Google halts political ads in Singapore as election looms: documents | Hacker News Reader

Google halts political ads in Singapore as election looms: documents

reuters.com

88 pointsdoppp62 comments

In these comments, and in the press at large, we have another great display of "damned if you do, damned if you don't".

It is constantly argued that Facebook, Google, etc. must stop political ads in America, because allowing ads benefits the party currently in power.

But now all the comments argue that Google must not stop political ads in Singapore, because forbidding ads benefits the party currently in power.

I have not the slightest doubt that the same amount of outrage would occur if Google had taken the exact opposite action: for literally any action you can construct a narrative for why it benefits the "wrong" people. It feels like some people won't be happy until Google is literally appointing the politicians they like.

I mentioned this in another comment, but you've hit the nail on the head. This idea is expanded upon by Thomas Sowell's idea of "Cosmic Justice":

> Presumably, the vast ranges of undeserved inequalities found everywhere are the fault of "society" and so the redressing of those inequalities is called social justice, going beyond the traditional justice of presenting each individual with the same rules and standards. However, even those who argue this way often recognize that some undeserved inequalities may arise from cultural differences, family genes, or from historical confluences of events not controlled by anybody or by any given society at any given time. For example, there was no way that Pee Wee Reese was going to hit as many home runs as Mark McGwire, or Shirley Temple run as fast as Jesse Owens. There was no way that Scandinavians or Polynesians were going to know as much about camels as the Bedouins of the Sahara-- and no way that these Bedouins were going to know as much about fishing as the Scandinavians or Polynesians.

> In a sense, proponents of "social justice" are unduly modest. What they are seeking to correct are not merely the deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos. What they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for. Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man but the oversights of God or the accidents of history. What they are really seeking is a universe tailor-made to their vision of equality. They are seeking cosmic justice.

The above is an abbreviation of a speech, which itself is an abbreviation of a book. I highly recommend reading the speech as the ideas are heavily expanded upon:

https://tsowell.com/spquestc.html

Those snippets are a rather disingenuous dismissal of "social justice". Contemporary discrimination based on race, gender, etc. is real and endemic, and working to address that would be a better way of looking at it.

Edit: an example to consider https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data

This was just discussed in similar posts recently. But there are flaws with this idea of contemporary discrimination specifically when looking at statistics of people who get "approved" for a job, college, etc.

Often times people advocate that those numbers should be equalized to some extent to be "fair", regardless of the context around which those approvals are made. If applicants are given preferential treatment to "balance" these "unfair" results, well you are in fact the very problem you're trying to solve. Jobs or college acceptance should be based on performance or capability, and the root of the problem actually really lies in opportunity. Often times minorities don't have access to equal opportunity, which results in sub-average performance. But that does not mean we should necessarily just "lower the bar" for a demographic because that's their average. Rather we should work to balance opportunity, and continue to make actions on capability and performance because that's what's truly fair.

We should not compromise people's lives when they've worked hard (regardless of race etc) just because they aren't of a specific demographic and fit the majority even though they performed better and would theoretically contribute more than worse counterparts.

Morgan Freeman actually talks about this in relation to race, and the blame lies on both of the sides of the spectrum that actively bring attention to and try to base decisions on race.

I'm sorry, but where did I advocate for "lowering the bar"?

A simple example of what I'm trying to describe: the treatment of POC by the police. For example, stop and frisk laws. The ACLU does not look favorably upon them: https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data

Please explain to me how the example given is not an example of social injustice that should not be tolerated by an enlightened society.

I made assumptions about the kind of "social injustice" you were talking about. There are many different forms of social injustice (by definition) that captures both what I'm describing and what you're describing.

My comments stand around the kind of social injustice I was describing, which was denying or accepting applicants for opportunities based on demographics vs performance.

What you're describing is a different kind of social injustice which is arguably racism in the police force or in the justice system. They're different manifestations of the same concept that is social injustice.

We aren't contradicting each other, I just didn't know what kind of social injustice you were talking about because you didn't specify in the original post.

To me that’s a small argument not worth stating, because there are already so many accepted mechanisms by which to diffuse causal responsibility, such as in a corporation. And nobody is going to buy that toxic dumping is morally okay just because it’s causally diffuse, opaque, or cosmic somehow.

Very few people think in terms of moral causality. Many people do not assume that people with mental illnesses deserve harsh treatment, as opposed to kindness, even though it is in a sense the cosmos which has done this. People already frame the cosmos as cold and cruel, and people seek to bring a little warmth to that story. The fact that the cosmos did it makes no difference when a greater moral vision is in sight.

Another way of restating the cosmic argument is "it's not my fault".

> "damned if you do, damned if you don't"

It's a false dilemma. There's a lesser evil of the two, that the west chose 300 years ago - free speech. We are now just rediscovering that wheel the hard way.

So free speech means you allow political ads. Which falls in the “damned if you do” category

Effective uncontrolled free speech is basically mind control, which KGB understood ages ago. CIA probably did, too, but the countries they wanted to influence in that way were either allies (not that it matters that much) or didn’t have free speech.

yeah but effective controlled speech is worse

You mean loudest person wins ?

I think the fact that both outcomes are perceived as dangerous points to the real underlying problem which is that moderation of content is desirable, but not if it has an outsized influence. In other words, the scale of companies like Google, Facebook, etc. is itself a political problem rather than the moderation policy they choose.

I don't think anyone would claim the n-chans to be on the same scale as Facebook yet they are usually Exhibit A when it comes to zero moderation being undesirable.

In that case it makes sense for Google not to allow the ads and let a smaller local company take over the role.

I thought the issue with Facebook was that they were creating funny accounts that shared memes and then switching them to be political accounts. And also using post farms to share funny political memes that people share to sway group thought. I never heard that it had anything to do with political ads. Is this correct?

I'd prefer to allow political ads with disclosure or some mark that it's an ad. Otherwise I fear that astroturfing and trolling will get much worse (somehow) since that seems like the only avenue to go down with banned ads

That's already been happening. Basically ever since it started, there has been the same disclosure that you get in a standard print publication, i.e. it says 'advertisement' at the top. Doesn't stop anyone from complaining!

Stops me from complaining. Like many others, I subconsciously gloss over any ads or junk like that. It's harder to do that when you have /u/joevoter pretending he's a normal person and not a paid commenter

it should also be required to be "reasonably affordable" (this is more for TV rather than online, but it could mean an upper limit on bids)

We have finally reached a point where the reality of things presents itself to people in tech.

The idea of fair or unbiased does not exist. Politics is at its core, about moving peoples hearts, not brains and getting your voice out there. Manipulating gullible people might as well be the first class in politics 101.

Google and Facebook, in this case, are not more than tools, the new warfront for the same old war. It has existed before them and will exist after.

Once your organization is big enough, all light will be on you and everyone will look to get their tirade in. It is all but guaranteed.

> The idea of fair or unbiased does not exist.

I've probably said that in the past but after a fair amount of thought it isn't true. It is pretty clear that there is an objective truth out there somewhere and we occasionally uncover bits of it as we muddle along. In maths even if nowhere else.

So although there is some theoretical level of purity that cannot be reached, for the English-language meaning of 'unbiased' is totally achievable. We just don't have a test for when it has been achieved. And it probably upsets everyone; because reality tends to have frequent disagreements with politicians and ideologies of all stripes.

They are not the same people. There is a group that consistently believes money should play a role in politics and a group that does not. If you eliminate political ads, you annoy the former.

So you are "damned [by the pro-money-in-politics-group] if you do, damned [by the no-money-in-politics-group] if you don't"

I’m curious about the outcome of this prelude to the US elections and whether problems will crop up.

It seems banning political ads on its properties will have a disproportionate effect on small parties and favor incumbents.

It could have the opposite affect too though, since google ads are essentially a bidding war, so if you have lots of money you could theoretically just out bid all your opponents (then it's down to who has more money).

This is exactly what happens. Since a larger company can just bury a message by having better ad targeting, spend more on the big demos, overload and bid up keywords and generally squeeze any smaller message out.

Do small parties benefit more than others with Google ads?

Exposure. It’s like an initial hockey stick graph. Once you’re big you don’t get as big a bang. It helps them get initial traction.

With all the griping about ad effectiveness. I'm not convinced that's the case.

Does anybody have numbers for how much revenue companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter even earn from political ads? At this point it is hard for me to imagine that revenue is worth the public backlash, regardless of my opinion on whether that backlash is justified.

It’s not about revenue, it’s about being indispensable to politicians and using that as leverage to prevent regulatory actions.

Not really, for instance Facebook is constantly arguing that they want to be regulated in the domain of political ads.

The total political ad revenue for 2016 was $1.8 billion. It's not that big

> is worth the public backlash

There will be backlash with or without ads. Twitter will also get a lot of blaming for not allowing small parties to have a voice.

Romania recently held presidential elections. Officially all the candidates spent 690.000 euro for online ads. Other countries such as Greece spent ~1 million euro. This article in Romanian details more https://romania.europalibera.org/amp/30285024.html

Maybe time is of the essence.

Someone should split the Twitter/Facebook difference and allow political ads until 90 days prior to the election. Information should spread freely but people should have the time to parse it too. If Boris' Brexit Bus (with misinformation about the consequences of Brexit for the NHS) had been allowed to hang around but banned near polling time, there would be time to fact check it or even think about it calmly.

Can you imagine a Russian search engine having 90%+ market share in the U.S., making decisions on whether or not political ads should be allowed on it's US properties?

This is Google, an American company with clear political bent, indulging in election interference in a foreign country. Just defer to local laws Google, you are NOT a neutral third party, and definitely NOT local.

They are defering to local laws. The laws say you can't advertise unless you conform to these requirements; google hasn't set up there systems to conform to those requirements so they can't publish political ads.

>The office administrating Singapore’s new fake news law, called the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA)

Anyone else get the sense that these new laws and policies get "beta tested" in other countries first?

I have been to SG but know nothing of their politics.

The skeptic in me wonders if a party that was likely to come to power that Google did or did not agree with if that would change wether and when they decided to ban political ads.

One thing people need to understand is that halting political ads to all political parties is not political neutral, it is siding with the establishment, the party in power.

I think Germany does it right by restricting political ads only to a very limited timeframe. I think negative ads aren’t allowed either. So parties can get their message out but they don’t benefit from having more money and the quality of the ads is not as low as in the US.

Is that the case?

Are Google ads that influential as far as 'establishment' vs 'not establishment' in Singapore?

Allowing all political ads isn't politically neutral either, the establishment will presumably have far greater resources (in this case, money to pay for ads). Then the only other option is to ban or suppress certain political parties on Google's ad platform to appeal to some notion of "equality". But who gets to decide that? Do we really want Google deciding which political parties get more ad play?

I am reminded of Thomas Sowells idea of "Cosmic Justice" which was posted here a few days ago [1]. Giving Google the reins on political advertisement is an impossible game, and the only winning move is not to play.

[1] https://tsowell.com/spquestc.html

I am not suggesting Google needs to do something to balance political powers, which is not Google's responsibility at all.

I am simply pointing out the establishment benefits from Google's policy. Between allowing all political ads and halting all political ads, the Singapore establishment would prefer the second.

As a dominant search engine and tech company, Google is also an established "party in power". If we want to re-balance power, we can redirect some outrage from Google to our own choices about the votes we make with our attention and money. We are free to use Duck Duck Go for search, Fastmail for email and so forth. Diversity is good for ecosystems, both natural and digital.

Isn't that a bit like saying that my local grocery store is not politically neutral because by not involving themselves in any political matters whatsoever they are siding with the establishment?

Under this definition, wouldn't it effectively be impossible to be politically neutral?

Is local grocery stores involving in political matters a social norm in your local community? You can not make up a non-existent reality.

A more proper example would be your local newspaper, instead of local grocery store.

Why does it matter what the norm is?

I personally think that we should be generous in this regard, and always treat inaction (e.g. not distributing political ads) as neutral, but I can't explain why.

"but I can't explain why."

Well, if nothing else, time is finite. If I simply read a list of every political or plausible political issue that could affect you, I could easily make it detailed enough to take hours. How much have you donated to cure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rare_diseases ? Don't you care about all of those people? What's your opinion of all the bills currently making their way through your city council? Don't you care enough to make time to find out and have an opinion and take appropriate political action? Every charity in your state or country you're not donating to, well, clearly if you're not for them you're against them.

That attitude just doesn't scale. Inaction shouldn't be read as opposition or lack of concern. We all have a list of thousands of concerns and only enough energy to invest in a couple dozen or so, and we've got other constraints on what those can be too if we're not trust-fund babies.

> That attitude just doesn't scale.

Well, yes, it is scale-variant. Inaction matters a lot more for powerful groups (like governments or large corporations) that actually could take actions that would meaningfully change outcomes.

For more details, this quote from the article:

> In an election with the media totally dominated by the state, alternative parties would have no ability to educate and inform the voters of Singapore in the run up to the elections if we are not able to use Google’s advertising platforms...

The situation is markedly different from the one in the USA, where the media is not state owned. Therefore banning political advertisement in the USA is politically neutral, whereas banning political advertisement in Singapore obviously aids the incumbent People’s Action Party and is not politically neutral.

Even with a fully private corporate-owned media industry, banning political advertisement can very well not be politically neutral.

If the most dominant media (visible above-the-fold by default on phones, computers, TV) predominately favors a specific political party - then the opposing and third parties will lose the ability to have their say heard via ads.

Wouldn't it be the opposite? Theoretically doesn't the party in power usually have access to more resources (whether directly or indirectly through connections etc) than the opposing party? And therefore would imply that the party in power would be able to out-perform in both quantity and quality in ads generally speaking than opposing parties?

I'm just trying to understand how it actually helps the party in power by not allowing ads to run. Because I see the opposite situation. Honestly it seems to me both situations the sitting party has the most power, but simply due to the fact that they're the party in power.

The reason is simple. The establishment has nothing to gain but everything to lose.

Let's say the maximum reach/exposure to voters is 100% in their country. The political establishment of many decades already have this number close to 100%, but the opposition may only have 5%. You see, the opposition has potential to gain a lot from ads, but not the establishment.

Also in a rich society like Singapore, grassroots can make huge contribution to the opposition party if their voice get heard and spread. But the establishment does not need this.

So if the opposition only has 5% support, while the establishment has close to 95% support (for the sake of the example).

I'd argue the opposing party 5% support would likely have a matching resource pool of their size. Meaning the establishment might run 95% of all ads as ads supporting the establishment and only 5% of ads would support the opposing party. So I struggle to see how that would help the opposing party?

Obviously, it isn't that cut and dry, but America is a good example actually. Because they have 2 major parties and several third parties. But those third parties never make any meaningful growth even after running ads because they only represent >5% of the available political parties.

By running ads, the opposition can gain more support, but the establishment can't. How is this hard to understand?

Yeah I'm saying that doesn't make any sense and is untrue.

So agree to disagree then.

It is not meant to address the clout of the incumbent, who might be of any political party, it is meant to reduce the influence of money in politics; to reduce corruption and de-facto bribery.

If it favors incumbents then it is not favoring any particular ideology since the incumbent can be any.

If you want to address the staying power of incumbents, arbitrarily favoring opponents who happen to have the most wealth is not the way to do it. It will just consistently favor political movements that money approves of.

No. In a rich society like Singapore and America, grassroots can use make a difference with their individual contributions. Money in politics doesn't mean it always favor rich people. Allowing ads is not arbitrarily favoring opponents.

Generally think political ads on these platforms is an overblown issue, but one that it would be smart for these companies to nip in the bud.

Most people still get their news through traditional channels, I genuinely feel that a lot of the ink spilled by media companies on tech is a backlash to the loss of ad revenue. That being said the scrutiny is required.

The party in power only allows political ads on the TV station they control for a few weeks before the election. This makes me think that they are trying to control alternate routes of information as well.

People are forgetting something. We know Google is far left and wishes to impose their leftist agenda on the world at large [0].

All of their shenanigans including censorship of search, censorship on Youtube, and now this, would make this agenda and intent abundantly clear, even if they weren't exposed on tape admitting to it.

This particular action may be aimed towards Singapore, but I am 100% confident that this is a test run for a similar action in the United States.

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

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