Hacker News Reader

Comment by s_y_n_t_a_x | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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?

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.

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...

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com