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Comment by creaghpatr | Hacker News Reader

>Boz posted an explanation on Facebook, where he advertises the post as an organizational, internal call-to-debate. But while it's great to have a safe space for internal, organizational debates, it's still hugely concerning when that internal debate is whether we should all have a free and fair election in the U.S.

Was Facebook having an internal debate over whether we should all have a free and fair election in the U.S.?

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I would encourage you to read the memo itself [1] and find out. It's not that long. In it Bosworth acknowledges that Facebook, as a new medium for propagating information, had a role in shaping the outcome of the 2016 election. He said that it was no longer tenable for Facebook to claim that it had no effect, and that as the 2020 election approaches, Facebook should be conscious of its role and formulate specific policies proactively so that it doesn't find itself in the same position it found itself in 2016, as it reacted to candidates and third parties using the platform in ways that hadn't been anticipated.

If Bosworth is calling for an "internal debate over whether we should have a free and fair election in the U.S.", it's exactly the same sort of debate that is occurring in newsrooms, radio and television studios all across the country. Every new media offends the old. Newspapers were offended by radio. Radio was offended by television. Now they're all ganging up on Facebook.

[1]: https://www.facebook.com/boz/posts/10111288357877121

Newspapers, Radio, and Television all have a named editor who is responsible for output. Facebook doesn't.

Facebook, at one point, did curate the news that was shown in the News Feed. It stopped doing so after one side complained.

Why does it matter if they have an editor?

I think there's a legal distinction. Just like phone companies don't have a responsibility to censor misinformation being spread over the phone.

> it's exactly the same sort of debate that is occurring in newsrooms

I'm going to have to contradict you there. Anyone who was following the 2016 Russian Interference campaign, and related news stories, would know that Facebook used to pay people to moderate news stories, perhaps in a manner that was like a news room... But then they fired those people because they were not promoting conspiracy theory news stories, and so conservatives claimed FB news was "biased".

This essentially created the environment where no one at FB was willing to fact check for fear of losing their jobs. When you hear about FB saying they will not fact check political content, it's specifically because if they did, they'd have no choice but to point out all the lies and inaccuracies in Trump's statements. So instead, they simply refuse to touch any of it, which leaves the door wide open to political actors to spread any disinformation they want.

As the [2] reference says, unless FB has suddenly grown a backbone with regards to standing up for truth over dollars, then any new effort will fail in the same way it did last time. Facebook has never been able to demonstrably prove it cares about election meddling, and you shouldn't believe empty words in their press releases.

> As the [2] reference says, unless FB has suddenly grown a backbone with regards for truth over dollars, then any new effort will fail in the same way it did last time

I find it somewhat sanctimonious for the traditional news media to be calling out Facebook for favoring dollars over truth when they themselves were just as key as Facebook was to normalizing and publicizing Trump. CNN executives made a conscious decision to give Trump lots of coverage, in an effort to compete with Fox News. They too presented Trump's views as being just as legitimate and valid as the views of those opposing him.

Other countries have rules about political advertisement especially before elections. Those include budget limits, content, attribution, locations, and more. It's weird to think the rules are so lax here.

An advertising ban ahead of an election feels like a logical solution, or at least a simple-to-understand one. People would try and circumvent it still but the burden would be on the ad vendors to not be liable for a violation.

And if they don't want to risk liability, they always have the option to not show any ads to the relevant population ahead of an election.

The difference is that the U.S. has this pesky thing called the First Amendment that makes restricting political speech difficult.

But don't forget, money is speech, and corporations are people. All of which is absolutely not in the first amendment.

Why is it that free speech extends to organizations? I'm all for free speech but outside of individuals and nonprofits I'm struggling to think of good reason it should extend to corporate entities.

I can’t for the life of me figure it out.

Nonprofits are corporate entities too.

The Citizens United case, the most recent Supreme Court case striking down restrictions on political speech, was about a nonprofit organization opposed to Hillary Clinton. The government tried to shut down their “documentary” film about Hillary.

The right to freely associate + the right to speak + the right to printed speech = the right to collaborate on speech

i.e., there is free speech for groups as well as individuals

Saying there's right to free speech for groups unless someone gets paid is a little silly and hard to enforce. Hence our current situation.

From another perspective, there is obviously "freedom of the press" but the Constitution does not say who is allowed to own a press and it doesn't say you have to personally own a press to make use of it. In fact, it would probably be problematic if you weren't allowed to hire a press if you had something you wanted to say.

For the same reason groups and corporations don't have voting rights, they shouldn't be able to monopolize speech by drowning out all others.

Additionally, money is not speech. We disallow politicians directly giving people money to vote for them - why would we do that, since the politicians trade is in speech, he's simply delivering stump speech in the form of a $100 bill to his potential constituents.

Money is not speech, but speaking publicly on a scale larger than a literal soap box on a street corner has never been free. Banning spending money to express oneself is banning expression just like banning paying for raw milk is banning raw milk.

And groups do have voting rights. That's how Congress works. The U.S. is a republic.

Are you saying congress voting on legislation is akin to a corporation voting on members of Congress?

I'm saying that republics are voting as groups. By definition.

Not any arbitrary group gets to directly vote, no. But different groups do have rights: races, religions, genders, ethnicities, and, yes, groups of people with common values and interests.

Also remember that nonprofits, labor unions, and community groups are corporations too.

Corporate speech is just "speech for groups of people". Those groups may be for-profit corporations, or they may be nonprofit.

Why do Americans always think that the freedom of speech is a exclusively American thing? All liberal democracies have similar concepts, they do put different limits on it (just like the US puts limits)

It’s the American exceptionalism, the belief that the US is unique in how much freedom its citizens have. The land of the free. In reality, citizens in other democracies have as much or more freedom.

America has far fewer limits on freedom of speech than other democracies.

Hate speech law in the US is practically nonexistent. Libel is much more difficult case to argue. Restrictions on political speech are widely held to be unconstitutional.

Compare that with other democracies, such as the UK, Germany or India, and I think you'll find that the US does have significantly more freedom of speech than other democratic nations.

Nope, it’s just that Americans are sufficiently politically homogenous that they don’t try to say the forbidden things.

Try, for example, to blog that your company should not trade with Israel whilst tendering for a federal contract.

(Just an example: I don’t have a dog in the actual fight).

Wow, that post is pretty deluded. To paraphrase crudely, he is doing mental gymnastics to justify and invest in his/facebook's current position. An easy example of this is:

> If I want to eat sugar and die an early death that is a valid position.

Sure, if you want to make an informed choice, go for it. Nothing prevents a person from buying and consuming 10lbs of sugar everyday. However, the obvious problem which a lot of people have been focussed on is how do we prevent unhealthy amounts of sugar from being present in all food.

All of this sidestepping from Facebook and its execs reminds me of tactics used by Trump (and Republicans).

>>> Boz posted an explanation on Facebook, where he advertises the post as an organizational, internal call-to-debate. But while it's great to have a safe space for internal, organizational debates, it's still hugely concerning when that internal debate is whether we should all have a free and fair election in the U.S.

>> Was Facebook having an internal debate over whether we should all have a free and fair election in the U.S.?

> I would encourage you to read the memo itself [1] and find out. It's not that long. In it Bosworth acknowledges that Facebook, as a new medium for propagating information, had a role in shaping the outcome of the 2016 election. He said that it was no longer tenable for Facebook to claim that it had no effect, and that as the 2020 election approaches, Facebook should be conscious of its role and formulate specific policies proactively so that it doesn't find itself in the same position it found itself in 2016, as it reacted to candidates and third parties using the platform in ways that hadn't been anticipated.

> If Bosworth is calling for an "internal debate over whether we should have a free and fair election in the U.S.", it's exactly the same sort of debate that is occurring in newsrooms, radio and television studios all across the country.

This seems a bit illogical to me. Facebook is a platform that enables sophisticated communication, for anyone who chooses to to use it. I don't see how the opinion that Trump "got elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser" in any way implies that the election wasn't either free or fair.

Let's rewind to 2008:

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.htm...

>>> Like a lot of Web innovators, the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely new. Instead, by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans.

>>> As a result, when he arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama will have not just a political base, but a database, millions of names of supporters who can be engaged almost instantly. And there’s every reason to believe that he will use the network not just to campaign, but to govern. His e-mail message to supporters on Tuesday night included the line, “We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.” The incoming administration is already open for business on the Web at Change.gov, a digital gateway for the transition.

>>> The Bush campaign arrived at the White House with a conviction that it would continue a conservative revolution with the help of Karl Rove’s voter lists, phone banks and direct mail. But those tools were crude and expensive compared with what the Obama camp is bringing to the Oval Office.

Obama seems to have had an advantage in 2008 - was that "unfair"?

If the capabilities within the Facebook platform, that are available to everyone, are deemed to be harmful to democracy, then so be it, but claims that it is unfair, or should somehow have no effect, seem way off the mark to me.

I think the argument goes like this:

1. The US Presidential election is decided by a small percentage of voters who have an open mind and live in the right districts.

2. Facebook’s targeted advertising allows advertisers to efficiently buy the votes of these select voters.

3. Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening.

Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and I’m willing to believe #2. But I’m not so sure about #3.

The other two major parts of this:

Facebook's ad model is built to reward "virality" - meaning being over the top and salacious means lower costs. Even Boz acknowledges that was part of the Trump team's genius - they used the platform, as it was built, perfectly. The Democrats naturally have equal access to this platform, so I don't think its as much a left-right thing, vs a crazy-calm divide.

The other thing is just disinformation / identity verification - making sure all advertisers are who they say they are (and you don't get russians posing as black lives matter, etc.)

> 3. Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening.

> Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and I’m willing to believe #2. But I’m not so sure about #3.

I think you overstate #3 a little bit. It could have been happening without Facebook, but at a lower scale and not effectively enough to matter.

I think there's also a #4:

4. Facebook ad-targeting allows the influence to be covert, because watchdog group members are probably not part of the targeted demographics.

4 isn't right (anymore) because they made all political ads available to anyone who wants to see them. https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2405092116183307?id=2...

> 4 isn't right (anymore) because they made all political ads available to anyone who wants to see them.

I think #4 is still valid:

1. Facebook may not be to correctly identify political ads vs other ads.

2. Their Ad Library seems to be missing important information [1].

3. A disclosure like the Ad Library still obscures influence campaigns by greatly reducing the ability of watchdogs to passively monitor the political discourse. Instead they have expend much more manpower to actively monitor the library with the right search terms, and if they fail to do that they'll miss things.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-blocks-ad-transp...

> Facebook has launched an archive of American political ads, which the company says is an alternative to ProPublica’s tool. However, Facebook’s ad archive is only available in three countries, fails to disclose important targeting data and doesn’t even include all political ads run in the U.S.

> Our tool regularly caught political ads that aren’t reflected in Facebook’s archive. Just this month, we noticed four groups running ads that haven’t been in Facebook’s archive:

If you accept the premise of #1 and #2, #3 may simply be analogous to how money laundering was possible before bitcoin, but now it's easier/cheaper and harder to trace.

So the argument could be said they disrupted that black market but are a publicly listed company.

I'd add that for #2 they don't need to persuade people to change their vote with the adverts, or even mislead them (although the latter may help).

All they need to do is target adverts reminding you to vote to the people who will vote the way they want.

Facebook ran an experiment in 2010 that shows they can definitely increase the chance of individual users voting: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-a-facebook...

> Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening.

This double negative is a bit confusing. Targeted political messaging absolutely was a thing before Facebook and even the internet. Correlate info on zip code demographics, the readership demographics of different publications and media outlets and one can provide messages that target specific groups.

Harder to track the impact of 'analog' misinformation like leaflets/handouts too.

<But I’m not so sure about #3.

It was happening, but it was done by people from political parties visiting those voters in person at their doorsteps (I know of it from documentaries), obviously way more expensive and time consuming than ads, and ineffective when done in a foreign accent or language or without other means of identification/verification, so people outside the US had it a lot harder to influence those voters.

There are a significant number of tech workers I know that do genuinely believe that companies should leverage their technology to benefit the candidates that they feel would be better for the country, and do things like ban Trump's social media accounts. This is what Bosworth was addressing:

> But he maintained that the company should not change its policies on political advertising, saying that doing so in order to avert a victory by Mr. Trump would be a misuse of power, comparing it to a scene from “The Lord of the Rings.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/technology/facebook-andre...

Banning Trump's social media accounts wouldn't require bias against him, it would simply require him to stop receiving special exemption from platform rules.

People are downvoting this, but it's just a matter of fact. Jack Dorsey has repeatedly said that the "newsworthiness" of Trump's tweets outweighs the ordinary standards of propriety that get applied to other people's tweets. Somebody asked Jack point blank whether Twitter would take action if Trump made a tweet explicitly asking his followers to murder a journalist, and Jack's response was, "We'd certainly talk about it." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/18/would-calli...)

Specific individuals aside, the point was to explain that Bosworth was talking about how Facebook shouldn't use it's platforms to benefit the candidates of their preference.

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