Peter Thiel at Center of Facebook’s Internal Divisions on Politics | Hacker News Reader

Peter Thiel at Center of Facebook’s Internal Divisions on Politics

wsj.com

89 pointsJumpCrisscross139 comments

Who is fact-checking political ads on television or in newspapers? Who is fact checking "opinion" shows on cable news that present overtly biased and occasionally outright false information?

The implication in this debate is that the "wrong" candidate only got elected because some voters had bad information and were tricked. Maybe parties need to look at what they are offering voters and what they have actually delivered in the past to get to the root of why people either don't want what they're offering or don't believe it will actually come to pass.

The issue with fact-checking Facebook ads vs. TV or newspaper is one of targeting and timing.

Facebook ads can be micro-targeted to the point where they're only seen by a very small audience, which is simply not possible in mainstream TV or newspaper. If you have a misleading campaign on TV (e.g., swift boat stuff on Kerry in '04), that can be recognized and called out (not that the dems were super effective at that then...). However with Facebook, it's much more challenging given the small sample size to (1) see all of the ads people are seeing and (2) figure out who has been exposed to them.

So at the end of the day, it's tougher to identify misinformation, and then if you do identify it it's pretty much impossible to re-message the same audience with the correct info. Add timing to that (many campaigns are only up for 24-48 hours) and you start to see why this is a fundamentally different beast from TV and newspaper ads.

One of the blunter but potentially effective solutions is to have a much larger minimum audience size, which is what Google moved to (although still at a pretty small scale).

Not to mention that Facebook for some time also enabled resharing those micro-targeted ads, which would then show those ads on friends/followers' newsfeed without the Sponsored Content notice, thus further blurring the lines between what was "legitimately" viral content and what originated as micro-targeted paid advertising.

in my mind, the facebook policy is limited in ways that mitigate the problems you present. the "hands off" policy (as I understand it) only applies to elected officials, meaning there is some level of inherent accountability (in significant part due to legal requirements to disclose the source of campaign ads), and a built-in limit to how 'fringe' the information will be (since an elected official, having been elected, has some amount of public support). A relatively small number of actors with established political support, who are generally under high levels of scrutiny and accountability for the things they say, ads they run, etc., are subject to the policy, not everyone.

Interestingly this is the same guy who felt like he needed to use his billions to take down Gawker because he didn't like what they said about him. Evidently he doesn't care about ad messages on Facebook though as long as it doesn't impact him. Or maybe he thinks is okay because he can always use his money to protect himself. Long story short the Gawker incident just goes to show that Theil has absolutely no moral high ground here and that his reason for supporting these ads has absolutely nothing to do with "free speech" or any other positive moral trope.

Super curious what would happen if someone started an ad campaign on Facebook about Peter Theil though...

This is also a man who bought a huge remote property in NZ (and went so far as to get NZ citizenship) as insurance in case the world goes to shit.

I've read/seen many interviews with people who've known him in the past and very few people have nice things to say about him as a human being, but all agree he's got a "unique" view of things.

Definitely unique. He is one of the few people today who is openly lamenting that women got the right to vote, because it has led societies to adopt more liberal policies than they otherwise would have, especially in the economic sphere, which he believes has led to less prosperity than if we had more of a free market:

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/492380/

re-read what he says. he says that open rights to women was used by capitalism as a way to reduce the benefits of everyone. which I agree with. Before you could raise a family with one salary. Now it is impossible. that is a fact, liberalism very often uses society revolutions against its own people. it is a nice coverup.

"Before you could raise a family with one salary. Now it is impossible."

Demand and offer. If tomorrow some law allowed a couple to send their cat to work in a mine, our shiny lovely capitalistic system would adapt in a matter of months and we'd find that raising a family would cost what it costs today, plus a cat's salary.

The problem is elsewhere, and Thiel knows perfectly from where it comes.

So if wages are flat or lower after inflation and cost of living adjustments, while profits are increasing, it's because women are working? That sounds unlikely.

I am not saying it is the problem. I am saying we re living in a system that profits from any social evolution and plays it against its people. and that is what Thiel is saying. He never says women are the problem. capitalism is.

Since people always do this when Thiel comes up, here's the actual quote:

>The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

I think what he's lamenting is that women tend to find libertarian policies unappealing, and, judging by who publicly brands themselves as a libertarian, this seems like a fairly uncontroversial observation (there just aren't very many women in that cohort).

That’s basically what I said.

Anyway even Thiel as a “libertarian” is very unique in his thinking. Not many libertarians I know turn around and start companies like Palantir to help governments and police departments build a precog surveillance state. I wonder how he justifies that one given his claims of being libertarian-leaning.

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/2/27/17054740/pal...

I disagree with the OP article, I don’t think there is anything AT ALL wrong with Mark Zuckerberg being friends with Republicans. However, the real shame of Mark Z’s association with Peter Thiel is the professional one. Peter was the first check in after Eduardo, $500K. His views would make most capitalists blush, eg “competition is for losers, build a monopoly and extract rents!” He writes as much in his book Zero to One. I bet that had a big effect on what Facebook has become and its view of taking the entire social networking space under itself, and its tactics of taking any data it can and storing it to give itself an advantage (eg in Friends you may Know). Oh sure it may apologize if caught but will continue to store the data.

Mark Z’s earlier attitude of “I dunno why they share the data, those dumb f-cks, they ‘trust me’” found a mentor in Peter Thiel early on to retain that militant guerilla approach even as Facebook had to turn into something more respectable and corporate. “Move fast and break things” gave them all the license they needed.

"many interviews with people who've known him in the past and very few people have nice things to say about him as a human being"

Curious, could you provide some links for this statement?

Things I were exposed on YouTube are mostly positive. That for sure is a echo chamber. And I'll need a bit help to break that.

There’s a decade of articles for you to form an opinion on Peter. Stop getting your information from YouTube.

Could you please provide some links for me to the articles, so that I could start search around?

Look for "dark enlightenment", "Peter Thiel" and read sources and criticism. Don't rely on dedicated subreddits because that's just a positive feedback loop.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/06/peter-thiel.html

The one that stood out most was his comments on Apartheid: https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/my-conversation-with-pete...

It's the attitude that even if the basic economic premise was sound(1), was his hyper focus on it and a complete insensitivity to the greater picture. It's like in his mind he could see how he (being white) could have benefited from it, but couldn't see that millions were victims and those who benefited wouldn't "let" black people be part of it.

If you look at a lot of his controversial comments, you'll see a pattern of a lack of empathy being a theme. Although Thiel denies the conversation happened, I'm giving the woman the benefit of the doubt for now other reason than it fits within other comments that he's either said or alleged to have said.

(1)For the record, I don't at all believe that it was. Apartheid-era South Africa's economy, as even the uninformed know, was built around having the black majority population do the menial/dangerous jobs cheaply and holding up the white minority.

Gawker published a private sex tape (Hulk Hogan's) without permission on the grounds that it is "news" in order to make its publication legal. I can't see how anyone could say Gawker had the moral high ground, they were a despicable organization whose only business model was publishing private information/revenge porn for profit

If you don't support the right of others to say things you don't like then you don't support free speech.

Even libertarians don't often expand free speech to include doxing.

As if a celebrity sex tape is so much worse then attacking the core of democracy by deliberately spreading disinformation.

Thiel doesn't care about Hogan's sex tape. He cares that Gawker outed his sexuality. With Gawker and Facebook he cares about information as it affects him personally.

Right, any talk of principles is a smoke screen, the only thing they care about is power.

The discussion isn't about Hulk Hogan v Gawker, it's Peter Thiel v Gawker, via Hulk Hogan. Thiel funded Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker, for personal revenge.

The current societal standard seems to be "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences". I don't think it's possible to give a principled reason why "Peter Thiel funding a lawsuit" (which he won) is bad, but "advocating for someone to be fired for having a wrong/bad opinion" is good.

Personal revenge for outing him as gay while he was physically in Saudi Arabia, IIRC. Which I'd consider to be only half a step down from a murder attempt if it happened to me.

(Of course, I'm not a billionaire, so there's a far higher chance that I'd actually end up dead in such a situation. But still)

It was a business meeting too -- great way of tanking that meeting.

But yeah, being gay in Iran or Saudi has serious consequences. Plus Gawker, posing a progressive media outlet via organs like Jezebel, shouldn't be airing anyone dirty laundry like that -- and then they did, repeatedly.

To be clear I don't think Gawker has the moral high ground either. There is no monopoly here on bad morals. It's possible for Gawker to be an asshole here as well as for Peter Thiel to be an asshole.

I bring it up merely to show that Peter Theil doesn't have any problem censoring stuff he doesn't like. Therefore it is pretty suspicious and two faced when he says he thinks that Facebook shouldn't censor ads.

News organisations should not be legally bound to take the moral high ground.

While we can debate about what they should have done (and I agree with you in this case) it's difficult to write laws to define what constitutes a moral vs immoral publication or what is news-worthy.

Consider what would have happened in they had a Clinton-Lewinsky sex tape. Could they have released that to refute Bill Clinton's denials?

It quickly gets very difficult, and I would rather have a totally free press than one that has to worry about running afoul of moral news laws.

Gawker is in no way a clean publication. They outed him.

Well, it's not surprising for someone who's been vocally "skeptic" about democracy to not care about one of it's deterrents; misinformation.

Facebook is so full of themselves - they think they can run the world etc. Doesn't hurt that the mainstream media are (baselessly) convinced of it. Corbyn's campaign heavily dominated social media in the UK and it turned to a catastrophe. The rules for posting on their pages and using their API have become obnoxiously stupid. few days ago i got a request asking about a surge in calls to their API 5 years ago, as if i can remember (or give a shit about their API access for that matter). the witch hunting has gone out of hand , but i m loving to watch facebook and everyone else bursting in flames over who can manipulate the most. bring it on

Facebook has increasingly become a media property for boomers and the technically illiterate. It is the “spam folder” of the internet. We used to have to build tech to filter spam, phishing and forwards with stupid nonsense and now we’ve got it all wrapped up nicely in the various a Facebook properties.

Facebook doesn’t realize that what it’s really become is humanities supermarket tabloid.

> It is the “spam folder” of the internet.

I absolutley love this and I'm stealing it.

I will point out though that those moron boomers who cant fact-check are all usually voters.. Easily influenced by the whims of BS.

It will be remembered as the largest intellectual garbage heap in history. I feel sorry for the people that actual use it to share personal photos and memories. It would be like printing your family pictures in the Daily Mirror.

Garbage Meme - Last Picture of your Ant Muriel 5 years ago - Avocado Advertisement

same level as trash tv really. bottom-of-the-barrel quality, but sellable

That’s really the best way to describe it. YouTube has been trending the same way now for a while which is where it’s easiest to see. We’ve created these content ecosystems where the content is terrible and it’s just barely sellable. Like no one would actually pay for it, but with ad model you can create content that is just barely more valuable than nothing at all. Just barely. The value of the vast majority of content now approaches zero but never quite gets there, and that’s where we are now. Improvements in targeting ensure the content actually becomes worse over time while still being sellable.

Except they own instagram too.

Instagram is no better. Maybe worse.

The insanity is that in the UK and in the US you have massive propaganda outlets misinforming the public financed by their own billionaires. I'm sure Russian propaganda is trying to get the outcomes they want, why wouldn't they? But the idea that they are more effective/more worrisome than Murdoch and co is ridiculous.

That said, Corbyn won every age group < 40 [1]. So those most likely to be heavily invested in social media did seem to get the message...

[1] https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/1...

> That said, Corbyn won every age group < 40

I.e. people who don't remember what Corbyn’s pre-Tony Blair Labour did the last time it had power.

Not a fan of Corbyn, but you can't deny that he was smeared heavily and unfairly. As was Milliband. Mostly by the papers who are owned by the people he wants to tax.

And the policies proposed in Corbyns manifesto would have brought the UK more into the central European mainstream. Nothing in there was terribly radical.

Corbyn is a communist sympathizer.

Tangentially, I heard of a theory that some of the change in political landscape could be due to population life expectency increases and the ratio between young and old having diminished.

This is backed up by some research suggesting that people naturally become more conservative as they age.

Not saying that explains the UK elections, but your linked article reminded me of this theory.

I think there also is good evidence that we are looking more at age cohort effects rather than age effects. After all people who are 39 would not exactly have been considered young a few decades ago.

It's a smooth curve but the labour/cons cross over point aligns well with the age of those who were able to build their lives and establish their careers before the early 2000s and after. The economic and societal structure that worked well during the 20th century has not been delivering returns for a while. In the UK this is the generation that will be poorer than the generation before them for the first time [1] until they inherit.

I think the changing age structure is massive though. If you had this breakdown of voting behaviour with the age distribution of the 60s when the median age was 32 rather than 42, you are looking at a labour landslide.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/81343d9e-187b-11e8-9e9c-25c814761...

http://archive.md/1Vt4h

Thanks

Facebook took down an ad by a left-leaning politician that said Lindsey Graham supports the Green New Deal. It's only Republicans that are allowed to lie in Facebook ads. It's transparently a Trump-reelection strategy.

> “Mark is friends with Peter Thiel and a lot of Republicans,” said a former Facebook employee who worked in its political group. “It’s a reality people aren’t willing to accept.”

Friends. With Republicans. The horror.

that's someone whose job is on the line being polite about a board member's political activism.

the less polite way to put it would be that Peter Thiel is balls-deep in all kinds of dark-money republican activism and would really prefer to keep Russian propaganda all over facebook because it's advantageous for his tax rates.

really?

yup.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/press-release/crew-exposes...

Can you tell me where the money from Colbert's Americans for a Better Tommorow SuperPAC has gone? He's not legally required to tell us, yet a revelation that a political group receives money from people with money to spare is framed as shocking... I don't know what is interesting about this story.

Wow, you should watch less CNN.

Edit: there's nothing to dispute in his post, it's all conspiracy theory and talking points barely strung together.

"Dark-money Republican activism" Lol.

Post some sources and I will show you the other side, as a bonus I'll give you a similar "dark-money" event from the Democrats.

What do you dispute in his post?

it's easier to dismiss the totality of an argument if you manufacture some level of aggrievement

That which has no source, takes no source to dismiss. The "Dark money in the republican party" claim was not substantiated. I can say there is a unicorn on the moon that shoots candy out of it's butt, how would you dispute it?

That is one of the milder critiques of Thiel, considering some of the stuff Palantir gets up to.

What do they get into?

Which now has ads on TV make me more than a bit uncomfortable.

Not political activism, but Peter Thiel was also doing research into using the blood of the young to rejuvenate himself and prolong his life.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to...

(Wanting to live forever seems to be a not-uncommon desire among the hyper-rich. Larry Ellison's only known voluntary charitable contribution is similarly to a foundation he set up for researching the prolonging of life... specifically, his.)

Everyone knows that Democrats don't propagandize, maneuver, or move money at the outer limits of what is legal. Not once ever.

Pro tip: If you find that the only argument you can make is whataboutism, then you're probably defending something that you shouldn't be defending. It's fine to talk about the political influence of Zuckerberg's friends (and board members) and the implications of that without having to resort to arguments about "both sides".

HN is becoming pathetic.

I don't see how you get "what he really means is ... all kinds of dark money republican activism" from "Mark is friends with Peter Thiel and a lot of Republicans". This seems like baseless conspiracy theorism unless you're privy to more information.

> the less polite way ...

No - that's the highly editorialized, average "opinion" of Maddow, Lemon,... PBS is much better at not indoctrinating their audience on conspiracies

Did Russia hack the British elections recently?

Did Russia plant Tulsi into the DNC as a Trojan horse. Clinton seems to claim so.

Edit: The Russians have caught wind of this comment, and frantically down voting it, lest the media uncovers them lurking on HN

The biggest problem I have with arguments like this is that it seems to take the extent of Russian influence out of context. In the Mueller report, it mentions that the IRA purchased ~$100,000 worth of ads on Facebook (pg. 25). In comparison, the Russian government has spend ~$40m lobbying the US government through legal channels.

We shouldn't be comfortable with Russian influence, but we shouldn't allow our political opinions to be so dramatically warped by something that seems so proportionately small. As far as the Russians go, I think characterizing Thiel as being part of some "dark-money" republican machine that supports "Russian propaganda" is not accurate (or to the extent to which it is accurate, it doesn't matter). Not defending his position on other things, though.

Measuring influence by spend might be misleading. The leverage they discovered on social media could have surprised even them.

I saw a lot of nonsense get spewed on Facebook- things that could be quite simply fact-checked, and people completely bought into them. Also, contradictory emotional appeals were spread (without, of course, the responders recognizing the contradictions). Finally, I was on a forum when someone gave stupid numbers concerning Obamacare, that I quickly checked and challenged (he left and never came back).

Having discovered that people by and large won't think critically about what you're saying, and using the viral nature of emotional appeals to create a general sentiment (which will later be rationalized) payed off for somebody. I don't know if it was the Russians or not.

The very nature that Facebook sold micro-targeted ads for pennies just because they were "only" for the smallest audiences, but yet these audiences were most likely to reshare the content virally, effectively whitewashing the "sponsored content" tag off it into a larger population of feeds, effectively created a scenario where ad spend on Facebook at the time must have been absolutely misleading.

I'm not sure what you mean -- generally, the smaller the audience size, the higher the CPM.

He is saying that if an 'ad' hits the right person in the right way, that person will share it withing a large group. So you may pay more to reach the first, but after that the target audience does the work for you by sharing.

-> I sponsor an ad targeting a certain audience

-> Byron Shifflett comments on the sponsored content in a way that makes it clear I reached him

-> Under another account, I reply to his comment

-> I send a friend request

-> He accepts

-> Now I can reach him just by posting my nonsense on my second account

-> He shares. That's what I like about him.

None of that is the case. Microtargeting isn't cost effective and doesn't scale well, and it's usually more expensive, not less.

In 2013, I remember people were building Facebook audiences by ripping Facebook ID's from relevant open groups - that was insanely targeted audience, and while it wasn't general practice, it's definitely something advertisers were using. None of what comes from that is unexpected results. Your argument appears to be that Russian authorities with a $100k budget were 1000x better at manipulating Facebook's audience targeting tools than the people that had been paid to do just that for years - is that true?

I do not like Facebook, personally, and I don't like Trump. But this appears an unlikely scenario.

Exactly. The use of ad spend to talk about Russian influence in 2016 is negligent in focusing on a metric of convenience. I suspect the real channels through which they exert influence don't lend themselves to easy quantification.

The dollar amounts don't reflect the impacts of what the Russians purchased. Conventional lobbying is to get specific bills passed. Social media propaganda can get a few high profile candidates elected, sway general attitudes to justice, liberal democracy, objective truth, etc. It just so happens that it's very cheap to sway some voters. If Russia could get a particular energy bill passed with $10k of Facebook propaganda, it would do that. That's not to say that the shiny new foreign policy tool of social media influence doesn't receive out-sized attention.

So you're saying a billion dollars spent by the Hillary campaign couldn't compete with Russia's $100,000 in targeted ads?

Russia spent money on democrat positions too. Their intent was to sow discord in the US populace and increase polarization.

>It just so happens that it's very cheap to sway some voters.

You say this very matter-of-factly. Do you have any evidence to back that up? Could you isolate that audience? As someone that has run a lot of political and consumer ads over the last 10 years, I'd really like to figure out who those people I can get for 100k that I can't get for 81 million are.

Propaganda does work. Russian propaganda does not work nearly as well as Madison Avenue propaganda, and that's been shown for decades. I'll give the edge to the Madison Ave guys spending tens of millions, here, over the Russian troll farm and 100k.

>If Russia could get a particular energy bill passed with $10k of Facebook propaganda, it would do that

Sure. I don't believe it can, though, and nobody has provided evidence to the contrary. Attempts, sure, but no real success.

It is my belief that the US FBI had much more to do with swaying the 2016 election than Russia's $100k Facebook ad spend.

There was something in the neighborhood of one billion dollars spent on the 2016 election cycle. If Russia managed to significantly influence it by spending $100,000, they're far more effective than either the Democrat or Republican campaign machines.

Indeed, the fake news being parroted on the most watched TV channels, and the most listened to talk shows has far, far more reach (like orders of magnitude).

These guys didn't have the clout they have now when broadcasters and content-owners were not allowed to monopolize the market.

What is "dark money"?

No, it has a pretty precise definition. It's money spent on political activism that isn't publicly reported, typically through a specific category of non-profit organization.

Are you being facetious?

Definition here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dark_money

Money spent by non-profits that don't have to report their donors (hence "dark")

money that moves through PACs/SuperPACs and thus doesn't have to be disclosed and is not subject to campaign finance limitations, as opposed to direct spending by individuals or campaign funding.

I think this is an unfair characterization of his political views.

This is my understanding of how Peter Thiel views the world:

- Our entire economic system is structured for growth. With growth things are good and everyone can share in a piece of an ever-growing pie. Without growth you get a zero sum game and collapse.

- We are in a 'great stagnation' where growth is stalling in most industries. Every industry outside of tech (and arguably tech now too).

- The 'Neoliberals' (Obama and Clinton types, liberal centrists) don't see this stagnation as the existential threat it is and the institutions in place can't make the changes necessary to help correct for it.

- Without correcting for this problem you get an apocalyptic scenario and collapse of society.

- There's a dash of fair trade protectionism and an anti-immigration view somewhere in this that I don't totally understand (this is my weakest understanding of his politics, but it comes up when he talks and in his donations).

Then with this framing Trump in this context:

- I think Peter Thiel thinks Donald Trump is an idiot, but his administration's willingness to ignore precedent may allow them to break out of some of the existing constraints that prevent large change.

- Focusing on anything except the stagnation problem is meaningless in the long run.

- The push back against China IP issues is good and something others were afraid to do.

- He thinks the immigration push back and protection of American workers is necessary for political stability.

The questions I have with this view:

- He often asserts this stagnation problem exists, but without any real evidence (he just acts like it's obvious). I'd want some reason to think that now is different than historically - is it just a comparison to low hanging fruit in scientific discovery of the last couple hundred years? Something else? I think there are problems in academia, but I'm not sure I buy this 'great stagnation' argument up front.

- Trump seems like killing the patient to cure the disease, Peter Thiel would argue that actually things are mostly the same and Trump hasn't really changed day to day life for people. Currently this is largely true (unless you're an undocumented immigrant that had your children taken from you). This is playing with fire though and collapses of democracy are real - Putin was elected before becoming a dictator. I think he's playing dangerously here with his assumptions of what is possible.

- Continued support after this first term I just can't accept - it seems pretty clear at this point that Trump is a bad/criminal actor that only has his interests in mind with his actions.

Or Thiel is a malicious libertian and wants to tear our republic apart to rebuild it in his image

"Russian propaganda" is all over facebook? This has never been substantiated.

We had 3 years of the mainstream media networks pushing the Russian-Collusion narrative and how Trump is going to be impeached for it.

Then the narrative get's utterly dismantled. It's such a farce at this point that the DNC didn't even list Russian collusion in it's articles of impeachment against the President.

Still, as this circus continues, very smart people still believe that Trump was elected because of Putin, and is in fact an agent of Russia.

It's mind blowing.

The Mueller report is pretty clear the Russian government tried to interfere with the investigation and that individuals close to Trump coordinated with the Russians.

> The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. Evidence of Russian government operations began to surface in mid-2016. In June, the Democratic National Committee and its cyber response team publicly announced that Russian hackers had compromised its computer network. Releases of hacked materials—hacks that public reporting soon attributed to the Russian government—began that same month. Additional releases followed in July through the organization WikiLeaks, with further releases in October and November.

>Dozens of IRA employees were responsible for operating accounts and personas on different U.S. social media platforms. The IRA referred to employees assigned to operate the social media accounts as “specialists.”42 Starting as early as 2014, the IRA’s U.S. operations included social media specialists focusing on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.43 The IRA later added specialists who operated on Tumblr and Instagram accounts. 44 > Initially, the IRA created social media accounts that pretended to be the personal accounts of U.S. persons.45 By early 2015, the IRA began to create larger social media groups or public social media pages that claimed (falsely) to be affiliated with U.S. political and grassroots organizations. In certain cases, the IRA created accounts that mimicked real U.S. organizations. For example, one IRA-controlled Twitter account, @TEN_GOP, purported to be connected to the Tennessee Republican Party.46 More commonly, the IRA created accounts in the names of fictitious U.S. organizations and grassroots groups and used these accounts to pose as antiimmigration groups, Tea Party activists, Black Lives Matter protestors, and other U.S. social and political activists. The IRA closely monitored

"https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf"

You want them to only be friends with Democrats? That's the future we want right, only one-sided? I'm sure Mark is friend with people from both parties, that quote needs a citation. Hell the guy has met with other world leaders before. I'm not a Mark Zuckerberg fan mind you.

They have too much influence to be 'friends' with anyone to be honest.

We can all complain about it, nothing will change, but there is no denying, that such a big fish shouldn't have such a big influence on things because of their 'friends'.

But whatever

This is true, it's more like just political connections at this rate.

The Dem, Republic split is a tool for getting things done. They can be friends with whoever they want. It's better for Steve Jobs that Bill Gates is his main rival, rather than a German, British or Chinese tech company. A democrat can play off a republican to force through change or achieve goals. We get herded into the middle of a story by real world details being politicized. Republicans and dems will control the internet news stream by killing off fake/Russian news. They'll clean up areas of money flow with 'shocking' exposes. You can see it coming if you remember the patterns over time. It's getting boring to watch..

rayiner was being sarcastic.

More like, being friends with a known crank and general creepo. Seriously, if Zuckerberg was friends with say George Will that would be one thing but Thiel is just a flake with too many dollars in his pocket than he deserves.

Sure, you can be friends with bigots and authoritarians. It shouldn't be surprising it is a cause for concern for many people.

I think there's a reasonable distinction to be drawn between "friends with Republicans" and "friends with Peter Thiel", who is a very particular kind of Republican. I have a bunch of Republican friends. I don't think I have any Thielian friends?

What are, at a high level, the policy positions of a so-called "Thielian"?

Conservative libertarian populist nationalism. "Thielian" is much easier to type.

Is there something wrong with liking the US Constution?

he is right. it is not because ads are not favorable to your agenda that you should ban them. what kind of democracy are we living in. California is a world outside of reality

Is he still active in politics as a Trump supporter?

> Mr. Thiel has argued that Facebook should stick to its controversial decision... to continue accepting [political ads with no fact checking]

Okay, so just to recap:

1. Thiel is the investor who made billions off of Facebook before becoming a high-profile Trump supporter.

2. Trump is the guy who became president thanks in no small part to misinformation campaigns at scale made possible by Facebook's ad platform.

3. Thiel is now one of the strongest voices arguing that Facebook should remain in the political misinformation-for-profit business.

I couldn't read the entire article due to paywall, but forgive me for having doubts that Thiel's convictions are based on a desire to do what's right for democracy.

ignoring the totally insubstantiable claim that facebook ads got trump elected, the alternative is making facebook the gatekeeper of political truth. this scares me much more than six figure ad spends in a presidential election.

> the totally insubstantiable claim that facebook ads got trump elected

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/03/22/a...

> the alternative is making facebook the gatekeeper of political truth

This argument is so played out. If it cared enough, or was forced to by regulation, Facebook could deploy enough fact checkers to greatly reduce the problem.

> forced to by regulation

So now you want the government to tell Facebook what is truthful?

Government approved media is propaganda.

Do you not see how flawed this is!?

The argument is not played out. I do NOT want Facebook telling me what is the truth. Period.

If you want to limit their targeting tools for political ads, that's an okay route for me.

would you trust fox news' fact checkers? do you think fox news viewers would trust yours? any fact checking apparatus would immediately become politically contested and unworkable in the best case scenario; in the worst case, we have a privatized ministry of truth that acts unilaterally. why would you trust facebook with anything approaching control of political discourse after the experience of the last election? are you naive to think that the 'fact checkers' will always be on your side? if you are, do you think your opponents will just sit there and let them control discourse?

It's funny how it's controversial for FB to not to want to be the Ministry of Truth.

If you don't trust them with your data, why would you trust them with the truth.

Allow all ads and let the people decide for themselves.

But if you're on the side that is providing the fact-checkers, I see how you'd want your propaganda be stamped with an approval and your opponents facts be dismissed with a fake news label.

Censorship is a slippery slope guys...

We don't fact check polical ads on newspapers or TV ads. There is a reason for this. Jesus fucking Christ.

The FTC already has truth in advertising regulation for non-political ads, no matter the platform. Is that a slippery slope?

FTC doesn't explicitly have a truth in advertising regulation, it's just that corporations can be held liable for damages in case its advertising misleads consumers, after the fact.

Politicians lie all the time, and sometimes even do the opposite of their campaign (HW's famous "Read My Lips, No New Taxes" comes to mind). It'd be pretty hard to make the case that voters who experienced an ensuing tax increase could sue the US government for damages.

> corporations can be held liable for damages in case its advertising misleads consumers, after the fact.

I don't see the distinction. It wouldn't make sense to pay penalties for violating regulations before the fact.

> It'd be pretty hard to make the case that voters who experienced an ensuing tax increase could sue the US government for damages.

Why would the US government be liable? It is the campaign that is liable. It would be straightforward to penalize a campaign in proportion to the amount of money spent on the misleading ad and hold the proceeds in a fund for use by other campaigns.

My mistake, you're correct, it would be the campaign and not the government that might be held liable.

The point still stands: if you think that voters can hold a campaign liable for not fulfilling campaign promises, I wish you...all the best in making that case.

Likewise, if the New York Times publishes information that's later found to be incorrect, and does not publish a retraction, I wish you all the best in pursuing legal action against them.

This was tried in NYTimes v Sullivan, and the NYTimes ended up triumphant. You'd have to prove "actual malice", the burden for which is high enough to be mostly infeasible.

In any case, it would never be Facebook that would have to facilitate this kind of legal action. Any sort of legal action would have to be between the individual/group that originated such a post, and the individual/group that wishes to seek damages for "misinformation". Facebook is just the medium.

> if you think that voters can hold a campaign liable

I see no reason why they would be any less successful than other FTC enforcements.

> This was tried in NYTimes v Sullivan, and the NYTimes ended up triumphant.

If there's no law against it, I don't see why they shouldn't be.

> In any case, it would never be Facebook that would have to facilitate this kind of legal action.

I never said they would. I argued against the slippery slope objection to enforcing truthful advertising.

Agreed! People think it's so easy to determine what's true or not at scale. Do I want Facebook employees or (algorithms written by them) making that call? No way.

Maybe they shouldn't be in the political ad business if it's too hard to do it safely. Imagine if we said the same about driving cars or sale of high explosives or thwarting counterfeit cash.

Do you think Facebook should publish an ad that says there is a security problem with your bank account and you need to login immediately to fix it? (The ad links to a phishing site that pretends to be your bank’s website but actually steals your account credentials.)

Do you think Facebook should publish an ad that falsely claims that the date of an election has been changed?

In Canada political ads are regulated so that they must always clearly disclose who they were paid for and by what party. I think that's a good place to start which doesn't censor anything, but enforces disclosure.

> Allow all ads and let the people decide for themselves.

I think that's an argument for banning targeted ads? In a way, you can think of targeted ads as a form of censorship. I can't see what someone else does.

I wonder if censorship can go both ways? You can censor the message, but you can also argue that the listener can be censored.

> In Canada political ads are regulated so that they must always clearly disclose who they were paid for and by what party.

This is already the case in the US.

Okay, I didn't know that. So political ads on say facebook show a disclaimer on them about who paid for it and by which party it was endorsed or not?

Yes. https://www.facebook.com/business/help/198009284345835?id=28...

Same with social media accounts run by paid staffers (unless the staffers are paid by foreign entities, which was a big scandal in the last presidential election).

I didn't know that, thanks for the info.

I guess this is the article that has me confused: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-google-to-b...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com