Upcoming Restriction Period for US ads about social issues, elections, politics | Hacker News Reader

Upcoming Restriction Period for US ads about social issues, elections, politics

developers.facebook.com

47 pointsmikece62 comments

Note that the restriction period is not a ban on all ads, it's a period during which new ads will not be approved. From the article (emphasis mine):

>We will not allow any new ads about social issues, elections or politics in the US from 12:01 AM PT on Tuesday, November 1, 2022 through 11:59 PM PT on Tuesday, November 8, 2022.

>In order to run ads about social issues, elections or politics in the US during the restriction period, the ads must be created with a valid disclaimer and have delivered an impression prior to 12:01 AM PT on Tuesday, November 1, 2022, but with limited editing capabilities.

They need to ban political ads, period. For good.

Toss in pharmaceuticals while we're at it. Both are purchases that individuals should research from trusted sources, not "ask their doctor about" or decide based on gut instinct. I don't think it's OK to let Pepsi and Coke sink their mental manipulation hooks into your brain... let alone political candidates and drugs.

The US and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow pharma ads.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/medications/do-not-get-sold-o...

For prescription drugs.

We have drug ads in Canada, too.

Hey man, I didn't know I had restless leg syndrome until they told me I did in the commercial. My left eye twitches now but at least my legs don't shake when I sleep.

who knew that had a name! i always just called that Jimmy Legs

What constitutes a political ad?

I think "Does it mention or show a politian or political party?" is a reasonable first pass, with room to add additional restrictions as people find loopholes.

"Go to youtube and watch <influencer> NOW, your way of life depends on this upcoming vote!"

<influencer> on youtube: ...vote <politician>!

I'm not sure this answers the question because it fails to define what "political" means.

In this narrow definition, a politician is a person holding or running for elected office, and a political party is a specifically registered organization that is formed with the express intent of organizing voters and politicians, such that the voters vote for the politicians. There's a list on Wikipedia [1].

Of course, this narrow definition leaves out a lot of political issue ads that don't mention candidates or political parties by name, but are still very much political. Things like "support / oppose access to guns / abortion / health care / immigration / education / clean water / fair elections / military service / communication / electricity / there's a lot of other stuff" are quite often political ads without necessarily being tied to any particular candidate or party.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_t...

Context: This is within one week of an election. It's a bit clearer in that context. If it says "vote for X" or "X is a horrible person/candidate/waste of matter", then it's political. Ditto if it says that about ballot initiative Y.

Within this context, if it says "the federal reserve eats frozen puppies", it's likely not political. Ditto if it says "embargo country X for reason Y".

It can still be grey. If candidate X runs on position Y, and an ad is about position Y without ever mentioning candidate X, it's probably still political.

But all in all, it's about the election, not politics in general, and so it's a lot more clear. Not perfectly clear, no, but it's more clear than politics in general.

What constitutes a "political" add?

"Hi, my name is Total Liar and I'm running for Useless Government Position. I'm going to lie to you about what I'm going to do and instead line my pockets, sell my book, and appear on your favorite hate-cast about people you disagree with! Don't forget to donate so we can DOMINATE the <libs|GQP>!"

Say I want to advertise my new documentary on climate change, should that be banned?

This is a bizarre non-sequitor "what aboutism" that I feel is stolen from some pundit

----- Edit: Same thing with the "But what is politics??" comment duplicated twice below

I don't get why you think this is anything other than a very obvious and genuine question that hasn't been answered.

Someone said "ban political ads", and I don't know what that means. Does it mean banning any ad that references a politician or political party? Any ad that references an explicitly political issue? Any controversial issue that's currently a hot political topic?

I want to know what people's views are on this, which is why I asked.

This isn't whataboutism; it's not trying to deflect from the original. It's a very valid claim. When science (or insert topic X here) is politicized and political ads are banned, then are stories about science (insert topic X here) also banned?

It's impossible to define what is a political ad that satisfies, say, 75% of the populace.

I'd say political speech is a very important category of free speech.

Free speech is only in reference to government restrictions not private platforms

This comes up in every such discussion. The legalities of free speech apply only to government restriction, true. But the concept and ideals of free speech are something that a private platform can support and promote, or suppress and bury.

We need a concept to distinguish these for speech, like for software. Something like "Free as in legal" vs "Free as in voice".

Ads are not speech.

Electing not to host political advertisements on a private platform is not a free speech issue.

It is when it’s a general purpose ad platform. It’s just not a First Amendment issue. Free speech isn’t just a synonym for a law that protects it from the government.

There's no way to define "political ad".

Anything can be a political ad, whether it says so overtly or not.

That ends up meaning subjective reviewers looking at things an just deciding they think something's "real" purpose in political, and failing to identify others that actually are.

They need to ban ads, period. For good.

That also has the effect of locking in incumbent people and parties. No political ads means it's even less possible to get new candidates before lots of eyeballs.

And they again subtly condition everyone to think that political advertising works and you certainly shouldn't stop spending on it or even question the usefulness thereof.

>condition everyone to think that political advertising works

Political advertising _works_. Regular advertising _works_. You are not immune to propaganda.

That's a bit complicated. The most basic thing is awareness, and advertising definitely does what you'd expect there. If your problem is that nobody knows who "nemothekid" is then you're not going to get many votes, and advertising "nemothekid" helps with that.

But it gets murky pretty quickly after that, an advert which tells people "nemothekid" is a straight shooting maverick, a fresh face with plenty of experience, who is laser focused across a broad range - vote nemothekid, that's nemo-the-kid - well that might work fine even though that's self-contradictory nonsense. Because it put your name in a voters head.

After reading all that I'm pretty convinced to vote nemothekid, just from sheer repetition

Any time I hear a political ad, it makes me think of the spoof ones in Vampire Bloodlines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ovLsFhd-EM

Sure, it just depends on what your goal is and what your budget is. If you have millions of dollars and want to give a candidate a boost, you can definitely do so. Ads that feature the candidates name will increase voter familiarity, which will increase votes. Even with the new rules in place, you can probably still achieve similar ends by running 'get the vote out' ads only in areas where your candidate's likely voters live.

But this doesn't mean FB ads work for everyone. Most companies don't have millions of dollars to spend on raising awareness, because mere awareness doesn't translate into purchases in the same way it translates into votes.

How well does political advertising work? During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Clinton spent about twice as much on advertising as Trump did. How many Electoral College votes did that change in the end? Advertising may work to an extent, and large campaigns need to do at least some, but it seems to quickly get into an area of diminishing returns.

It's not a linear function of raw ad spend dollars, as there's a huge amount of different ways you can spend an advertising dollar. Trump ran a very smart advertising playbook, because he had some serious manipulation experts on his team. Hilary ran a terrible terrible campaign strategy because she was sure, like many people, that it was in the bag, and she basically felt entitled to the position and didn't really think she had to earn it. They spent that money because that's the point of political contributions. That's why even Ted Cruise, who will probably never be voted out, still spends a majority of his time phone banking and getting campaign contributions.

The campaign contribution network is the whole point. That's where most of the lobbying comes from.

>Hilary ran a terrible terrible campaign strategy because she was sure, like many people, that it was in the bag, and she basically felt entitled to the position and didn't really think she had to earn it.

She still literally got millions more votes than Trump did, and the end result was almost a 50/50 split between them. That isn't the result of a terrible terrible campaign strategy, but bad tactics vis a vis the votes that actually mattered, and bad PR from the DNC leaks. Still hardly a slap in the face from the electorate.

Trump got most of his ads for free - news companies letting him call in and say anything unquestionned for as long as he liked

Yes, if you spend your money unwisely, you may not see results. That isn't specific to advertising. Movie studios regularly spend $200-300MM on movie budgets that go nowhere, and some that return over a billion dollars. Effectiveness isn't linear with budget.

Should be easy to prove that, then.

Before people post platitudes about Meta and censorship, know that this is in line with what many democracies around the world do in with media blackouts a few days before elections. It has generally worked out pretty well actually feels like balanced policy.

It could be a balanced policy, but what they will do is the same thing they always do -- consider posts of positions they approve of as "news" and everything else as prohibited "politics", therefore making a massive contribution-in-kind to their political party

This is just about paid ads AFAIK.

As a former resident of a US swing state, it certainly didn't seem like that was the case. The day before election day, just about every other TV ad was for a politician.

Did they have media blackouts? Where I live they do and I think it helps to chill down the discourse and garbage scandals.

I don't think the US does this, most other democracies do though. I think the same goes for ads for pharmaceuticals. Banned everywhere except US and New Zealand I think?(heavily regulated there though)

The US for the most part has an insane amount of leeway for political advertising. They are explicitly exempt from anti-cold calling laws for example.

Do they classify "boosted" posts as ads? They mention restricting boosting advertisements, but isn't there a separate thing where you can pay to "boost" anything?

Not just boosted posts but astroturfed ads as well. If Kim Kardashian shares a story about some senatorial candidate punting puppies (that she was paid under the table for), then will that be punished as well? I fear that Facebook is just moving the problem from paid ads to astroturfed ads.

No, this is only for ads that Meta/Facebook is selling themselves, not for content posted by end users.

Oh cool, now Meta can fish for any and all pending ads for attack vectors and somehow get it leaked to their opponents.

Well done, Facebook. Well done, Meta.

plz restrict all ads

why are my social interactions susceptible to advertisements?

because you socialize on someone else's property? It's not really any different than going to a bar with 10 different channels playing on TVs showing various sports events that have ads running.

With the way Facebook mixes ads with content, a more apt description would be "It's not really any different than going to a bar with 90% of the people present actually being paid actors there to promote something"

No one would go to that bar. The one cigarette rep at a busy bar of over 50 people is annoying enough...

Anecdotally, that sounds about right. However, FB claims to have ~2.9 billion monthly active users, and countries like the UK and India have significantly more active users than in the US or Canada, so your experience on FB is largely dependent on how active your network actually is.

Not to beat the bar analogy further to death than it already is, but the last bar I went to had TVs on every wall... no matter where you looked or who you were looking at, there was a TV within your peripheral vision just waiting to display a flashy ad that would draw your attention.

In any case, I hate the social experience at bars and on FB equally, so I generally choose to socialize elsewhere, and don't have to deal with the ads either way.

I just go to bars that don't have TVs. Gay bars in SF, especially "bear bars" don't tend to have 24/7 content streams running.

They're not. To test this, go hangout with your friends in a park or someone's backyard or basement or wherever.

Social platforms are by definition, advertising companies. Of course they'll show ads, that's what their business model is. Just like if you go to a bar they will show you all of the alcohol you can buy.

A social network suppressing discussion of "social" issues reminds me of that scene in Dr Strangelove: "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

this is just paid advertisements though, there's no discussion suppression

You should see how much money BigTech is earning being paid to spread disinformation during Brazil elections.

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