fashion (before the election and to the core constituency!). The best product at the best price doesn't matter if the business runs out of money before it can drum up sales... not to mention, real world concerns like collective action problems.

I'd argue the market place of ideas is only the best idea in comparison to the rest.

> Then it comes to the question is there is such thing as a true narrative to begin with as narratives

No there isn’t. There is truth and then there is people too lazy to do the investigation that uncovers the truth because it takes real work, real people, time and energy and unfortunately is not profitable.

All the investigative journalism I know about exists mostly in dirty "lefty" or "Centrist lefty" orgs like NYT, WaPo, Reuters, etc.

All the "righty" or "conservative" orgs i know about are mostly opinion pieces.

Beware filter bubbles. If you're in the Blue Tribe bubble then you'll see conservative sources, but only when they're saying something contentious if not blatantly false (and so you'll also only see the Red Tribe sources who say such things), because that's what causes fellow Blue Tribe members to bring them to your attention.

I openly admit im fairly left wing, But I also can not think of a single serious major investigative right-leaning news org.

I'd love counter examples, This is not about filter bubbles.

EDIT: on Further consideration, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist might qualify, but they typically don't seem to do expose pieces.

Reason, Cato (especially worthwhile: https://www.cato.org/people/julian-sanchez), The American Conservative, they exist.

Even Fox News does some actual investigative reporting, notwithstanding that most of their airtime is spent on opinion and propaganda.

"Even Fox News does some actual investigative reporting, notwithstanding that most of their airtime is spend on opinion and propaganda."

I actually read Fox News daily for a few months to try and see this, but I didn't, and eventually stopped after they autoplayed played someone getting fatally hit by a truck on their front page.

Yeah, Fox News is pretty crap in general. You're not going to find happiness on the front page. But there is this:

https://www.foxnews.com/category/news-events/fox-news-invest...

Where you find things like this:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/veterans-face-more-delays-on-agen...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/jon-stewart-burn-pit-victims-psa

It's not sexy contentious lies, it's factual reporting about veterans and 9/11 first responders. So naturally, it doesn't get promoted by algorithms designed to push clickbait to the fore.

I wouldn’t consider Cato “Right

Both of the major parties are Big Tent parties. The Red Tribe institutions that look similar to major Blue Tribe institutions are going to be the ones operated by fiscal conservatives, libertarians, veterans organizations, etc. If you want news from religious conservatives, there is an organizational structure that as far as I can tell has no Blue Tribe analog -- a mostly-decentralized network of localized institutions called churches.

Public schools

That would certainly say a lot about the nature of the fight over school vouchers.

well if you believe in a secular education, go to school. If you believe in a religious education, go to church

That is what they do. But then they want to know why the secular schools get so much more of their tax dollars than the parochial schools they want their kids to attend.

No they don’t. They want access to the public’s money.

It would be more helpful to think of churches/parochial schools as businesses.

They are the public. It's their money.

If parochial schools are businesses then school vouchers are sending retirees social security checks rather than operating state-run homes for the elderly. It allows people to buy what they want in the market (from businesses) instead of being restricted to a choice between a government facility and nothing -- not even a refund of the tax dollars not needed to pay for it when you don't use it.

No, i don’t get a refund from the fire department because my house doesn't burn. An educated populace is beneficial to the nation.

People are free to choose as it is. No reason to provide the public’s democratically distributed money.

>Reason, Cato

Reason and Cato are corporate funded think tanks pushing a corporatist agenda. If you look at CATO's front page piece right now, for instance, it's not an investigation it's an opinion piece on how hard it is to complain in the WTO inspired by their backers:

https://www.cato.org/publications/free-trade-bulletin/trade-...

The point isn't that they never publish an opinion piece, it's that they do publish investigative reporting, like this:

https://www.cato.org/blog/why-nsa-deleting-call-records

You also get pieces like this, which are full of factual information whether or not you agree with their policy position:

https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/new-nation...

And it's hard to see which "corporatist agenda" pieces like this are pushing:

https://reason.com/2019/11/21/with-this-forfeiture-trick-inn...

Which isn't to say that they're unbiased. Everybody has an opinion. But everybody has an opinion; that's why you need more than one news source.

There's massive amounts of special interest money being funneled into publications on every side of issues, local and national. That's the reality we have to live with. See Politico's latest reveal of "dark money" also going toward left-wing policy activism and media coverage [1].

That doesn't mean we should totally ignore what media and think tanks have to say, they can still produce good critiques and investigations -- whether Brookings or Cato. Even explicitly partisan muckrakers like Greenpeace or O'Keefe's Project Veritas occasionally expose a valid case of wrongdoing no one else noticed. These organizations are very selective and hyperbolic in what they focus on, due to their narrow mission and ideology and the natural limit of time/energy, but if you combine all of their varied output you can get enough slices to approximate the pie.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/19/dark-money-democrat...

Reason and cato are not investigative journalism, they are policy research, its not comparable.

No, I mean, what are right wing investigative journalism publishing sources? Can you point me to any?

Well, let's look at the most obvious right-wing publication. Here you go, original news reporting:

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/05/17/exclusive-facebook...

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/06/13/exclusive-facebook...

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl...

I just noticed that they even publish stuff in opposition to Trump: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/12/11/exclusive-text...

Note that I found "right wing investigative journalism publishing sources" to be ambiguous, because you could mean a "publishing source" as in a place that publishes things or specifically that you want a list of references as found in academic papers or on wikipedia. If I guessed wrongly, perhaps you could clarify.

There is only thermodynamic truth, but it rapidly decays with entropy. Most things people assume are less true than they believe

/"the most important thing I think Google must do is to disable targeted political ads if they continue to allow them in any shape or form."/

...uh, isn't that exactly the policy announced here?

No. They are restricting just one type of targeting.

>Google is extending a ban on political campaigns targeting advertising at people based on their supposed political leanings.

>It said political groups would soon only be able to target ads based on "general categories" such as age, gender and rough location.

> Just ban them completely or don't bother

Wait, you mean ban all ads completely and make Google lose 100 billion dollars of revenue and make advertisers waste more money on non-targeted ads increasing costs of products and make users pay subscription fees for currently ad funded services like Google Search? Otherwise I don't see how your statement makes any practical sense

100 Billion is a vast overstatement.

In 2018, google sold 118 billion worth of ads. Parent was saying (I think) that all ads present misleading narratives so google would have to ban all ads.

Is it though?

> A staggering $24.1 billion of Google's $27.77 billion revenue for Q3 2018 was from advertising – roughly a 22% increase from $19.8 billion in Q3 2017.

source: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busin...

Over a decade, from politics, that amount is high, but not unreasonable.

Phrased in terms of opportunity cost, it's appropriate, again if a bit high.

Media gets YUGE dollars from politics. That flow of money in politics is one of the biggest problems in the US.

Many want to fix it. That risk, in terms of the financial opportunity assessment under discussion right now, would reasonably ratchet that number down further.

Right. All ads are political by definition. So it’s really a ban on opposing ideology, and on overtly ideological ads which are really not so much of a problem. I think it’s a non-change from the current system, mostly a pr move.

Then there’s also the concept of truth that is factually incorrect. Like authors and comedians using made up/constructed anecdotes to convey a deep truth about society.

A great example is the lady scientist character from the Chernobyl series. She herself was a fabrication, but represented the factual voices of opinions of hundreds of USSR scientists. Because you can’t write a story with 200 main characters.

To be clear, you're in FAVOR of their policy that doesn't allow a rouge actor to, say, run ads targeted to a specific community that tell them Election Day is Wednesday, rather than Tuesday, right?

You're just opposed to the extra measure of removing ads that are based on their fact-checks of political issues? I favor removing on the basis of both, but I do think these are VERY different categories.

If they were an "[azure] actor who ran ads targeted to a specific community", should we suddenly be neutral? What difference does the color of the actor make?

I believe the poster above you meant "rogue", as in malicious but not strictly associated with a specific party.

In any case, it is almost impossible for someone to be truly neutral, especially in US politics. Having a company decide that they are the arbiter of this is dangerous. Especially google, which tends to come off as leaning towards one side of the debate.

I had no idea what you comment meant, then I realized I misspelled "rogue." I can't tell if you were joking or actually thought I was referring to cosmetics, but either way, oops my bad.

> I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims as it's perfectly possible to make an add which is 100% made up of technically correct statements but presents a misleading narrative.

What do you find objectionable about a low-pass filter that simply removes obvious lies?

I think you mean high-pass filter?

I guess that just depends on the axis orientation...

But there is nothing inherently wrong about removing pure garbage ads.

Of course, one might object that it would give more visibility to harder-to-discern bad ads, and make the consumer less wary of ads if they are less used to see them with obviously wrong information. Double edged sword as always, and I would certainly ban them. Or every ad, for that matter. But that's google, it is their business model, so what are you expecting?

Quite right.

The fact that I don't trust Google (or any other large corporation, for that matter) to judge what is and is not an "obvious lie" given the right political incentives. In this case, outright banning would be better and remove any ambiguity or opportunity for shenanigans.

You shouldn't trust any large _institution_ to prevent "obvious lies" from spreading. Institutions are just collections of people, and there's barely a single one out there that's managed to completdly avoid the fact that people are, generally speaking, dishonest and dumb.

I trust The Economist newspaper and the Congressional Budget Office

You'd trust The Economist (or the CBO) to be the arbiter of what other people are allowed to say? That's what my comment says, not "trust any institution to avoid telling obvious lies" (that being said, I've read some pretty dishonest stuff in the Economist, despite generally being a fan).

>You'd trust The Economist (or the CBO) to be the arbiter of what other people are allowed to say?

They already do that with their own employees. They censor and control what statements they print to control for accuracy. Journalism concerns in part determining what true statements we should print. I think the Economist and CBO do a good job of separating the facts from the fiction. I would trust them to fact-check statements. I would not trust CNN or Facebook or the Democrats to fact-check statements.

Ok, so then you have the problem of Google judging what is and is not political.

This is a good point that runs a little deeper than some people appreciate. (moving a topic into the category of "political" can already, today, be a subtle form of censorship in the public sphere)

At the same time, if we're talking about advertising, in the US we can just rely on what constitutes political advertising under the law.

I agree that would be an easy move for Google to make.

I would imagine that there would then be an incentive for potential donors to, rather then giving cash, pay for messages that fly under the radar but are designed to support a particular campaign.

Not that an outright ban is a good solution either, as there is a large discussion to have about what is and isn't political. Some people see some topics as inherently political, while others would say that they have nothing to do with politics.

So deciding what is and isn't banned becomes an inherently political statement.

This makes the definition of "politics" meaningless. Besides, it's a lot easier to nail down an objective definition (at least for Google's purposes) of what falls under a specific subject (ads are sold on keywords) than it is to nail down an objective definition of "truth".

You can exclude ads that mention or are paid for by any PAC, candidate for public office, or are advocating for or against any particular public policy decision, or mention the topic of elections or voting.

This would eliminate the majority of them, leaving bad actors that don't care about Google's requirements anyways. Another option would be to simply make certain keywords unpurchaseable.

> nail down an objective definition of "truth"

Recognizing the truth or falsehood of a statement or series of statements can be complicated, but we're doomed as a species if an objective definition of truth stops us in our tracks.

When it comes to things in Google's wheelhouse, at least. Their entire advertising platform is based on categorizing ads and where they're supposed to display. This is an entirely different ball of wax than trying to determine if the text of an ad is true or false, and that's before we get into the "true but misleading in context" quagmire.

Besides, we have precedent here. Have a look at their policies surrounding what's allowed in health ads[1], they're pretty extensive, objective, and granular.

[1]: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/176031?hl=en

Thanks, there is some thought-provoking stuff there.

What constitutes an "obvious lie"?

If China says the majority of Hong Kong support immediate reunification, backed by a statement from the Hong Kong government, is that an "obvious lie"? It comes from what is considered to be an authoritative source of truth.

If Google can overrule a government's statement, by disagreeing with China, does that mean they can overrule the official statement of any government?

That gives them the power, and incentive, to approve some statements that come from the White House, and not others that might damage their own reputation.

Or rather, knowing Google, approval of these goes through a machine, with unknown bias, and suddenly Google is only approving right-wing messages. All Democrat messages get disapproved. Or vice versa.

It places Google in position as the ultimate source of truth, without giving them the responsibility that comes with that.

On the other hand, if google replies to the query "labour manifesto" and the top link is an ad to "labourmanifesto.co.uk" that is actually run by the conservative party, that's the same category of fraud as if I entered "chase bank" and was sent to a phishing site. Allowing that ad in response to that query is defrauding voters.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-fake-lab...

Being the largest source of information in the world while being completely indifferent as to whether that information is true or not is an amazingly nihilistic, amoral position to take.

Absolutely.

I think the most sensible thing for any ad agency to do is to ban _all_ political ads.

It may become difficult for them to differentiate what is and isn't a political ad (an ad for a gay dating app could be construed as a political ad in some nations), but they need to remove themselves from any seat of responsibility.

Based on your questions and comments I get the feeling I am communicating with someone who does not know that journalism exists or how it is supposed to work. What constitutes an "obvious lie"? is not even close to being an intractable problem. Reporting what China said is not the same thing as putting it forward as the truth. Determining whether it is the truth or not is not necessarily an impossible task. Etc. etc.

It's true enough that Google will experience some pressure to kowtow to the governments or powerful interests who have the ability to lean on them, and that is probably a pretty good argument to get out of the business of political advertising altogether. "What is truth anyway, man????" is not much of an argument.

> Based on your questions and comments I get the feeling I am communicating with someone who does not know that journalism exists or how it is supposed to work.

I'll try not to take offense at that.

I'm just someone who has lived under an authoritarian regime where what is "truth" has been actively manipulated by the powers that be - dissenting opinions were made illegal.

> "What is truth anyway, man????" is not much of an argument.

That wasn't the "crux" of the argument.

No advertising company should be in the business of deciding what to report as truth. If they are, complying with local laws about what is "truth" may in fact be completely antithetical to the pretense of fact checking.

The most sensible solution for someone like Google is banning political advertising altogether - not putting themselves in a position where they may be required to act as propaganda mouthpieces.

First you have to define what is an ad and what isnt. I a not being flippant, but with the web, anything published can be an advertisement and frankly, most content seen by people these days could be defined as a form of advertising...

The truth is knowable.

Here here, this attitude that somehow the truth is impossible to know, and that there is no difference between insane conspiracy theories, and researched, documented facts is a pile of horse pucky.

But full ban costs Google money.

Even this restriction costs them money, as the advertisers have either worse targeting, so lower ROI, so they'll spend less, or they'll have to do the targeting work themselves, which removes part of the value chain from Google, so they'll pay less.

I’m not sure if that: if ads are less effective (generalized, less targeted) advertisers (campaigns) will have to spend more money to have the same impact.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com