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Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

The funniest part:

> But the Liberal government’s decision does not extend to the party. Liberal Party of Canada spokesperson Parker Lund said in a statement that the party would continue to advertise on Meta-owned platforms. According to the company’s ad library, the party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month.

So: we would not deal with FB because it's evil, unless of course it could help us personally to win the elections, in which case of course we'll deal with them. Taxpayer money is another business, this is what you use for posturing.

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Honestly, it's pretty reasonable. This is what it looks like when you really treat your party as separate from governance. They are not using public funds for their advertising.

Contrast this with the last Conservative government, which made all of its publicly funded announcements from "The Harper Government" instead of "The Government of Canada."

https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2012/06/harper-governm...

The point is not public funds. The point is, in public they behave like FB is so horrible no reasonable person can use their services, but when it comes to using the services not for public benefit, but for their personal benefit, turn out FB is not so bad after all. Evidently, using FB is beneficial for them. They are OK with benefitting themselves, but withhold same benefits from the public in the name of political posturing.

Yep. If they believe these platforms are cost-effective ways to advertise, then actually choosing not to use them for public funded advertising would be an abuse of public funds, unless they can explain how it is different, which I'm sure they can't.

Right. For better or worse, Meta currently gives cost-effective targeted advertising. Would be interesting to see a graph over time of Canadian govt advertising spend, split by channel (newspaper, TV, radio, online social media, email) and by outlet. I imagine OSM (and email) have cannibalized the older channels.

Political parties work quite a bit differently in Canada. The party structure, the part that purchases ads and such, is not the government. They can have opposing goals. One is governing, the other is trying to get elected. That's how we like it.

Canada actually used to give federal funds to all political parties, including opposition parties, as long as they reached a certain level of votes in the last election. This leveled the playing field for campaign money. Again the last Conservative government got rid of this to try to starve the other parties, another example of what happens when this division is not maintained properly.

It real interesting the Venn diagram of vocal opponents of the Trudeau government and those silent about or in support of the Harper government....

Almost like is has nothing to do with what's right or just and everything to do with them angry about not having authority....

O noes, politicians being hypocrites!

I was driving thought Ontario today, I kept thinking that it was posturing as well. It’s pulling ads from the official government body, it represent maybe 1% of Meta activity in that country.

Weirdly enough the news was in loop on radio but nobody mentioned what Meta had to say. No empty statement saying it’s for the greater good.

I wonder what $15,000/month means for FB, and how much revenue FB lost from the federal government. My guess is not much, ane FB doesn't care.

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