Facebook Moves to Limit Election Chaos in November | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Moves to Limit Election Chaos in November

nytimes.com

36 pointsmitchbob48 comments

>Facebook also plans to remove posts that both explicitly and implicitly aim to disenfranchise or prohibit people from voting; previously, the company removed only posts that actively discouraged people from voting. Now, a post that causes confusion around who is eligible to vote or some part of the voting process — such as a misstatement about what documentation is needed to receive a ballot — would also be removed.

In a country where about 61% [0] of voting-age people actually take the time to vote, I can't believe there are people trying to bring that number down more. It saddens me that anybody would want to silence a voice/vote through disinformation online. It also really confuses me on who this would even affect? I haven't seen any posts about this (I haven't been on Facebook in years) so I am unsure who the "target" audience is. Would the perpetrators just want a really low turnout, hoping one side is just smart enough to not listen? Or is it to just instill more confusion?

[0]: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2017/...

People try to target demographic groups that are not on their side, and discourage or inhibit their voting. For instance, if poor demographics don't tend to vote for your side, you can push for more stringent documentation being required to vote, like driver's licenses, which poor people don't have. Or you can move to limit poll locations and hours, as poor people can't get off work as easily as wealthier people.

Gerrymandering is another way to game the voting system, which can be used against people rich or poor. For instance, the city of austin might very well elect a democratic member of the House, if district lines were drawn sensibly, but it is cut up into little slices of pie, then each piece slice wraps around a huge rural area that tends to vote GOP.

Not everyone may have a drivers license. Some upper middle class members also don’t have driver’s licenses.

What just about everyone over 18 has is a form of government ID. Without a gov ID you cannot get access gov resources: education, SNAP, medicare, Medicaid, purchase controlled groceries like alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana , power, phone plans, credit cards, etc.

It’s a myth that poor people cannot get IDs. You’ll be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t and cannot get one. I was dirt poor as a youth. I got a non drivers ID card. It was necessary in life.

Since there are no standardised IDs in the US unlike most other countries, can't poll workers just be unnecessarily stringent on identification to deny people the vote?

There is standardization, it just happens at the state level.

Complaints about lack of standardization come from (a) businesses that want cheap, easy and immutable unique identifiers for everyone from a government that isn't maximally accommodating to their use case and (b) the federal government wanting better police record-keeping on the population.

I believe one of the ideas bandied about is a nationalID. People are against these as well. Non DL IDs are issued by the same state org that issues drivers licenses and they look the same, except it says Identification Card instead of Driver License. They also have no-fee options if you are homeless and reduced fee cards if you are on gov assistance.

National IDs are always a bad idea. To give an example, when India ("world's largest democracy") decided to roll out a national ID, they touted it as a harmless and useful tool. Recently, when New Delhi erupted in violent riots, guess what was used to target and arrest the protesters, predominantly of the minority community?

At this point in technology, IDs and their information are a much smaller threat than the vast information trove collected on line and from cellular devices.

It’s like complaining about plastic straws but ignore the issue of nets from fishing operations. One has a better attack surface for activists but in reality the problem lay elsewhere.

The difference is in the number of obstacles involved. The local police force would have to go through some hoops to track your devices and online activity. On the other hand, a national database would give them every information about you at the clock of a mouse - no expertise required.

Of course, the former will be an issue regardless, especially when it involves state level or national level police forces pursuing some overarching motive. But the latter can be used by the local yokels masquerading in uniform. Imagine if a policeman had some beef with you on a personal level and was able to access all your information, including your name, Date of Birth, Addresses present and past, and your family information. Because that latter bit of information was what was used to pursue most of the activists and protesters in the Indian example.

> Since there are no standardised IDs in the US

I mean... they have passports don’t they?

Yes but a minority of people get passports. And they are required otherwise for very few things in ordinary life. State issued IDs are a necessity in life if you are a non-hermit.

You cannot get on with life without a State issued ID.

Thanks for writing that. I sometimes forget that these basic facts are not (sufficiently) common knowledge.

> like driver's licenses, which poor people don't have.

I did a cursory search and found this link[1] that says ,

> Across all age groups, 84.6% of all Americans have a drivers’ license.

> The lowest percentage of total licensed drivers is among 16- to 19-year-olds, where 51.7% of the population have their driver’s license.

Its even higher if you remove 16-19 age group, who aren't eligible for voting.

Curious if you have a stat for drivers license by income.

1. https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/10/number-of-licensed-dr....

On a side note, can we please pass a law to make Election Day a national holiday? It is sad that companies don't help their employees and customers execute their right to vote.

I've wondered about more than one country why they don't make it a weekend. Or just be open for longer, not everyone has the same days off.

Even with national holidays, it's still up to the company to give employees the day off.

It seems to be a tactic not so uncommon as that. It happened here in Canada:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election...

To wit: Harper moved on to head the IDU after his last time as PM. I'm not sure if it's crazy or not to draw a line there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Democrat_Union

> Would the perpetrators just want a really low turnout, hoping one side is just smart enough to not listen? Or is it to just instill more confusion?

Demoralization. Destabilization. Crisis. Normalization.

Crisis Is Time of `great Opportunity'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSVn3paVwgU

> It also really confuses me on who this would even affect?

You can have very precise targeting with FB, so you can use different tactics for different subgroups to make them vote for you or don't participate at all if they won't vote for you.

If you can get people to disengage from basic politics (voting), then you can sway dozens to hundreds of seats.

I dislike Facebook as much as the next person. I think most self-regulation is somewhat of a joke, especially in the private sector, but I also think the blame belongs with the money people who buy the manipulation. Sure Facebook has rotten ethics, but the real danger to our democracy is the fact that you can buy a medium platform and just manipulate all day long.

Our only real option to fight it, if we refuse to go after the people who pay for the manipulation, is to make sure we educate our children better.

But really, I think we should ask ourselves if we really want that sort of power sitting with a few billionaires. Because it’s not going to stop with Facebook. It’ll be on any social media ever.

1) A lot of manipulation happens outside of ads. For example, fake news sites being shared widely or private groups spreading anti-vaxx propaganda.

2) Most of the people being manipulated haven't been children for decades. Educating children better is already happening, especially as children grow up knowing that you can't believe what you read on the Web.

Can you provide an example of what you consider “manipulation?”

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...

This seems like a question with obvious answers, which leads me to believe you're attempting to build a trap because you've already got some outcome in mind and you're ready to pounce.

But just in case you're serious, check out what a shill is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill

Even if you're right, you're not supposed to attack people on HN. It's not interesting to see everyone accuse each other of being shills without adding anything to the discussion.

It's better to just downvote and move on.

I wasn't implying he is a shill, I was answering his question by providing reference to a type of manipulation that has been around since before the internet.

The first part of my response was because it seemed like he was trying to lure the parent reply into a debate trap using leading questions. Not because I thought he was a shill.

I know what a shill is... Are you implying that the manipulation is shilling? Can you provide an example?

I use Facebook. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything I would qualify as manipulation in sponsored posts, as my sponsored posts are almost always product advertisements. So it’s not obvious to me what is meant by “manipulation” in the post I was responding to. I think asking for an example is quite reasonable.

Not everyone on FB sees manipulated media. I almost never did before I deleted my account.

It depends on your social network, groups, likes, and shares. Manipulators are always going to try to target people who want to believe their lies.

Which is why I asked for an example... I frequently read claims of voter manipulation and armies of paid shills and such, but I’ve never seen a single example of what exactly they’re talking about.

You're in the bubble

In this world every problem has the same solution: Facebook decides what is right and what is wrong.

...because governments aren't doing their job and legislating.

Why is something of such importance being left up to private companies to regulate?

Legislation that is responsive can inadvertently create or reinforce monopolies because of the regulatory moat that is created, making it economically infeasible to create competition without already being of equal stature.

Facebook posts are people talking to one another. You really want the government to legislate what people are allowed to say to each other?

We don't trust government to govern as much as we trust the free market.

Doesn't sound like that's facebook's problem to fix, and nor should they be blamed for the consequences of it.

There are significant challenges being presented by the new tools that humanity has built for communication over the last 20 years. I'm not sure that it's the fault of the people who are building those tools that our institutions are failing to get a grip on it.

There is a very simple answer to the problem of "why is facebook getting to choose what's right and wrong" and that's "we're not doing it, so they have to".

Why don't we just step up and start making some rules?

I'm thinking misinformation on social media is just something we're going to have to learn and live with. Its like advertising, my grandparents believed when some infomercial says this product will make your life better where younger generations know its junk. Pretty soon people will be equally skeptical of random things on social media soon.

I think that would be more true if they viewed it [as/with the same distance as] a publication. FB (and maybe Twitter, too) seems to hold this weird place where it's not quite a conversation and its not quite broadcasting, but its a bit of both and treated with an overlap of the traits applied to each.

So while people grew to view advertising, broadcast and print productions with skepticism, they seem to give more benefit-of-the-doubt to posts on FB as if it were a family member or friend reaching out, but with the same deference they might give to a respected authority writing or speaking on a subject of expertise in a publication or broadcast.

It's really strange to see people who I've known my entire life to be intelligent people take shared items on Facebook, YouTube (et al) at face value.

I see little evidence of that from my own anecdotal experience. Are there any sources that support this progression?

The African Prince scam where they email you that they need help and will pay you vast sums of money if you do.

It has been around awhile and the number of people falling for this has dropped.

People catch-on.. not everyone but enough to make an election hack not workable.

People struggle with new ideas but adapt . COVID scams have gone up and then down.

Would you say something like that if you didn't think someone will cheat?

So that's what they're calling it?

"Election chaos" must be how dictators, globalists and statists feel about it.

Poor NYT, it wasn't going to be chaotic when Trump's odds were 34%...

Well this is going to be a mess. Ads will be replaced by astroturf. Misinformation will spread by other networks (Q, talk radio, etc) and produce "news articles" which will be circulated with all kinds of extraordinary claims about Joe Biden and pizza parlours, or whatever.

There is likely to be election chaos in the streets as well, as a gradual accumulation of previous unresolved crises all take effect at once.

I believe the folksy saying here would be “lipstick on a pig.”

From the article:

“Facebook said it would begin barring politicians from placing new ads on Facebook and Instagram, the photo-sharing service it owns, starting on Oct. 27. Existing political ads will not be affected.”

Well then, amend that folksy saying to “lipstick on a pig, but we didn’t even finish painting his lips.” What possible difference could a week of different ad content make?

“Misinformation across private communication channels is a much more difficult problem to tackle than on public social networks because it is hidden. Limiting message forwarding could slow that spread.”

Again, little bit of lipstick on a gargantuan pig. I think the bulk of the really whacky stuff on Facebook is in semi-private groups; even my local neighborhood group is full of nonsense. (People are just obsessed with 5G causing cancer.)

Now, do I have a solution for this? Nope. I have no earthly idea how you police disinformation at scale. Heck, even if Facebook developed some sort of near-god-level AI that could track all this down, the craziness would just move to other platforms. (See: QAnon on TikTok.) I just find it a bit offensive they’re even pretending they can do something.

Zuckerberg promises? Again? Are these still newsworthy?

Imagine trusting individuals to make their own decisions about the information they consume. Imagine being comfortable with others coming to different conclusions, without crying foul play.

When did society become so insecure that 'alternative facts' and differing perceptions justify hysteria? Was it when legacy media acknowledged that they had been disrupted by Internet publishers? What role do walled gardens play in this paradigm?

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