Facebook will block ads from state-controlled media outlets
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Historically, the United States has always had actors within traditional media. It is literally impossible to block out domestically state-controlled outlets.
The article seems to focus on foreign state actors, but shouldn't their policies block all political ads at all? I feel like Facebook should just get out of that space entirely if the want to appear entirely safe/neutral (or as much is possible).
This is like adding DRM to computer games. The only one hurt are those who shouldn't be.
In Steven Levy's book [0] he goes into detail about this, the Trump campaign would show ads that specifically appeal to certain users while avoiding showing them ads that would turn them off.
If you were in a targeted group known to be anti-immigrant then you'd get the anti-immigrant ad, if you were in a group that was pro-immigrant you might get the tax-cut ad, if you were someone that would never vote for Trump then you'd get anti-hillary ads, etc.
This isn't at all neutral. FB's newsfeed also being algorithmically ordered for engagement (or really any way that's not chronological) is also not neutral. I'm partial to the argument that FB can't be arbiters of what's true and what's not, that people should hear the political speech as long as it's truly coming from those politicians - but this breaks down when FB allows people to narrowly target the message while also manipulating the general feed.
People are only hearing subsets of political speech precisely targeted to manipulate them. It's not informative, it's leveraging confirmation bias and hiding contradictory information.
I generally agree with the point that they're better being neutral, but then they should be neutral and not algorithmically rank for individual user engagement or allow this kind of targeting on political ads. Otherwise they're making editorial decisions as a publisher and should be held to that higher standard.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Inside-Story-Steven-Levy/dp/...
That doesn't seem that different than e.g. tailoring a speech to emphasize whatever polices are important to the city a candidate is speaking in. I could imagine it being a problem if you're presenting completely different policies to different people (e.g. pro-gun to rural, anti-gun to urban) but all political Facebook ads are public and archived so I imagine that would get found out pretty quickly.
Most people aren’t going to see a candidate speak in their city, and even if they do - the targeting can’t be as precise. On national TV they’ll see a more general message.
Most people are on Facebook though and vulnerable to these targeted ads.
Even in their city, I think a tailored message is different than an ad tested for engagement in its ability to manipulate effectively (particularly when the candidate also lies, it’s easier to hide lies when you’re selecting people already motivated to believe them, and only showing the lies directly to those people).
There’s two different kinds of reporting....news and investigative.
I wanna know what they do about radio Yerevan.
People seem to not be distinguishing between running targeted ads and allowing news to be transmitted. It doesn't seem like the latter requires allowing the former.
IIRC, NPR and PBS are primarily funded through donations. Federal funding only makes up something like 10 or 15% of their budgets.
IMHO, this is what "state-controlled" media looks like:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/19...
> Entertainment, social and international news should be edited in the “right direction”, just like domestic news, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Friday as he told state media and tabloids to alike to uphold the Communist Party leadership.
> Party-owned media should put political awareness first and let “positive propaganda” be the majority of the public voice, Xi told heads and veteran journalists from media outfits including People’s Daily, CCTV and Xinhua.
> “Party-owned media must hold the family name of the party,” Xi said. “They must embody the party’s will, safeguard the party’s authority … their actions must be highly consistent with the party.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act
There was a Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, but I can't tell if that had any meaningful impact on whether the VOA can advertise to Americans.
(I know Facebook is used worldwide. Can the entities which purchase ads say that their ads must never be shown to people of certain nationalities? Would that suffice in the face of a Federal law?)
As for BBC vs NPR, the BBC is funded by what is essentially a tax, the license fee, whereas NPR is mostly funded through fees, grants, sponsorships, and contributions; in 2012, 10.9% of its funding came from Federal sources.
Luckily, there is a clear determining factor for what state-controlled means. If it comes from a foreign country's territory, or if it simply agrees with an opinion also held by a foreign nation, it must be state controlled.
> The decision is part of its efforts to prevent foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. election.
Because luckily, only foreign states try to influence elections. Luckily, no national meddling ever happened within the USA. It was all Russians, or Chinese looking like Russian.
> Facebook also is starting to label state-controlled media outlets, giving users more information about who owns and runs those entities.
Luckily, Facebook is the perfect arbiter for making such assertions. Only by branding foreign and independent media outlets as such, can the good name and reputation of Facebook and other altruistic independent sources of information be protected by such evil.
/sarcasm
We look at several factors that may indicate editorial control by a government, including:
- Mission statement, mandate, and/or public reporting on how the organization defines and accomplishes its journalistic mission
- Ownership structure such as information on owners, stakeholders, board members, management, government appointees in leadership positions, and disclosure of direct or indirect ownership by entities or individuals holding elected office
- Editorial guidelines such as transparency around sources of content and independence and diversity of sources
- Information about newsroom leadership and staff
- Sources of funding and revenue
- Governance and accountability mechanisms such as correctional policies, procedure for complaints, external assessments and oversight boards
- it says its goals are honest journalism,
- it's privately owned (and hence not required to disclose its owners),
- it has public guidelines and policies promoting transparency, neutrality, independence and accountability,
- its newsroom leadership and staff are careful about what they put on their official Facebook accounts,
- it has an abuse@ address and an internal oversight board, and Facebook has assessed it
then that's okay? I think I'd be able to get an organisation past stronger checks, and I'm not even particularly good at that sort of thing.
That last check is the hardest one to game, but it's also likely to have a high false positive rate, so I wouldn't be too worried about my hypothetical shady organisation getting past that.
Generally I like to remind people of an infamous quote, from a truly nasty period at the beginning of the last century. Because I believe it illustrates the true nature of this fact you pointed out:
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power” ― Benito Mussolini
It is possible that what (eventually) will go down in the history books regarding the USA, might be how astonishingly effective the decades upon decades of positive propaganda have blinded/confused/divided it's own citizens from noticing the true nature of the machinery that runs the country (and has done so, maybe even ever since WW2).
In fact, I wonder what the smallest amount of people and effort you'd need to get past this: if you can get away without having face-to-face you might be able to pull and do it with 1 person, a bunch of emails and some AI generated faces (inspiration courtesy of https://youtu.be/bqPARIKHbN8 )
> The decision is part of its efforts to prevent foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. election.
Also surly Chinese, Russia and other propaganda actions will tell facebook that they are media outlets/state sponsored and not just lets say some company trying to sell some stuff.
Yes they have to, its clearly written in the conditions when you sign-up ;) uh and why not also the UAE? like just russia and china makes propaganda (hello trumpidumpi)
Ironically, "facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth/speech" is exactly the defense Zuckerberg made about the decision not to put a disclaimer on Trump's "looting and shooting" tweet. And people are still killing him over it. At this point, I'm not entirely sure what people want.
(I'm a bit sad this is downvoted)
And yes that person is often you or I. None of us are immune to cognitive blind spots. Smart people are sometimes the worst offenders.
So does the concept of dysrationalia, proposed by Keith Stanovich. Ironically, the Wikipedia article quotes Robert Sternberg as saying:
> I am afraid that Stanovich has fallen into a trap—that of labeling people as 'dysrational' who have beliefs that he does not accept. And therein lies frightening potential for misuse.
Entity Whack A Mole.
Zuckerberg is also ~12 times wealthier than Murdoch (who has a declining empire).
Most recently:
"News Corp Australia blamed Google and Facebook for undermining the profitability of Australian media outlets, including 60 of the company's local newspapers that may publish for the last time next week."
https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/news-corp-...
Can't say he didn't tried. But even murdoch and his billions couldn't outzuck the zuck.
"News Corp. to Acquire MySpace"
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jul-19-fi-news1...
[1]: https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/labeling-state-controlled-...
Some problems with this:
1. an honest person in a democracy must fear how ads influence her neighbors, regardless of how they influence her
2. honesty does not buy you an all-seeing eye, so honest people can be fooled by a dishonest person's lies
3. lies are laundered when they are repeated by well-meaning, fooled honest people, so whatever superpowers one honest person has against dishonesty, they are neutralized by this kryptonite
If we determine that there are enough protections in place to ensure editorial independence, we will not apply the label. Publishers looking to prove their independence must be able to demonstrate at least:
A statute in the host country that clearly protects the editorial independence of the organization
Established procedures, processes, and protections at the media organization to ensure editorial independence
An assessment by an independent, credible, external organization finding that the statute has in fact been complied with and established procedures have been followed
I'm going to be a little idealistic here, but I would rather see a greater emphasis on media literacy online. Provide the reader with some context and help them make informed decisions. No it won't work on everyone, but it's better than panicking.
Any media source can be illuminating if you know how to read it. RT contains the perspective of the Russian state, as well as a lot of western journalists who are outside the western mainstream for whatever reason. The stories are often embarrassing for western states, but that's fine as long as the the reader knows the intention of the source, and they are aware there is some propaganda mixed in.
Personally, I'd rather just see ads from anyone who wished to buy them. This way, at least I know who is trying to push what.
(I don't and never will automatically believe anything an ad shows me. And neither should a single citizen.)
Unfortunately you are not the norm.
Plus, the unwashed masses might not be very good at deciding who's acting in their best interests… but the set of people who are good at deciding who to vote for has different interests (on average) to the set of all people. So even if there were a perfect way of doing this, it wouldn't achieve what we want it to achieve.
I really want the minimum voting age to be lowered to 7 – it's something my seven-year-old self swore to do. But then parents would basically get an extra vote for each child they have, given how easy it is to control a seven-year-old's access to information and how much trust they place in their parents' judgement, and that would be really bad. So I'm not actually going to support such a measure.
(Rebellious teens, on the other hand… well, perhaps 14-year-olds voting wouldn't be so bad. Except there would then be higher incentives to manipulate them, and do we really want to put 14-year-olds through that? Well… you could argue they're already being put through that, so perhaps? But —)
Like they advertise a YouTube channel/video, but then that YouTube channel/video contains badly manipulative content.
Worse with how thinks developed in recent times on YouTube not even all of this videos have bad intention some have accidental manipulative by oversimplifying reality. Like ... explained in 10 minutes where ... is fairly complex and omitting any of the major parts will have manipulative effects on the opinions people with no knowledge about ... get.
Most scarily is that I have seen some channels providing mini educational videos of this kind which for most topics try to be objective but for some topics are extremely manipulative while convincing you that they just present you the "objective" facts, in a way which clearly is NOT accidental. I'm a 20+ year old student and if I wouldn't have know more about the given topic I would have been tricked by them. So the effect such videos can have on younger people has me worried.
A real tear jerker of a life. But for some reason he never worries about eating healthy -- or eating at all, for that matter. Maybe I should try giving him some body-positive feedback for emotional support.
Bah, you know what, maybe it's my flawed humanism getting in the way, maybe it'll be easier for me to just become a corporation, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh...
Sounds like a terrible complicated situation where social-medias are, if i where Zuckerberg, i would just sell the hole thing and live my live, cannot believe that something like that makes fun.
Yes again one-sided, owner of CNN are WarnerMedia and Turner Broadcasting System now you research for yourself what Turner's connections are, and especially WarnerMedia's.
But now we have an incentive to prove all the media control, and thereby kill them off. Without ads not much controlled media. Only the biggest players which are paid by the state will survive.
(worked in state and in independent media)
EDIT: And have a completly different "ad" system for political advertisements limited to sources from countries you whitelist defaulting to your country of origin which are all manually "fact", racism checked, and "source" checked etc. What isn't possible for general purpose product adds might very well be possible for political ads.
(Through this doesn't meant they are not biased, not that there are no people with influence which are members of some party of the many parties in Germany which have influence to some of them). (To quite wikipedia: "It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all federal states of Germany.")