Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election | Hacker News Reader

Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

nytimes.com

124 pointscoloneltcb247 comments

This just seems like too little, too late.

Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources.

If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.

> Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources.

Define a credible source? We know for a fact all the major news outlets edit photos, often don’t use their own reporters, write sensational articles (actively stretching facts).

No, I don’t think we can say what is a “sketchy” source. Unless we start wanting Facebook to moderate truth (or just accept the current propaganda machines as truth).

These statements remind me of school. I used to be told not to use Wikipedia and do all my searches in Altavista or Ask Jeeves. I was told this for years, even after Google came out. I think it’s short sighted to try and suppress. Instead we should teach or add a warning (at best) saying “unverified”.

This can’t be stressed enough. It used to be footage or images were verified or were from a photo or video journalist on the ground. Now they use recycled footage and images either through laziness, incompetence or maliciousness to drive a narrative. This is from “reputable” networks.

And not to lessen the complaint about excessive use of force by police, but very often the context preceding a confrontation is deliberately omitted to reframe an interaction with a suspect. This reframing has damaging consequences in many affected areas of concern.

> It used to be footage or images were verified or were from a photo or video journalist on the ground. Now they use recycled footage and images either through laziness, incompetence or maliciousness to drive a narrative.

The use of undisclosed recycled footage to accompany news coverage is older than television. Its not a new phenomenon.

(What's recent is the degree to which media critics have the ability to detect, identify the source of, and, through alternatives to the media that are doing it in the first place, publicize findings about such misleading use of imagery. You are experiencing it being harder to get away with, and mistaking that for it being a new thing that it is happening.)

> No, I don’t think we can say what is a “sketchy” source.

Yes we can.

If someone lies to me, they are a sketchy source. If someone gets caught spreading misinformation—lies repeatedly, they are a sketchy source. Or are we going to start trying to suggest we don't know what lying is now too?

> We know for a fact all the major news outlets edit photos, often don’t use their own reporters, write sensational articles (actively stretching facts).

We can't, perhaps, for a definition that captures all sketchy sources, but we can come up with a reasonable definition that encapsulates some of them.

> I think it’s short sighted to try and suppress.

Why? Suppressing the mass, unencumbered spread of vexatious lies as "news" would seem to be beneficial to all.

There is a very powerful dynamic going on between those well intentioned but perhaps too optimistic that we can or should try to protect everyone from bad ideas.

That debate is nothing new and in the mean time as we wait and see how these forces play out the correct answer for any person is to stop wanting and waiting for the powers that be to save us from ourselves. It has always been the case that media serves to manipulate even if unintentionally. That includes both the "platforms" and their various participants.

So we should consider our situation and duty to be like that or any intelligence analyst. Take in all the information, no matter the reputation of the source, with hefty skepticism knowing that there are various and sundry games afoot and a clear picture of reality is unlikely. Opt instead to weigh varying degrees of confidence against each other rather than seeking to sit pat on our well formed conclusions from "reliable sources". Becuase the only thing you can rely upon is that if smething is being waved in-front of your face there is a motive and it's not for your benefit.

“All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.”

― Upton Sinclair

And with that I would urge people to disengage from this kind of battlefield, turn and look in the opposite direction of all these debates because there lie mountains of uncontested and ignored realities that are never spoken of and this is fully intentional.

This reminds me of the California/Australia wildfires. They're the result of a whole cascade of problems, from global warming to the details of under-supported local firefighting infrastructure, but those at the top aren't interested in any of those until they start to feel the heat approach them.

I think the possibility of election "chaos" is starting to look real; you've already had this year "armed protestors occupy State building", "crowdfunded anti-protestor gunman", huge ongoing demonstrations, voter rights lawsuits, and chaos in the mail system on which mail-in ballots depend. This is going to make the whole Bush vs Gore hanging chad debacle look like a gentlemanly dispute from a vanished age.

Those at the top of Facebook won't mind a clean victory for either side. They don't even mind a one-off clearing of the streets with live ammunition. What they will mind is ongoing violent struggle for the legitimacy of the state.

(absolutely not a given, but definitely a risk. Much like the President catching the virus that's dangerous to unfit people over 65.)

> crowdfunded anti-protestor gunman

Can I get a link? I must have missed this one and google isn't helping me, it sounds fascinating though

I think the risk of protracted conflict is actually really high. Trump has repeatedly implied that he would not accept the results of the election, and has laid groundwork to say that the election was rigged and illegitimate. Hillary Clinton has publicly stated that in no way should Biden concede the election, and Harris last night in the debates implied that they would fight if needed.

All this during an extremely severe economic crash leaving millions of people unemployed, with each side blaming the other for the downturn. There have already been violent protests for months. When Trump's "poll watchers" end up in conflicts, I think that's when we'll see things escalate quickly.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and everyone else seems to be doing their best to control the narrative in an attempt to prevent this escalation, but it really seems like it's too late. There seems to be institutional momentum behind these forces at this point.

Not sure why you are being downvoted. Things you mention have been reported by NYT pretty clearly.

You make an interesting point: what would a social network of limited range look like?

Something where you couldn't have more than a set number of connections, things didn't spread more than two nodes in the graph, and resharing wasn't an option. I think it would be ideal to fill in the mainstream need for facebook ( keeping in touch with people)

>what would a social network of limited range look like?

healthy is what it would look like. because then it would operate on a human scale, be decentralised, robust, instead of being hyper-connected like sort of giant overstimulated brain.

Obviously it violates just about every financial incentive social media companies have, as well as people's increasing need for attention, so it will never happen.

Social networks could just disable the Share or Retweet button and I think the problem will solve itself.

I miss the old Facebook circa 2007 -- no likes and no shares made it a better experience for me.

Agreed. Facebook and Twitter really ought to have thought about the long history of chain emails, and realized what they were doing when they added an "all my friends have gotta see this!" button.

I do not think they were oblivious.

The ultimate goal of such systems is to gain hours and hours of your attention daily. What works better than outrage?

Not even cute kittens.

They knew exactly what they were building.

I'm old enough to remember "manual retweet", and people still do it on Instagram which has no re-share functionality.

People do it less on Instagram than on most social networking platforms though, and that's one of the reasons a greater fraction of the content on Instagram is original. A bit of UI friction has a big influence on user behavior.

Make it less like to show something if the further the connection is from the individual. By default don't show every like or retweet, only do it if you are relatively close to the original source? Dampen the viralness if the post by having diminishing returns for each "like?" I don't have an answer, but I feel like these are things that could be explored.

The "problem" (and I use the term "problem" from the perspective of the network, I don't believe it actually is a net problem for the world) - is that limited the reach of content would potentially reduce the amount of content to interact with exponentially.

Lack of content, lack of engagement, lack of reason to keep returning. Healthier for the world, but, potentially a very hard problem to solve from the platform provider side to keep it going long term.

There will be models that get it right, but would require quite large shifts in user behaviour.

It'd definitely be nice though.

I’ve been thinking of something like that. One person has what? Perhaps 100 people tops that they want to keep track of in their lives? Make it less, and now you are forcing someone to actively manage who they want to keep close with. On top of that prevent re-sharing or sharing of links and pictures and you have a more personal experience. No public profiles.

Vetted by who? Based on the political opinions of some manager somewhere in California?

The only democratic way to have a vetting system for political messages would be to have an transparent government institute that are responsible to the public, and it seems to me then that we have just reinvented the censor bureau of the past.

Ugh we have a constitution to protect against stuff like this...

Otherwise we’d have the ministry of truth which would be arresting people for inappropriate thoughts being expressed.

It's the classic problem of: But who will clean up after the janitors? When the highest authority is corrupted, there's no one left to (fairly) referee

And which will be run by a political appointee. I don’t think either party will be thrilled to have the other vetting political speech.

> Based on the political opinions of some manager somewhere in California?

There are some simple rules you can apply evenly with little or no political bias.

#1 Is it true? - Is a politician making a claim about the election which is false. "I won the election"... Likewise, are they making a claim which is verifiably false about current events? "Police have arrested Antifa activists in Oregon for starting the Holiday Farm Fire."

#2 Is it inciting violence — Is a politician making a statement that might incite violence. This applies equally to both sides. "Burn down all police stations" or "Show up in force and armed" are both calls which will lead to violent outcomes.

Yes. Private company, private rules. I will be the hypocrite back to make the argument you're making now when they come for me (which they won't because I'm not on facebook).

Lol I'm only on HN because the articles get here before they get on slashdot. The HN groupthink is much more toxic than Slashdot ever was

This is the real question :) Of course it will be by some far left leaning person. Zuckerberg said they have content moderation and consult with many many groups and the interviewer asked for ONE example of a conservative group they consult with, he had no answer.

Not intended to derail this, but could someone point to/recommend conservative groups who a) have denounced white supremacy, and b) are reasonably data- or analytically-driven?

Do you automatically presume any conservative group is white supremacists by default?

No, but I can't bring to mind any that have denounced white supremacy. Which is why I'm asking.

Does this work for you? https://streamable.com/sr9o2s

Edit: People on this forum need to stop being so cultish. Downvoting this doesn’t change the reality that it directly kills your narrative.

They ask for proof, and then when you give it try to hide your comment through downvoting. Followed by saying that it doesn't even matter.

Very topical example of why these "benevolent censorship" schemes are are worse than the problem they are trying to fix.

Nope. Trump is an incoherent bullshit generator. He says conflicting things such that his intended audience will take away what they want to hear, but can defend himself having said the exact opposite. The only way to judge him is to look at his results.

No, though it's a better reply to my comment elsewhere in the thread where I said Trump doesn't actually condemn white supremacy.

The handful of examples in the video that are post-Charlottesville are a nice start, but they've clearly ended up being lip service. He says "I condemn white supremacy" and then goes back to race-baiting at his rally just days ago. [0]

Also, it doesn't kill the narrative. It's entirely consistent with the narrative that Trump lies when it's convenient.

[0] https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1311481175689568256?s=20

See this is what I'm talking about. Can you not see your confirmation bias?

1. Ask for proof 2. Get proof 3. Call it "lip service"

This means that no matter what Trump says, you will say its disingenuous. Do you see how that can be problematic?

No, I can see what you mean. The problem is with your claim that no matter what he says I'll say it's disingenuous. That's not true.

I do have reasons to believe Trump is disingenuous. (And if you don't see those, that's your own confirmation bias at play.) But if Trump consistently refused to say racist things and proactively worked to address racial injustice, I'd absolutely believe those statements!

Instead, you've got a huge number of examples of Trump being racist and a handful of examples of him saying the words when a reporter presses him. But where's Trump's Philadelphia speech? What did he have to say about John Lewis's legacy? Where is his leadership on addressing the pain and poverty of Black families?

That's literally exactly what happened. Why even ask? What response could you have possibly gotten that would have changed your mind?

I have seen a ton of examples where people think trump is being racist, then I see them, and he's clearly not. I am 100% open to changing my mind, racism is terrible. Please provide specific and clear examples. Calling everything racism really weakens the argument.

You also provide another example of your clouded judgement: "and a handful of examples of him saying the words when a reporter presses him." This type of thinking shows that you just want to confirm your pre-existing idea that he is a racist. When he then says he is not, you say "oh he really is, he was just saying that because he had to". That means there is no possible thing he can do to change your mind.

As I said above, if someone can provide specific examples, and not just of behaviors they don't like but of how they are actually racist, I am more than happy to denounce him. Also, in case you missed it, under Trump (pre-Covid), black unemployment was at an all time low.

I did provide some examples at the end of the post. He could honor people doing racial justice work, rather than attacking them. He could stop stoking fear of immigrants and tell the truth about them, which is that they tend to be more educated and more determined than average. He could insist on full investigations of police violence toward black people, rather than equivocating. But he doesn't actually do substantive work on race.

So yeah, I call it lip service.

Thanks for the response! This really shows the lack of clarity in your thinking. We can review each item quickly:

1. He could honor people doing racial justice work - Does not doing this make someone a racist? Silly. Also, here is a direct quote from February 2020 (see how I use actual evidence) "We’re here with some of the black leaders of our country and — people that are highly respected and people that have done a fantastic job and, for the most part, have been working on this whole situation with me right from the beginning." Does that sound like something a racist would say?

2. He could stop stoking fear of immigrants - This is not a specific example.

3. He could insist on full investigations of police violence toward black people - This isn't the responsibility of the president. If he got involved in police business people would say he is overreaching. This is again a subjective thing you "feel" he could do. The agencies that are supposed to be involved are.

I try to stick with concrete facts to base my opinions on. This has been a great example where you really want to think he's racist because of what you see in the media but have so far provided 0 objective evidence for your claim.

Yes, it does sound like something many racists say. You treat "racist" like it only means someone who uses racial epithets. That's the tip of the iceberg. Looking at how people empower and disempower those of other races is the far more substantial and important measure.

I am laughing at your dismissal as "not a specific example". I linked to a very recent one upthread, and many many more are easily available and uncontroverted. He talked up a Muslim ban and campaigned on building a wall. You are being willfully blind on this one.

It absolutely is the responsibility of the president. He leads and sets the tone. He has influence over, for example, Daniel Cameron, and used it to encourage a lack of police accountability. He can control grant programs and discretionary spending in the area of policing. The DoJ can investigate police departments as part of their public integrity work, and has done historically little of that under this administration. And instead of calling Black Lives Matter a "symbol of hate" for reacting to a problem that his own Attorney General acknowledges (that there is systemic bias against black people in policing) he could press Congress and state leaders to address the issue.

The why ask him to denounce it?

I'm not sure, you'd have to ask someone who's asking Trump to denounce something he's clearly committed to.

I'm asking about conservative groups who have denounced it. I have some faith that conservatism is not aligned with Trumpery.

For godsakes the Republican party freed the slaves and voted for the civil rights act. It's the democrat party that should have to denounce it's history... except they let people like Ralph Northam continue to govern despite being photographed in a KKK hood. And before you start say "Oh the great switch" the part that's never explained by that bs theory is how one day people who had been fighting for civil right woke up and decided to undo everything they had fought for for the last 100 years. You're being taught to hate people that aren't hateful because then it makes it easier to justify the means of seizing power.

> For godsakes the Republican party freed the slaves and voted for the civil rights act.

Civil Rights Acts, many of them, starting in the 19th century; sure, and all that was great. But after that the Republican Party decided to seize on the rift created in the Democratic Party when LBJ also backed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which was essential to it being passed into law, because Republicans didn't have a veto-proof majority backing it) to subsequently, starting particularly in the 1968 Presidential election and continuing thereafter, to target the white racists (particularly concentrated in the South) that were disenchanted with the Democratic Party on that issue, in order to make sure that that split wasn't temporary as it was when the Dixiecrats revolted over Truman's integration of the military. And to do that, they started pandering, and have ever since, to the racism of the disaffected group they were courting.

It's precisely because there was 100 years in between that no Reconstruction Republican woke up and voted for Goldwater. You think things can't change over that time frame you haven't been paying attention to the last fifty years, or even twenty.

MLK was a Republican BTW.

> MLK was a Republican BTW.

That's quite plausible. I'd expect that most American Southern Blacks (outside the South the parties were quite different and the issue is more complicated) that identified with a major party between the founding of the Republican Party and the Republican Southern Strategy of the late 1960s and beyond, which King was murdered too soon to be influenced by, were Republicans.

The parties of today, despite sharing the same names, aren't ideologically the same parties as when King was alive (or, a fortiori, any earlier time), though.

That's not at all clear, historically speaking. Even if he were, that would make perfect sense as a Southerner. We think of politics these days as relatively nationally uniform, but then-Democrats were the racists that the Southern Strategy sought to woo.

https://time.com/5764282/martin-luther-king-jr-politics/

So they started voting for the people responsible for the KKK and Jim Crow laws thinking they were going to making things better? Honest question, are you high or just incredibly naive? Secondly, in 1860s republicans freed the slaves and in 1960s they passed civil rights despite democrats voting against it. Thats 100 years of progress so what are you talking about? What did the democrats do other than burn crosses?

Edit: I love downvotes without a rebuttal because I know Ive won.

> So they started voting for the people responsible for the KKK and Jim Crow laws

No, the people who still supported the KKK and the ideology behind Jim Crow laws switched major parties, if they were associated with a major party, from the Democrats to the Republicans between the late mid-1960s and the mid-1990s, because of disaffection with the Democrats (initially particularly President Johnson) backing civil rights, but also because the Republicans started actively campaigning to their racist interests to leverage their disaffection with the Democrats.

In some cases, the people switching parties were literally the same people who had bolted temporarily from the Democratic Party in the 1940s over Truman's integration policies, but who had come back because they had no other major party to go to, and their own separate party had failed. (Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrat Presidential candidate in 1948, is a notable, highly-visible example.)

And as this process continued it was self-reinforcing, because the more White supremacists left the Democratic Party for the Republicans, the stronger the Democratic support for the interests White supremacists opposed could be.

This theory is garbage because it totally forgets that REPUBLICANS passed the civil rights act and were still overwhelmingly less racist than their democratic counterparts. What you are saying is the equivalent of AOC voting for Trump because the party isnt radical enough. It’s a lie. Its always been a lie. Thats why democrat run cities since that day are some of the most destitute for black people. Democrats use them and its sickening. I’m a republican and I abhor any sort of racism. There are a lot more of me than you think and well find-out in November. One thing is for sure, Stop fighting hate with hate

The idea of "winning" a conversation is screwed up from the get-go.

Kennedy and Johnson were Democrats. The House and Senate were both Democratically controlled.

Saying that Republicans passed civil rights because there were 18 Southern Bloc Democrats who fought it in the Senate is just lying about the facts.

Based on the percentages it's blatantly obvious which party was more in favor of civil rights for minorities, Republicans. So why would the Racist democrats, the ones that voted no, want to join the party that was much more unanimous than the party in which they currently reside? What you are saying is like Nancy Pelosi becoming a republican because Trump became a democrat. It's absurd. You've been taught a lie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

Okay... why did a Republican, nominee of the party "more in favor of civil rights for minorities," vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964? And why did Nixon, a Republican, follow his lead in the following election, emphasizing law and order, an end to protests, and a war on drugs? Why did Strom Thurmond, a Democrat, join the Republican party?

You can't have it both ways!

Bingo. It doesn’t matter what he says, they just want to keep asking the question anyways to drive division to garner support.

Given the way Trump has captured the following of the conservative community, despite being a radical populist and having few policy accomplishments besides inflaming racial tensions, yes. It's reasonable starting assumption about any group that continues to express support for Trump.

I'm not a fan of identity politics, I generally try to ignore race, and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. But at this point it's awfully hard to not conclude that Trump is a race baiting bigot. My final straw was the FUD about Kamala Harris's birth certificate. Apparently "birth certificate" really is just a simplistic dog whistle for pointing out that someone is Black.

I'm a libertarian and think that both parties screw the People similarly, but after four years of this destructive ignorant bullshit enough is enough. It's time to take our country back.

A politician (or any human being for that matter) consists of a bunch of dimensions.

American society also has many dimensions , some being representative of the structure and institutions of the society, and then also all the people within the country who are affected by governance, and each individual person is also multidimensional (inside of which is lots of complexity, that drives political decisions within the overall system).

The makeup of a politicians dimensions affects the manner in which they ~govern, with respect to the societal dimensions, and in turn acting upon those dimensions.

Within this system we have "democracy", then within there we have "politics", which consists of this weird multidimensional, ~"interactive dance" that consists of "facts", "logic", rhetoric (perspective/narrative building (and advertising/distribution), framing, hyperbole, motivated reasoning, post-hoc rationalization, propaganda, destroying people with facts, "the news", "debates", memes(!), trolling, shitposting, etc), axioms, principles, "visions", and various other silliness. But all for a good cause, with the best of intentions in mind (to the degree that each individual is capable of that).

When it comes to election time, citizens are given one vote, a binary choice of two candidates. To make this choice, each individual voter crushes down all the complex dimensionality of their personal model of the world (which they mistake for shared reality) and out comes their decision who to vote for.

The purpose of all the absurdity and chicanery in the interactive dance above, is to influence the manner in which each individual crushes their dimensions. More specifically, the purpose of the dance is to influence the makeup/configuration/contents of each person's model - or, alter their perception of reality.

I would say that what the arguments we individuals engage in on social media "is", is simply a part of this dance. In this case, I reckon that you are responding to your model of the world, and interacting with others within the system, hoping to influence their model (an illustration of the viral nature of ideas). More specifically, you are (in all good faith, I presume), ~"deploying a persuasive meme/perspective", something roughly along the lines of:

  "Donald Trump's model contains a dimension labelled 'Literally Racist', and it's value is '100%'.  Furthermore, *because(!)* anyone who 'is' 'racist' 'should' 'be shunned by society, absolutely, full stop', *then therefore(!)* you must(!) vote for Joe Biden."

If the individuals "political team" (the leader, and all teammates) has done a good enough job in influencing the model of the individual deploying the meme, the person will perceive their action as being righteous, composed of critical thinking, exercising logic, doing the right thing, being an adult in the room, etc. But what it really is, is just this weird dance. And there's no need to feel bad about it, because it seems to be a fairly innate, evolved behavior of human beings, so we all do it (if to varying degrees, and in different styles). I'm doing it right now (in response to you doing it). The whole big thing is just this weird dance, and what ultimately comes out the other end, is a new or reelected President (in part driving the ongoing future evolution of the overall model), and the whole thing starts anew.

> When it comes to election time, citizens are given one vote, a binary choice of two candidates. To make this choice, each individual voter crushes down all the dimensionality of their personal model of the world (which they mistake for shared reality) and out comes their decision who to vote for. The purpose of all the absurdity and chicanery in the interactive dance above, is to influence the manner in which each individual crushes their dimensions

I'm 100% in agreement on this. I've previously made the argument that one bit of input is small, thus the overall function of voting is actually to make winning voters think they wanted all their candidate's policies. I formed during the Obama years, after arguing against blue tribe friends arguing for corporo-statist health care. To be clear, this is the first time I will be voting for a major party candidate for President.

> "Donald Trump's model contains a dimension labelled 'Literally Racist', and it's value is '100%'. Furthermore, because(!)* anyone who 'is' 'racist' 'should' 'be shunned by society, absolutely, full stop', then therefore(!) you must(!) vote for Joe Biden."*

This does not represent my perspective at all.

First, I've been slow to come around to labeling Trump a simple racist. As I said, my last straw was Harris's "birth certificate". Back in May, I was still arguing with a friend who was claiming Trump's malevolence on Covid came from his desire to see brown people die. Focusing on race begets racism. I've been trying to find non-racial explanations the whole time.

Second no, I don't think racists should be outright shunned by society. People that do must not love their grandmothers. Racism is like farting. Everyone is going to develop some of it, but we should try to keep it to ourselves and spare each other the unpleasantness. It's problematic when people bring it up and make it part of their identity, either as oppressor or oppressed.

And lastly no, my decision to support Biden does not come from modus ponens on policies. Rather, I've been trying to find any reason why it would make sense to support Trump, to give his supporters the benefit of the doubt. For context, I was the one explaining to blue friends back in 2016 that Trump would likely win, because he was speaking to a lot of concerns that they casually wrote off.

While he's still talking about red tribe concerns, he has done little to actually address them. If he had improved the economic situation in the middle of the country, I'd get it. If he were devoutly religious, I'd get it. If he had reformed some aspect of the healthcare system towards a functioning market, I'd get it. If his trade policies could actually preserve American jobs, I'd get it. If he had actually built that wall, I'd get it. I wouldn't necessarily agree, but I would understand.

What has he actually done instead? He's continued to reject expert advice regarding Covid, leading to 210,000 American deaths. Rather than trying to calm the situation after George Floyd (even if it just resulted in some token reforms), he drove the division. He's setup tariffs that could only have worked twenty years ago, and has chosen to compete with China by adopting China's app censorship totalitarianism. He has withdrawn from foreign diplomacy to let China and Russia conquer unhindered.

The only charitable narrative I can come up with is that his supporters are still buying into his narrative as an opposition candidate, despite his past four years of office and his lack of results on goals they claim to care about. As they continue to be directly harmed by his actual actions, that becomes less plausible.

> thus the overall function of voting is actually to make winning voters think

More generally, the specific implementation of "democracy" in America was probably done with the best of intentions, but the rise of various forms of communication have now enabled and created the need/desire for more sophisticated forms. I would propose some reasonable form of more direct democracy, or at least comprehensive direct polling (non-binding) on individual issues - this way we'd at least have a half decent model about what people's beliefs are. Unfortunately, this may be unpalatable to certain parties who enjoy the ability to project what they want people to think other people's beliefs are.

That people have not been provided this improved (over one vote every 4 years, and then some other low-resolution voting here and there at other levels, all of which rarely results in changing much, or pleasing a large portion of the public) seems to have resulted in a situation where people have decided to take influence into their own hands, with the tools they have available: meme wars.

> This does not represent my perspective at all.

I may have estimated you erroneously.

>> Do you automatically presume any conservative group is white supremacists by default?

> Given the way Trump has captured the following of the conservative community, despite being a radical populist and having few policy accomplishments besides inflaming racial tensions, yes. It's reasonable starting assumption about any group that continues to express support for Trump.

Upon reconsideration, my interpretation has not changed. Can you possibly explain where you think I may have gone wrong in interpreting the above exchange? My sense of what you are saying is that because I have awareness of racist tendencies in Trump's model, then therefore I should reject him (as opposed to considering his racism as just one dimension among millions of others).

> And lastly no, my decision to support Biden does not come from modus ponens on policies. Rather, I've been trying to find any reason why it would make sense to support Trump, to give his supporters the benefit of the doubt.

I interpret this to mean that you are unable to see how someone could possibly evaluate the multidimensional nature of Donald Trump and (all things considered) decide to vote for him, without ~being similarly racist, or at least to some noteworthy degree? This is literally how I interpret your words, did you mean something completely different and I missed it?

> He's continued to reject expert advice regarding Covid, leading to 210,000 American deaths.

I don't like the manner in which he's done this, but I am very displeased with the way this pandemic has been marketed (for many reasons), so I am "ok" with his buffoon-like performance.

> He's setup tariffs that could only have worked twenty years ago, and has chosen to compete with China by adopting China's app censorship totalitarianism.

Here we disagree, significantly.

> He's withdrawn from foreign diplomacy to let China and Russia conquer unhindered.

Also here.

Other than these points, and then also our final decision on who to vote for, I believe you and I are largely in agreement on everything else you've written.

> My sense of what you are saying is that because I have awareness of racist tendencies in Trump's model, then therefore I should reject him (as opposed to considering his racism as just one dimension among millions of others).

No, but you did get what I'm saying with this next quote:

> I interpret this to mean that you are unable to see how someone could possibly evaluate the multidimensional nature of Donald Trump and (all things considered) decide to vote for him, without ~being similarly racist, or at least to some noteworthy degree?

Every individual decision is moderated by noise, lag, etc, but fundamentally yes this conclusion seems to be getting more and more valid. I've been trying to see the other dimensions but have been coming up increasingly short. For example when he's asked about his Covid response - he always comes back to talking about banning travel from China. It seems the only way he knows how to make policy is to claim some group is responsible for the problem, and exclude them. The concept of attacking the details of problem itself is beyond him.

So the deeper problem isn't merely that Trump has racist tendencies, but rather than it's the only lens through which he sees the world. In his mind, every problem is due to bad people disrupting things for good people. Stop the bad people and things will be good. But the world is much more complex than that.

I guess if you still believe his China policies, then it's possible to support his approach without being racist yourself. The problem is those policies also reek of the simple minded thinking of racism - tariffs to keep out bad Chinese goods, don't care about Hong Kong because it's Chinese, blaming Chinese apps specifically rather than data collection in general - and they will all be long term strategic failures that miss the big picture.

> I don't like the manner in which he's done this, but I am very displeased with the way this pandemic has been marketed (for many reasons), so I am "ok" with his buffoon-like performance.

If it were just the way he communicated I would get over it. But the real problem is the rejection of experts. He basically kneecapped the entire federal response, for which we've been paying a large amount of taxes, in favor of letting Covid spread unchecked. He's the leader and his job is to lead everyone - the "both sides" argument doesn't hold water. The standard politician thing would have been to defer to the experts and make sure he himself couldn't be blamed for errors. This culture is itself suboptimal, but would have produced much better results than what we got.

If he had listened to any experts, Trump could have easily gotten the wartime president boost rather than presiding over a needless disaster. The lack of PPE specifically would have dovetailed nicely into his call for domestic manufacturing, but instead crickets. If he were anything besides an empty suit, he would have figured this out by now.

> The concept of attacking the details of problem itself is beyond him.

Donald Trump's full capabilities are unknown to you. At best, you can form a model of them based on observations, but this also has a dependency on the comprehensiveness and accuracy (unintentional bias due to interpretation) of your observations.

> So the fundamental isn't merely that Trump has racist tendencies, but rather than it's the only lens through which he sees the world.

With all due respect, this seems hyperbolic, to be generous.

> In his mind, every problem is due to bad people disrupting things for good people.

This is speculation.

> But the world is much more complex than that.

This seems ironic.

> I do get if you're still hanging your hat on his China policies

This is a figure of speech that typically implies certain things.

> then it's possible to agree with his approach without being personally racist.

One can also be not racist and disagree with his China policies.

> Although those policies also reek of the simple minded thinking of racism - tariffs to keep out bad Chinese goods, don't care about Hong Kong because it's Chinese, blaming Chinese apps specifically rather than data collection in general

This is your personal interpretation.

> and they will all be long term strategic failures that miss the forest for the trees

This is a prediction of the future.

> He basically kneecapped the entire federal response, which we've been paying a large amount of taxes for, in favor of letting Covid spread unchecked.

This is suggestive that you posses highly accurate knowledge of the incredibly complex causation behind America's sub-optimal performance, and that there weren't many mistakes all over the place, as well as lacking acknowledgement of vast uncertainty involved, in general.

> He's the leader and his job is to lead everyone - the "both sides" argument doesn't hold water.

I've made no such argument.

> The standard politician thing would have simply been to defer to the experts and make sure he himself couldn't be blamed.

Perhaps. One might argue that he had an irrational/inappropriate response to fault being near-completely laid at his feet, and responded to that rashly. True causation of human behavior is incredibly complex.

> This culture is itself suboptimal, but would have produced much better results than what we got. Doing so would have also greatly benefited Trump, in that he would have gotten the wartime president boost rather than presiding over a needless disaster.

Agreed. Sometimes life sucks.

> If he were anything besides an empty suit, he would have wised up by now.

Perhaps, but this again speculates about the comprehensive nature of Donald Trump, as well as what optimum behavior is under the current circumstances.

I see where you're coming from - generally, your points are reasonable. Something for you to consider though, is the complexity involved in how people react to not just what is said, but how it is said. I very much do not like how you, or the media, or politicians describe reality. This would be an example of where I agree with one of your points: "This culture is itself suboptimal." I believe the style of politics and journalism we practice in the West is dishonest & misleading, irresponsible, and dangerous (but the danger in play is not properly realized, because Westerners seem to not like to think terribly deeply about things.....they like to "KISS").

I wonder if my general impression of the entire system, is similar to your impression of Donald Trump: ~a complete joke, no respect whatsoever. I can easily appreciate how people disrespect Trump, but I cannot appreciate when those same people respect the general state of politics in the US.

> I wonder if my general impression of the entire system, is similar to your impression of Donald Trump: ~a complete joke, no respect whatsoever. I can easily appreciate how people disrespect Trump, but I cannot appreciate when those same people respect the general state of politics in the US.

That's my general impression of the entire system too, but I still think Trump represents a radical departure from even that. The status quo serving entrenched bureaucracy ("deep state") had at least been performing basic non-partisan functions such as pandemic response. Disrupting that with no replacement waiting is a short path to a completely failed state.

If I were the type of libertarian that thought moving to the middle of nowhere represented the pinnacle of freedom, the thought might appeal to be. But IMO the true measure of freedom is how it scales with society, and collapses have a terrible track record for freedom.

> Disrupting that with no replacement waiting is a short path to a completely failed state.

This is one potential outcome, and in a banana republic I may even agree that it is the most likely outcome. But the USA is a lot more robust than it appears, and I feel highly certain that the (largely manufactured) polarization that we observe is actually quite shallow. My concern is that if we throw Trump out and elect yet another insider, we will immediately resume the former status quo...lip service towards the genuine problems in the world, and plenty of catering to powerful corporations and the military industrial complex (I have the feeling way are waaaaaaaaay overdue for an "existential threat" from some tinpot middle eastern dictator). And then before too long: War with China.

It's not a good choice, and it is risky, but I continue to believe that the chaos Trump sows acts as sand in the gears of the powerful, and exposes the media and other politicians for the propagandists they are. Most people seem to be still fully under their spell (many to immediately fall into another trap: conspiracy theory, which is fixable, being mostly a symptom), but many have woken up.

What's missing is, the people that have woken up don't know what to believe, or believe in. The West has no vision for the future, other than the same old bullshit story politicians of both sides of the aisle have been selling people for decades (as our military lays waste to 3rd world countries over completely manufactured pretenses, while the media runs cover for them). We need a new story, and it has to be at least fairly true, and plausible, and acknowledge the real barriers to achievement, rather than making up a whole bunch of fantasy land fake problems.

That's my take on it anyways.

This is interesting. I wish I were writing your comment. It seems like we're coming from a similar place but have much different read on the present situation - you're optimistic.

> I continue to believe that the chaos Trump sows acts as sand in the gears of the powerful

Arbitrary chaos tends to benefit the powerful, as they're able to take advantage of it. For example I had been hoping that the pandemic-induced economic slowdown would have unwound the debt treadmill by a bit. Instead the powerful just had the government print money to prop up asset prices. Meanwhile Main St continues to suffer.

> My concern is that if we throw Trump out and elect yet another insider, we will immediately resume the former status quo...lip service towards the genuine problems in the world, and plenty of catering to powerful corporations and the military industrial complex

From what I can tell, Trump has not stopped the sabre rattling and foreign military interventions. How are things better by not even paying lip service? Don't mistake upsetting specific individuals with upsetting the overall system.

> exposes the media and other politicians for the propagandists they are

He may call them for what they are, but his own reality distortion field prevents him from gaining any high ground. I had been working to keep an open mind on this, putting aside the media's complaints about Trump, and trying to see what he was actually doing (eg I appreciated when he scrapped the individual mandate). Covid itself was my breaking point, as it was an objective threat that he just rejected dealing with. I (still) agree the media is a giant propaganda operation, but in 2020, I listen to them over Trump.

> What's missing is, the people that have woken up don't know what to believe, or believe in. The West has no vision for the future, other than the same old bullshit story politicians of both sides of the aisle have been selling people for decades (as our military lays waste to 3rd world countries over completely manufactured pretenses, while the media runs cover for them). We need a new story, and it has to be at least fairly true, and plausible, and acknowledge the real barriers to achievement, rather than making up a whole bunch of fantasy land fake problems.

I agree with this in general. But IMO Trump looks like yet another conspiracy red herring rather than a productive path forward.

> Arbitrary chaos tends to benefit the powerful

It depends where they're positioned. If they're on solid footing, agreed. But if they're 100 feet up on a highwire with no safety net, not so secure.

> From what I can tell, Trump has not stopped the sabre rattling and foreign military interventions.

It's a subjective call, but the only sabre rattling I've heard much from is Trump. It's when the media starts acting in unison (like when Trump suggested pulling troops from the middle east), that's when my ears perk up.

> How are things better by not even paying lip service?

I believe Trump in all he does demonstrates how illusory our political system is, and how closely it is joined at the hip with the media. He's managed to get plenty of serious people to say very silly things, intentional or not, and I think a lot of people are starting to catch on that there is a curtain on the stage, and that there are in fact things going on behind that curtain. This is a stark contrast to Obama, who was an absolutely brilliant performer, like the David Blaine of politicians.

> He may call them for what they are, but his own reality distortion field prevents him from gaining any high ground....

Here I completely agree. Very often I cannot help wondering if he truly is as incompetent as people say, because sometimes it sure seems like it (covid, particularly opposing masks!!!??, the debates...all sorts of examples). At the very least, he is highly inconsistent. I imagine he is hyped up on amphetamines most of the time as well, which likely takes its toll some days, so perhaps that helps explain his truly incompetent days.

> But IMO Trump looks like yet another conspiracy red herring rather than a productive path forward.

Sometimes for a new forest to grow, you have to burn the old one down. Mother nature operates in mysterious ways.

But even if Trump can successfully derail the system, he is in no way a man with a vision for a new one that serves everyone's interests - "Make America Great Again" minus the bad stuff would be a huge improvement over now, but it is still fundamentally flawed, and I don't see a lot of people lined up with better stories.

Here's the president, leader of the conservative party, in his own words denouncing white supremacy, as covered a year ago by CBS https://youtu.be/DUdRS98R6B8

Ben Schapiro has literally written books about how terrible the alt-right is, yet he that is what he is frequently called.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page?

Not sure about data-driven but there's a clue in your name. The Proud Boys have denounced white supremacy.

What are you talking about? The Daily Caller is one of Facebook’s official fact checker partners: https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/facebooks-fact-c...

And the top performing content on Facebook is dominated by right wing media figures: https://mobile.twitter.com/FacebooksTop10

> The Daily Caller is one of Facebook’s official fact checker partners

That doesn't tell you how much they weight it compared to the others.

> And the top performing content on Facebook is dominated by right wing media figures

This is misleading for the same reason as Fox News being the most popular cable news network. There is only one right-leaning cable news network, whereas CNN and MSNBC split the left-leaning viewership even though together they're larger than Fox.

The same thing happens with links. Fox covers a story with their take, it gets N shares, CNN and MSNBC each cover the same story with their take and each get M/2 shares, and then Fox is at the top of the chart even if M > N.

The Facebook top 10 is dominated by a large set of right wing media figures, with it varying quite a bit which subset appears during any given period. Your splitting theory does not work.

The number of right wing media figures is smaller than the number of left wing media figures, which means they each get a larger proportion of their base. It's the same thing.

The conservative content that is popular on Facebook is not news, it’s people like Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, Mark Levine... and it’s not like there is a shortage of right wing media personalities.

You have to remember, a huge proportion of engagement on the Facebook Blue app are boomers and folks outside of large cities.

A simple way would be to stop all content from propagating beyond few thousand people before a human vetting it.

Vetting it would be hard. Most of it is opinion, slander etc. not so much factual. Even the quasi factual content can be spun any which way while remaining within the confines of 'technically correct'.

At what point does freedom of speech qualify the post?

Freedom of speech isn’t a right when it comes to a company deciding what can be posted on their site, right? So they could just have a policy where if they don’t know they don’t let it grow viral. Hell, even a limit of 5000 unique views on all posts probably won’t affect many people until the election is over.

I'm sure they'd like to, but the line between "vetting" and "endorsing" is extremely challenging to draw, and it's not good for anyone if Facebook bans spreading information that they don't as a company endorse.

Information or Lies?

Even Free speech protections in the constitution doesn't protect the right to yell fire in a theater.

>Information or Lies?

There are no absolutes. If you're willing to accept some false-positives, nearly everything can be categorized as a "lie".

This is how and why Stephen Colbert coined the term "truthiness".

That's false. First of all, if there's actually a fire it's fine. Second of all, if the speaker was under the actual belief there was a fire even if there wasn't actually a fire, it's fine. Only if the person yelling fire intended to cause panic would there be a case against the person. And proving this would be difficult in a court of law.

A lot of the "viral" content is started with a paid ad though.

A fair amount of misinformation and outright lies comes directly from the mouths of Trump (or other politicians) themselves.

> viral content from sketchy sources.

Many of those sources are seeded with promoted links, though. It's true that a lot of conspiracy nonsense is genuinely organic, but a LOT of it is not.

I think the 'too little too late' you mean is the American education system. If things like critical thinking, personal finance, ethics, philosophy were emphasized in K-12 you think it would play out this way. Heck Facebook might not even exist now, but sheep need their shepherds supposedly.

Or just a button for 'this is fake news' or some such. Once say 10 people click that they stop it spreading. Bit like the flagging system on HN.

> Once say 10 people click that they stop it spreading.

What will actually happen is that 10 people who do not share your political or societal views will flag that news item irrespective of its true or false status, and we're back to step one. That's why FB tried that "internal commissions of truth"-thingie (or whatever it's called), but obviously that cannot scale and, also obviously, they also have their own biases.

In which case it'd stop after say 30 shares which would reduce the spread of controversial stuff in general I figure.

i feel like slashdot was onto something a couple decades ago with metamoderation. the question is whether you can wrap the moderation decision enough times to get rid of the biases.

This is very exploitable, and would probably remove all mainstream reporting from the site (whereas the viral spam rubbish would just create more domains to evade the flags).

Button is way too simplistic. A form where you could state your proof along with other arguments why a news is untruthful or otherwise overly antagonizing would work better, but would be hard to evaluate by automatic means.

Maybe after a certain threshold have been reached and the complaints vetted by a human, you could start removing the news or even blocking the news site from being shared on Facebook. Most likely the system would be gamed to attempt to block major sites like CNN, but would work well for smaller, dubious sites that have no real other purpose than creating provoking news.

That would be just way too easy to game.

>Or just a button for 'this is fake news' or some such. Once say 10 people click that they stop it spreading. Bit like the flagging system on HN.

We are now in year 5, the second election cycle, and you think the solution is as easy as adding a flagging system?

It would be a start, I kept finding videos of how to make ‘Covid killing’ hand sanitizer on YouTube with incorrect dilution and there was no option to flag it as spreading dangerously false information in the review process.

The questions were just “is it hateful?” And “is it illegal” with no option for “demonstrably false and offering dangerous advice”.

I think that will just reinforce filter bubbles.

Anything from the "other side" (where "other" is relative to the initial reach of whoever posted it) is just gonna flop.

Yep but the way Facebook ads work is you can temporarily promote specific content to help it go viral more quickly.

> they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.

But _the precious engagement_!

Viral nonsense is, unfortunately, effectively Facebook's business model, so they're unlikely to do much about it.

This is very true.

> If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.

And then you see the complaints (including on HN) about how Facebook is biased.

I do note that they have recently banned all QAnon groups and posts, so that's a start.

> And then you see the complaints (including on HN) about how Facebook is biased.

They can block lies and disinformation unilaterally, it shouldn't just apply to one political party or the other.

"Don't let XXX News lie to you, I Just won the election!"

This kind of nonsense shouldn't be tolerated either way.

Personally... I think the whole model of "Viral" content is just absolutely broken. The kind of content it encourages is by nature inflammatory and often damaging.

>This kind of nonsense shouldn't be tolerated either way.

But it's the crux of the problem.

If you're a relatively low-information voter, how else are you supposed to know who won besides the politicians themselves or the media?

> they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.

Mainstream media outlets like the NYTimes or the Washington Post have become too one-sided (I think that if Trump were to say a common-sense thing like "the Earth is round" they'd certainly find something to argue about, like "it's not actually round, round! it's an ellipsoid! Trump is lying!"), at this point applying your (in other contexts) perfectly reasonable suggestion will only alienate half of the electorate.

The non-roundness of the Earth is a constant headache to cartographers, but the place which mandates errors is of course China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

(I believe they mostly end up being horizontal rather than vertical)

The problem that the Internet has exposed is that the average person is too susceptible to lies to be a useful contributor to republic-style electoral governance.

The problem with vetting is that it's unlikely to be done in an unbiased way. Facebook is a Silicon Valley company with a young staff that leans significantly to the left.

As a right-leaning individual this makes me uncomfortable because I know that staff aren't going to separate their politics from decision making surrounding vetting/choosing who gets to do the vetting. Here's a concrete example: Facebook staff, being left-leaning, do not view the "fine people hoax" as misinformation - their echo chamber wouldn't even bring it to their attention as something that could be misinformation, even though it is.

The only solution would be for a politically balanced workforce to be making these decisions, ideally a satellite office in a purple state/city with quotas for political leaning, set up only for the purposes of vetting. If we lived in a less polarized society, this wouldn't be an issue.

Would you feel comfortable if oil and gas workers who lean 80-90 percent Republican are "vetting" the information you're seeing (or are choosing who gets to do the vetting)?

As Naval says, you have a good system if you can hand the keys over to your opposition and things don't go wrong.

I'm curious what you consider the "hoax" in "very fine people hoax". Do you disagree with this analysis (linked below) which claims that the "only very fine non-white-nationalist people" Trump were either (a) at a different activity from the one Trump claimed they were doing, or (b) people who weren't there but Trump thought were there. That analysis puts Trump at best misinformed or confused, if not supportive of the white-nationalists

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/08/very-fine...

Go to the transcript it’s clear as day: https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trump...

> Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."

> Reporter: "George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same."

> Trump: "George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?"

> Reporter: "I do love Thomas Jefferson."

> Trump: "Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?

> "So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.

First, it’s crystal clear from the transcripts that he’s saying “I’m not talking about the neo-nazis and white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally.” Painting that as one of the “(a) or (b)” options is shamelessly deceitful.

So what does he mean? The city was renaming a park named after Robert E. Lee. Trump is making a totally reasonable point: not everyone protesting taking down a statute of Robert E. Lee is a white supremacist or a neo-nazi. And he’s point is actually prescient. The reporter says he loves Thomas Jefferson. Well, my high school is named after Thomas Jefferson, and just a few years later they’re trying to change the name of the school.

Is Trump wrong that there were people there who were just protesting the name change? Was literally everyone in that crowd a white supremacist or neo-nazi? Maybe but that would be odd. I grew up in Virginia. Lots of well meaning but maybe insensitive people lionize Robert E. Lee. Maybe they all stayed home that day. But it would be fair to guess they didn’t.

Regardless, whether or not those Robert E. Lee buffs were actually present has nothing to do with how to interpret Trump’s statement, because it’s unambiguous. Maybe his speculation was incorrect. So what? That doesn’t mean it’s fair to portray it as an “if not supportive of white nationalists” statement because it’s unambiguously not that.

If the headline was: “Trump incorrectly assumes that good people attended rally, but in reality everyone was a white supremacist” that would have been a good headline. Good commentary about how outdated it is to lionize Robert E. Lee. But instead the media went for an interpretation that was clearly not what Trump meant.

This is why TJ needs a better history curriculum. Support for confederate statues is not support for history or even support for Lee himself. The AHA even put out a statement to clarify since people don’t seem to ask historians what they think about the subject.

What is it support for and why do historians have special access to the internal motivations of contemporary protesters?

Historical documents are more evidence about the people who created them than the people described in the documents. It would be very poor historiography to use a book written about somebody as raw data about that person. This sort of thing is taught in intro college classes and makes it very clear that people who claim to be interested in defending history are not trained in the field and haven't actually made an effort to learn it. The conclusion then is that there is some other reason why they insist that said statues must remain up.

I agree with that today in 2020, but that’s not what I learned growing up in northern Virginia in the 1990s. I thought nothing of driving in Lee Highway, and didn’t know that all these monuments are created in the 1930s.

And that doesn’t even mean Trump’s assertion is even incorrect. Maybe the protesters had the same misconceptions about history as many people who grew up in a fairly liberal place in the 1990s. That actually supports Trump’s point that people who oppose taking down the statutes aren’t necessarily raving white supremacists.

Thus why I wish TJ had a better history curriculum. Its truly terrible that such a strong school is graduating people off two years of history, one of which is designed by the College Board.

Thinking nothing of the historical objects around us is not terrible. Most people are ignorant of most things, lord knows I am. A problem arises when people insist that defending confederate statues is protecting history, when if you went and asked the people who actually do history for a living they'd fairly universally disagree.

As for Unite the Right, I'd agree with you that there are people who want the statues to stay up and aren't white supremacists. However, it would not be possible to spend a few hours marching at Unite the Right and not notice the literal Nazi flags, the speakers giving speeches about whiteness, and the marchers shouting "gas the k--es, race war now". At that point, I'd expect an ignorant defender of confederate statues to think "wow, I've made a big mistake" and leave.

Historians are politically biased, with about 90 percent of them leaning left. See Jonathan Haidt for more information on political bias in the humanities. On such a politically charged issue they are not to be trusted and are a corrupted group of individuals. This is exactly why we need a politically balanced team to do any vetting on a platform like Facebook.

Also, to say that protesting in support of a Robert E Lee statue is not showing support for Lee is prima facie absurd.

The argument has nothing to do with political leaning and instead everything to do with how historians interact with primary sources. It is absolutely consistent with ordinary historiography to say that a statue of Lee is not a historical record of the man.

I do hope supporters will stop claiming they are defending history when they immediately turn around and declare that the thousands of professional historians around the country are all fools.

I'm sure that not literally everyone at a Nazi rally is actually a Nazi. But the Unite the Right rally and posters were full of actual Nazi symbols. There were enough Nazi and white power symbols that anyone marching there is either:

1. Anti white supremacist and Anti Nazi, but VERY dumb or very unobservant.

2. Anti white supremacist and Anti Nazi, but believe that saving a statue is worth marching in a rally on the same side as a large number of self professed Nazis.

3. A white supremist and/or Nazi.

This wasn't a case of a few white supremacist sneaking into an otherwise unrelated event. A large percentage of the crowd was chanting overtly racist slogans and flying overtly racist flags (even ignoring the confederate battle flags). No one there was confused about what was happening. None of the people marching on the Unite the Right side were "very fine people."

>I'm curious what you consider the "hoax" in "very fine people hoax".

The idea that the POTUS just called racists who ran over and killed a woman "fine people" is beyond reason.

A person with some objectivity can understand that Trump wasn't talking about white supremacists with his "fine people" statement. He was referring to there being "fine people on both sides" of the political spectrum, protesters and counter-protesters, at the protest. His point was that not all of those protesting the statue removal were white supremacists, some were "fine people". Of course, that's the story the left went with anyway, because Trump fumbled another one.

Trump started the interview by questioning the notion of the alt-right before pivoting to argue that the 'alt-left' started the violence and falsely claiming the counterprotestors didn't have permits, before adding his endorsement of the Robert E Lee statue cause. He pointedly hasn't taken a similar tack of emphasising the involvement of fine people as well as bad people with other protests involving some degree of violence, such as BLM. That's the context a person someone with some objectivity is putting it in, and it's difficult to argue with a straight face that there is no degree of truth to the media reporting it as Trump endorsing the march.

Because about ten seconds later in the same speech he says he unequivocally condemns white supremacists. But the media (and the democrats in their advertising) cuts off that part of the speech, leaving a false impression in people's minds. This alone is evidence that he wasn't calling white supremacists fine people.

Further, it was a large protest over a statue with thousands of people over a whole day, do you think there isn't one single non white supremact there protesting to keep it up? There's no evidence that Trump was referring to the tiki torch rally when he said fine people. He made the speech after the large protest and the terrorist attack, where by the law of large numbers there is inevitably going to be non-white supremacists attending to show support merely for the statue/history.

What specific people were both “very fine” and marching with Unite the Right? Trump said “both sides” so there must have been some good people on both sides. But I’ve seen their live-streams. The Unite the Right crowd was loudly and consistently shouting racial slurs and calling for racial violence. A very fine person would walk away upon hearing that.

If people honestly supported history they would have asked the historians. The AHA put out a clear statement that taking down statues is not destroying history.

There were lots of people protesting on that day in support of the statue that had nothing to do with the neo-nazis and white supremacists, in exactly the same way that there were lots of people protesting against the statue who were are not affiliated with antifa.

Those are the people that Trump was presumably referring to, given that he explicitly said he was not talking about white supremacists (whom he condemned totally in the exact same speech).

I would expect somebody who has "nothing to do with neo-nazis" to say "wow, I've made a huge mistake" and leave the first time they hear somebody they are marching next to shout "gas the k--es, race war now". Who specifically are these hypothetical good people?

Unlike you, I do believe that every counterprotestor was associated with antifa. It was an antifascist counterprotest. That is antifa.

Support for the Lee statue has never been seriously about history because the supporters of keeping it up never asked historians. I'm serious. UVA is an excellent history program. They could have asked the history faculty to decide. It wouldn't have gone in their favor.

I would also expect somebody to not march alongside neo-marxists and self-professed communists (antifa) with a history of violent extremism (according to the FBI director Wray) but there you go.

> Support for the Lee statue has never been seriously about history

This is irrelevant to the question of whether there were non-white supremacists in attendance. What matters as to people's motives is whether people think that it's about history, which many ordinary people do.

Then your conclusion should be that there were no fine people on either side, not that there were. If you truly believe that leftism is as evil as racial genocide then actually stand by that.

If ignorance leads you to provide ammunition for people who support racial genocide and you don’t leave once you notice the nazi flags flying at a march you attend... I really don’t know what to say.

I do believe that support for antifa (the violent political extremist group according to the FBI director) and support for communism (prevalent among self-described antifa) is as evil as support for fascism, yes. I am more concerned about communism actually because it has a veneer of respectability that makes it potentially more dangerous than fascism in the current climate, although I do believe that they're both evil. I am not talking about the Orwellian double speak that equates antifa the extremist group, with anti-fascism.

It's not my conclusion that there are no fine people on either side, I was simply outlining the absurdity of thinking that there were only fine people on one side, given the visible existence of political extremist groups on both sides that many protesters (on both sides) overlooked when they attended the protests in order to voice their political opinion about what should happen with the statue.

But he doesn't actually condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists! He makes the offhand comment that they should be condemned, but doesn't shut them down when he knows he has their ear.

It's the same with the Proud Boys comment at the debate. He tells them to stand by and stand down, then the next day says he doesn't know who they are. We all know he's lying - and most of all the Proud Boys, who see the wink and the nod behind the denial, which is just to get the lugenpresse off his back.

He didn't even know who the Proud Boys were during the debate. It's even disputable that they're white supremacists, their leader is Hispanic and they proclaim the superiority of western culture not the white race.

The next day Trump said something like "I don't know who they are, but I condemn them", you can't get more clear than that but of course this doesn't get coverage in the media.

Nevermind the numerous times prior where he has explicitly condemned white supremacy and even designated the KKK as a terrorist organization. It's all ignored in the left wing echo chamber.

It's not ignored – his claim not to know who they are made the news – it's just treated the same as most everything else that Trump says: facile and not based in reality, if not an outright lie.

It doesn't matter what he does or says. If he says nothing - apparently he condones it. If he says something condemning it, they pretend it's not genuine, ignore it and look at the other vague terms he uses as if they're dog-whistles condoning it. This tells me they've pre-decided their stance on him and will push that no matter what he says or does. You can't argue or reason with insanity.

What makes it worse is there are a lot of very smart, articulate and well-meaning people that are coming to the defense of such an incoherent point of view. They will verbally and with "facts" stomp down on anything but the most perfect of criticisms, essentially making criticism of any left-wing action next to impossible.

Yes, it is so simple. News should only come from approved sources. Once the veracity has been checked by a Facebook employee, it is then empirically true or false. I don't know why people in the 21st century cannot understand that all statements are true or false, and that we can place authority for determining truth with companies with known, trusted political allegiances.

For example, I have read a lot about healthcare-for-all not being free. The clue is in the name: "free" healthcare. I can't believe that misinformation, probably spread by insurance companies, has been allowed to spread. Facebook should put a stop to this.

Sarcasm lacking a “/s” sarcasm tag is risky. On deeply divided issues, where both sides demonize the other and is willing to think the worst of anyone at a drop of a hat, unmarked sarcasm is in effect asking to be knocked down.

Your assumption is that I care about some random person on the internet thinking "the worst". The point is to highlight that people on here actually have this attitude, and it isn't sarcasm. How many politicians are saying Facebook should be censoring other people (unsurprisingly: always their opponents)? How many people say social media is the problem? How many people say the "other side's" news is fake news and ignore the fake news they believe in? It isn't possible to have an actual opinion (I have offered them on here, and that gets downvoted too).

> Your assumption is that I care about some random person on the internet thinking "the worst". The point is to highlight that people on here actually have this attitude

If people are thinking the worst of you, you are failing to achieve your stated purpose, namely to highlight that other people hold these opinions.

If you are OK with people believing that you hold these opinions, then you are simply a troll.

Right. These harmful memes are rotting the minds of young voters. We need to have Facebook eliminate them.

Later when people send them via email, we'll need Google, Microsoft, and Apple make sure our email is vetted by their censors.

Then we'll need snail mail censors, and speech censors.

It's like people on HN can't even step back and really think about what they're saying.

Exactly. Glad to hear someone has understood. Eliminate all sources of untruth in society. Truth will prevail.

Yikes.

Simple solutions:

* Block all political ads all the time.

* Require all political parties, and their PACS, to register as a known Advertiser account within the system. Any time an ad runs, and regardless of the source, the associated party will be heavily penalized with a removal of their non-paid content.

There needs to be ramifications for their abuse of the platform. Being that Facebook can't charge them a fine, penalizing their organic exposure is the only thing that they can hold against them.

Multiple offenses will result in longer and longer periods of their content being "muted".

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but does this not potentially incentivise political organisations running their opposition's ads (it's probably feasible to do so in such a way that they don't really reach anyone) and then reporting the infractions and thereby getting their opposition punished?

These are "simple" solutions--i.e., not good ones.

Fair enough. What do you propose?

Can they not charge them a fine? Can't they put something in their terms that requires a monetary penalty as well as a "time-out"?

I love your solutions but I also worry that facebook wouldn't want to put them in place because of all the lost revenue, if you make the abuser pay for the lost revenue then all incentives seem aligned

Completely banning political ads puts incumbents at a huge advantage. Emerging challengers don't have nearly as much free organic distribution, so they need to buy ads to build momentum and expand their reach.

Even in the current US presidential election, Biden has 3.2 million Facebook followers while Trump 31.7mm on his personal page and 6.3mm on his presidential page.

Without paying for ads that extend your audience beyond your pre-existing followers, the incumbents will always have more reach for their messages.

Completely agree that we should be able to see the people responsible for running each of these ads though, with personal liability for the content that they're sharing.

Good point regarding the incumbents. This clearly isn't a simple problem to solve...some one will always lose.

Sadly, we cannot trust our political leaders to simply do the right thing. To the contrary, we need to have these types of discussions in an effort to govern the government. :(

You describe the system pretty much in place for decades in western european countries. The problem is, media companies have grown dependant on the easy 9figures in ad revenue they are all but guaranteed each election cycle. Take that election rev away and the 4th estate collapses.

Only if they wanted a fair balance, I think Facebook is just aiming to under advertise Conservatives. There is no secret that about 95% of all donations from Silicon Valley goes to Democrats. It won't take too long until the whole world is a mirror of California.

It's not quite 95% all around, here are the top ones with the percentage of all their employees' contributions to the Democrat party:

    Netflix           = 98%
    Nvidia            = 93%
    Adobe             = 93%
    IBM               = 90%
    Salesforce        = 89%
    Google            = 88%
    Microsoft         = 85%
    Apple             = 84%
    Paypal            = 84%
    Cisco             = 80%
    Amazon            = 77%
    Facebook          = 77%
    Intel             = 68%
    Broadcom          = 68%
    Oracle            = 67%
    Texas Instruments = 60%
    Qualcomm          = 50%

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-...

Still pretty bad, and makes one worry about where those employees are donating their non-political and non-tracked donations to.

Edit. Added source.

Surprising it’s the Dems in Congress that want to break up tech then. I guess money isn’t everything.

I thought it was more being driven/pushed by conservatives?

Edit. Wow, this conversation is seriously devolved when a simple question gets downvoted.

Those are employee contributions, in their capacity as private citizens, not contributions made by the company. Don't forget to count company PAC contributions, often made to both sides.

I didn't say they were made by the company, I said they were made by the employees of those companies. It's important as it speaks to the huge imbalance of democrat vs conservative individuals inside those companies.

And who at the companies are making decisions about policy? Employees.

.. not really? Most of the time policy is set from the top. Netflix isn't exactly a worker co-op.

Everybody contributes to a companies culture and that drives the people at the top too.

I would love if Facebook could simply remove all political ads. The problem then becomes what classifies as political ad. This can be very obvious (vote for president = political, buy cereal = not political), but it can also be far less obvious.

For example, would an ad for in support of an oil pipeline be considered a political ad? What if it's in support for an outcome of a referendum? Or an Ad for a charity? What if that charity is the EFF/ACLU in support of changing policies?

It's an extremely difficult problem to differentiate what is considered a political ad and what is not and I don't exactly trust Facebook to do so.

The thing is: it doesn't have to be perfect. If you already remove the ones that are obviously political ads, you already reduce the noise by a lot.

Some people's entire Facebook feed is political. Facebook knows that if you remove the political aspect from Facebook all those people will jump to Twitter or Reddit or whatever to get their daily 5 hours of politics.

everything can be made political, most things are political. humans are political animals. it's a great success of politicians who are gatekeeping non-politicians from making political statements (e.g. pressuring book authors to 'keep their political opinions to themselves' on twitter, etc.)

even weather can be made political, see sharpie-wielding POTUS making amends to NHC forecasts.

The same way the pandemic opened up the opportunity for remote work, I'd love to see Facebook _experiment_ with maybe 6 months of no political ads and see what emerges in its place.

I'd love to have the world experiment with no Facebook for 6 months and see what emerges in its place.

> Political ads will be banned indefinitely after polls close on Nov. 3...

Of course.

(googler, opinion is my own).

Google did the same thing: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/25/21456323/google-election-...

As there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week), the tech companies seem to be getting in-front of a potential problem to keep campaigns from drumming up any kind of fear about the election results after the polls are closed.

FWIW this misses the context that they'll already be banned 1 week before Nov 3. This just extends that ban beyond the election.

I predict they walk that back when they realize the huge market for post election day ads for steering the narrative of when to stop counting votes.

See 2000 for a great example.

They were already going to be banned temporarily from 27th of October[0], this is just now a permanent ban.

[0]: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/167836590566506?id=28...

What's the reason not to ban them immediately?

That would significantly advantage incumbents and unfairly change the rules of the game in the 9th inning.

Rhymes with "revenue". 2016 I made a large (for me) investment into FB certain that the revenue would appear, and it worked out quite handsomely. I can't stomach it this time.

$$$

Really? For a few last months of revenue versus potentially stopping an election result from being bought?

It's Facebook you're talking about. I'm not sure why you'd think they would make the right choice instead of chasing $.

Do you think they favour a fair election over $$$? Do you think there is anything they favour over $$$ at this point?

I suspect the lead-up to an election is like the Christmas season for political advertisers. So, it's hard to look at it as "few months of revenue" when in fact it might count for the majority.

Right. It's either already decided and no money left to be had or not yet decided and the majority of the money is yet to be captured.

The mistake here is thinking that (generally speaking) allowing questionable behavior is a "whole of Facebook" decision.

Instead there is some VP in charge of "ad sales for mid-West US" who looks at their target numbers for a bonus, looks at the ~$100M+ spending planned by the campaigns in that area in the next month[1] and goes "I don't want to sell an election but it is and important free speech issue that campaigns are allowed to get their message across".

Stopping that is a decision that has to be made at the top, by one person who then needs to argue against a lot of people whose financial interest is in the opposite direction.

[1] https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/electio...

It violates the principle of free speech (even if it does not violate the letter of the law in the first amendment). There is nothing inherently bad about paying $1000 (or $1M) for a political ad.

For a mental image, someone paying for a political ad could be running for school board in a medium sized city. A ban on all political ads would restrict that person's ability to explain why they want to be on the school board, and would restrict that person's ability to advocate for new policies in their school district. Why do you want to impose a ban on this?

Facebook is not committed to the principle of free speech in advertising, and prohibits advertisements for a great many things that are legal to advertise.

Whether or not FB has this commitment right now, they should have this commitment. A ban on political ads would go against a hypothetical commitment to the principle of free speech.

Every large advertising platform I can think of has rules about what they will accept that are narrower than what the laws that apply to them require. For example, it's generally legal in the US to advertise firearms, but most large advertising platforms refuse ads for them.

Again, I’m describing a goal. You are describing the status quo. The existence of a bad status quo doesn’t negate what the goal should be.

In my view, the goal of FB should be to allow for free speech, especially in the context of politics.

If Facebook was a simple publishing platform the way it was in its early days, I'd be inclined to agree. The same goes for an ad network with only broad targeting capabilities, e.g. that the viewer is likely an adult in a particular candidate's district.

Restricting political advertising using Facebook's hyper-targeted advertising platform strikes me as a responsible decision. I'm not sure there is a bright line between persuasion and manipulation, but if Facebook is trying to prevent the latter, that's more ethical behavior than I expected from them.

Note that limiting hyper targeting is very different from banning all political ads, as GP was suggesting, and as Twitter has done (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/technology/twitter-politi...). Even then, I don't think it's a good approach. I'd observe that you can do hyper targeting via snail mail, door-to-door campaigning, phone calls, and SMS. Also, this is still a type of policy that assumes people need to be shielded from speech, and that they aren't able to make good decisions without guidance from FB moderators.

Personally, I think disclosure is the best policy. For example, make it easy to find all the ads a particular politician or group has posted. FB has already implemented a many things in that area.

What about freedom to not do work on behalf of someone else? Is my work not my speech?

I don't buy that argument, which just rewards whoever has the most money to throw at the advertising market (Bloomberg's signal failure in this regard doesn't invalidate the general problem). I like the clearly labeled and non-sensationalistic statements in voter information booklets, myself.

I am of course speaking in general terms about future elections rather than making drastic adjustments in the middle of this one.

If you ban advertisements on Facebook, you end up favoring people with pre-existing set of followers. Typically this will be an incumbent, or perhaps celebrity candidates.

Moreover, FB banning political ads doesn't end the advantage of having more money. It just channels that money somewhere else (TV ads, hiring door-to-door campaigners).

How can you say that banning FB ads similtaneous muzzles free speech (in your other comment) and also has no quantitative impact on speech?

It certainly muzzles speech. It is likely to lessen the advantage of money in politics, but does not eliminate it entirely.

I don’t believe eliminating the influence of money from politics is a desirable or achievable goal. If you do think it is desirable and achievable, then a ban on FB ads makes sense, but you should also presumably advocate for a ban on TV ads, newspaper ads, paid campaign events, paid campaign staff, and so on.

Something about stable doors and horses.

I came across this article today and actually thought it as true for a couple minutes.

https://babylonbee.com/news/facebook-will-now-add-warnings-t...

I just found that telling on how bad the current state of affairs has gotten.

Babylon Bee is satire, like The Onion but with a right wing bias.

Edit: If you're going to downvote please explain why. What I said is factually correct.

OP implies that it's satire. So the only information you wanted to add is the right wing nature of the website (which has nothing to do with the article posted or OP's commentary).

Anyways (unlike reddit) we also don't ask why were we downvoted here, take it and move on. Generally down votes here come in when you add unnecessary 'color' to the conversation. Like you bring up an unrelated issue to the conversation to make it go towards the flame wars.

Its factually correct that a certain filesystem's developer went to jail for killing their spouse, but if someone keeps bringing it up on any discussion on filesystems and it results in a flamewar every single time then HN audience will downvote you.

Reasons:

1. The person appears to know it's satire already. 2. What difference does it make that it has a "right wing" bias? 3. To me it looks like it's just dismissing the commentary by OP because it includes a link to a "right-wing bias" source.

4. This is precisely what's wrong with any sort of social-media policing by government or private entities. Your post is factually correct. But just as in-person conversations have non-verbal communication, likewise text has it's own subtle and implied meanings that it conveys.

Whenever I read about the potential harms of social media or targeted ads I think of the imagery from Snow Crash describing our retinas as the only exposed part of our brain, offering a direct neural interface for good or for ill.

A truely brilliant book that I too think back to regularly.

Here is how facebook can solve this issue.

By default, each user (including news outlets) should have an area of influence analogous to a square kilometer of travel. This means that any post or share is only ever seen by a dozen people or so.

Now, the hard part comes in how you design an algorithm that reinforces community building behavior. Essentially, every troll in the world should start shadow-banned with no way to work their way to a larger audience without years of community building comments (kindness, engagement, supportive, etc.).

This would also mean that FB would have to enforce geotagging of comments, so that operatives in other countries couldn’t be a large part of the hidden political discussion in another country.

Facebook already does something similar to this. Newer accounts have less reach.

That said, thank you for giving an actual constructive, concrete suggestion. Most people persist with vague criticisms like Senator Warren here - https://mobile.twitter.com/ewarren/status/131397864151728947...

Profiteer off of unlimited Super PAC spending all year until 3 weeks before the election?

They really think we’re dumb.

The only thing Facebook can do right is to shut the ad and social graph down and deal with private shareholder lawsuits till the end of time.

We have a serious misinformation problem. It started with Fox News decades ago, and now it’s amplified by Facebook. It’s too easy for bad info and conspiracy theories to proliferate, and good info to be downplayed, before the truth rises to the top. Most voters aren’t getting the full picture and the media sources they consume aren’t integrating evidence well.

Retractions and corrections are usually buried deeper than the original erroneous statement.

I just wish they would get out of politics altogether.

What if they made all social media read-only for a day or two preceding the election? Analogous to radio silence. Then it would be impossible for anyone to post misinformation about where to vote or other things that are designed to change the result of an election.

I imagine that would be hugely disruptive to people’s lives, given how central social media is these days.

Besides, you’d presumably only do this to US users. So if someone wanted to spread some piece of viral misinformation they’d just post it under a non-US user and promote it.

Honestly, I've been quite shocked over the last 5 years or so at Zuck's take on political and politically adjacent politics. I get that they're of the "money at any cost" ethic, but a lot of decisions (or lack thereof) have been downright imprudent.

These last minute decisions are likely reactive to something, whether or not it's actually reactive to the debate comment that this writer thinks triggered it. My (uneducated) guess is that its more related to stuff happening on the platform itself.

In any case, the creepiness of fb just keeps rising. Maybe they'll end up exploding the whole thing.

"These last minute decisions are likely reactive to something"

The House "Facebook and others have monopoly power, are abusing it, and should be split up" report, perhaps.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/house-amazon-fac...

> In any case, the creepiness of fb just keeps rising. Maybe they'll end up exploding the whole thing.

Somehow, I doubt it. They’ve established themselves as a major tech stock, largely through the “money at all costs” ethic you describe above, they have billions of users that derive significant amounts of self-worth from the platform, and a world-class marketing arm to keep reminding us how much good they’re doing for the world.

Barring some major fraud scandal, I don’t think the market would be interested in moving away from them at all.

> These last minute decisions are likely reactive to something

Yes, reacting to Trump having a 16 point lag just a month before election day, so now Facebook is strategically aligning itself more on the side of the likely winner, which is increasingly talking about regulating FB.

If the polls were tied, I am certain this would not happen.

The challenge for all of the platforms to exit "political advertising" is the same as exiting "selling likes/follows", if they don't do it directly then 3rd party operators will enter midstream and broker it connecting people with political (or other content) to a network of bot/fake/paid posting accounts who then go promote and spread the content.

By keeping advertising on the platform it actually allows better control and enforcement than pushing it to dark web markets.

The tech players don't want to be regulated like broadcast networks are so they've created this mess by lobbying against regulation. Some level of "FCC" (I use quotes as maybe it should be a different agency online) regulation as we have with broadcast ads could make this all much better.

FCC broadcast guidelines: https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/statutes-and-rules-candidat...

From the post about the potential for upcoming anti-trust actions against Big Tech earlier this week[1]:

“One thing that occurred to me is the potential that Democrats could be using the threat of anti trust actions to pressure the tech companies to be more proactive, re: misinformation prior to the elections. Guess we will know if they make any significant policy changes over the next week or two.”

Now I guess we will see if Google and the rest to make any announcements :-).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24697860

I wish they'd also de-emphasize the ugly political memes that are constantly forwarded by some addicted folks.

I used to unfollow them, but recently found that if I blocked their sources instead it was more effective because I could still hear from them when they post themselves.

I just don't see any use for this content, it is 99% garbage.

Am I missing something or has a controversy been created out of nearly thin air by random politicized factors here? Facebook may be a gigantic media company with a whole social component, but it's still in many ways (especially in terms of advertising) mostly another media company with lots of eyeballs, fundamentally like so many media companies that have existed for a very long time.

Since political ads have been a part of media placement since (a very damn long time ago), what justification beyond hand wavey "it's a social danger" arguments can some of you favoring this state for such a ban or the feeling of having to pursue it?

It almost seems as if this only started being a supposed problem since the unpopular-among-educated-liberal-types Trump won an election. Prior to that I recall much less mention of anyone worrying too much about political ads on social media (my memory might be faulty on that though). So, is it a general thing or are we talking about many people now thinking there's a problem mainly because someone they happen to dislike took advantage of social media to win a major election?

Also worth noting:

1. Much of the really rabid fake news type content on platforms like Facebook doesn't even come from paid in-platform ads. It's sourced and virally spread from people (or fake accounts in many cases) posting it more or less organically, albeit in a highly coordinated way sometimes.

2. The whole argument of Russia supposedly using Facebook to "influence" the 2016 election has yet to be in any way credibly substantiated and has gone nowhere so far. Or does anyone have a piece of concrete evidence arguing the opposite to put forth?

The answer here is to pull politics out into a separate app, made by FB or someone else

Big tech is doing everything in their power to make Biden win this election, yet he'll still lose.

Precisely. Anyone denying this is kidding themselves.

Nationalize Facebook.

If Facebook were nationalized, it would have to adhere to the constitution, including the first amendment right to free speech. So if it was run constitutionally Facebook would be even less restricted than it is now.

However I don't think that Facebook would be run constitutionally if it were government owned. It would be run as a propaganda outlet and a way to spy on people all over the world.

Right now Facebook's motives are just money. If Facebook were government owned its motives would become more complex and dangerous. It would want to make the American government look good. It would want to elect corrupt politicians who promised behind closed doors to increase Facebook's funding.

If that were to happen, then banning political ads would violate the First Amendment.

No, split it up in 50 BabyBell-Facebooks.

The rot is already set and hardened. Just as MySpace user freedomed their way to a tacky, spastic shitshow, FB has dwindled down to rabid, death cult, Fox Zombie boomers screaming at clouds.

WTF are they doing w/ Insta and WA monetization? Anyone know the rev breakdowns (thx, too lazy to look through the quarterlies)

This is ironic. The west blames China for censorship while today they support their own. China truly has vision banning facebook from.the beginning

It's only censorship if the government does it. If Facebook runs editorial on any of it's content, it simply follows the same process private (and/or) foreign media companies have done since 1776.

No, it's censorship no matter who does it. It's only illegal if the government does it.

I really hope Facebook can not interfere in the elections. If they can do that, it would be a serious cause for concern.

But how would they do that? Send a zombie code to the brains of its users? Hack into voting machines?

That article makes little sense, imo.

You know, there's only one thing that bothers me more than political organisers spreading fear and misinformation through social networks.

And that's social networks becoming "Ministries of Truth", deciding for themselves what information is fit to be shared with the masses, and what must be suppressed.

I mean, all the evidence we've seen over the years suggests that Facebook is in no way, shape, or form trustworthy.

I'm bothered that there seems to be a vocal subset on HN who say that freedom of speech doesn't apply to these platforms.

You know that Facebook is private and can do whatever they please as far as content goes, right? Use a different platform if it bothers you so - free markets!

It doesn't matter what anyone says on here, free speech doesn't apply to private platforms. If it did then they'd be full of spam.

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