Meta to stop running political ads on Facebook and Instagram in the EU | Hacker News Reader

Meta to stop running political ads on Facebook and Instagram in the EU

euractiv.com

96 pointsaquir53 comments

Wondering about the consequences to the Hungarian government, which is by far the largest spender on Meta political advertisement in the EU (yes, bigger than Germany or the EU Parliament itself). I only have last year's data (per capita), since then the spending grew significantly.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/BFvCl/2/

Hopefully will reduce the right-wing propaganda and Orbán’s stranglehold on the country. He’s been a big maker in the authoritarian playbooks being used across the world now

IIRC, I saw some reporting that Hungary was spending (far) more on ads targeting other European countries and those elections, than on ads targeting their own.

In other words, an instigator, agent, and/or vehicle for right wing propaganda Europe-wide.

I've seen so many ads by the HU government and associated entities on YouTube I think they must be in the top 3 there too.

I hope this change also covers government-affiliated entities like Megafon, CÖF etc.

Now I must wonder how come I never see any kind of political ads on Facebook...???

Facebook allows targeting specific groups of people, you don't belong to one that anyone wanted to show political ads to.

I don't know if I would want government advertising, but I find this interesting as most of the advertising I get is weird food related ads and so on.

I don't want to buy your meat sticks people, or your 5G blocking beanie ...

I see plenty of unsolicited posts on my Facebook feed that are very political, except they aren't ads. I always just block whatever page posted it, but what's the point of blocking political ads if these posts still make it through the standard viral distribution channels?

Nothing of value was lost, not even Metas shareprice.

I think that’s very good news. Political ads should never have been a thing in the first place.

Who knew a social network founded by a goofy, rebellious nerd that used to have "Random Play" as a relationship status would have such an affect in our world.

What a time to live in...

This is funny because EU commission and parliament are among the largest advertisers on fb. I don't know if it counts as political ads

Just me but I've often round the EU commission advertisements more about being informative than trying to sway an opinion in favour of any political party.

Best news of the day!

I think this is a good move. EU has been passing some good regulations to combat internet enshittification.

The best, most successful political ads in social networks are not paid.

Of course. Literally every time I search anything in my native language on incognito youtube or a fresh instagram, I immediately get suggested propaganda videos from the local far-right party. Who needs ads when you've got The Algorithm on your side?

The Algorithm is present here to, there are dedicated down-voting accounts, many of which are far-right and apparently well funded... They monitor for comments that don't fit their propaganda and down-vote them - no argument, no explanation, no interaction. It was done to your comment too, so I had to intervene.

Hopefully a future step is enforcing airwave time limits/parity as is done in traditional media, for the countries that have such rules.

How this can be done is another question, not just from a technical standpoint...

Last time I signed up for a twitter account I was IMMEDIATELY followed by a handful of accounts. I'm not sure how. Two even seemed to try to pretend to be from my local town, albeit awkwardly. They had a lot of normal-ish posts.

Then after a bit their posts turned pretty dark / lots of allusions to "new people in town". I was curious so I checked out their profile, one described themself as "a former libtard who saw the light". Those profiles pretty much went down the path you'd expect after a while.

I read about this kind of tactics. Same with Facebook groups - knitting, cooking, history: they start by gathering a mass of normal fans, then slowly turn to the original aim of spreading propaganda. And in this case it was all pro-russian anti-war good-old-communist-times garbage.

My neighbor was a part of a facebook mom's group that went that way. It was a normal group, all the discussion you'd expect, but then the person running the group pretty much took the wheel and turned it hard to the right and even tried testing the locals for their loyalty and etc. Expelling anyone even wondering what was going on and so on. It was wild.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

> Meta to stop running political ads on Facebook and Instagram in the EU

For how many femtoseconds ? /s

> blames ... regulation ... political ads transparency rules

Blame is a fun word to use. Poor Meta lawyers, need to do some work before accepting money to spread propaganda.

It is not just propaganda. Its also normal political parties that try to reach out to voters to inform them of their politics.

Bingo; and one side's legitimate outreach appears to the other side to be blatant propaganda. Paid or unpaid. That's the normal nature of democracy; it's a contact sport.

It's better if people see all messages with proper attribution rather than an intermediary deciding what's allowed and what is not.

Incidentally, in the US at least, the old fashioned TV networks are require to offer all political candidates the same, lowest, media rates. PACs and outside money pay market rates.

> It's better if people see all messages with proper attribution

We’re talking about targeted ads on social media.

No one sees the same political ads. Everyone sees a customized version of whatever lie they want to tell you. Get that shit out of the shadows and out in the public where everyone can see who says what. They shouldn’t be whispering what they want in everyone’s ears.

This is the problem. When political messages are out in the open where everyone can see and challenge them it’s healthy.

When it’s whispers tailored to individuals playing on their hopes and fears…

Paid political are a problem no matter what, because one shouldn't need half a billion dollar in ad budget before starting a campaign otherwise you end up in an oligarchy real quick.

>Paid or unpaid. That's the normal nature of democracy;

It isn't in Europe. Most European countries have limits on how much can be spend on political campaigning and when campaigning takes place, and the difference between the smallest and largest parties is within the same order of magnitude, this is so because if one can simply buy an election this has nothing to do with democracy, an equal competition of ideas unrelated to one's financial resources.

Democracy isn't a contact sport, it's not even a sport, it's intentional deliberation between ordinary people at an appropriate place and time. Turning politics into 24/7 live TV bread and circus entertainment is exactly what's destroying it.

An important issue is the lack of transparency in campaigning expenses, which are capped in several countries. This is the principle that underpins the Sarkozy-Kadhafi affair (illegal presidential campaign funding) or the Brexit Cambridge Analytica affair (though that goes beyond that).

... or the German "Grüner Mist" scandal campaign in Germany in front of the 2021 federal elections [1].

[1] https://www.volksverpetzer.de/aktuelles/gruener-mist/

> It is not just propaganda. Its also normal political parties that try to reach out to voters to inform them of their politics.

I wonder how I would be able to spot the difference in practice?

It's propaganda if you disagree, and normal if you agree.

Which definition of propaganda are you using that doesn't include this?

The common definition used these days is including a manipulative character. Just neutrally delivering information is not seen as manipulative. Though it's of course disputable which case something is.

In the UK this is regulated spend, except the rules weren't updated for social media and all sorts of dark money adverts started appearing.

The UK system gives both a minimum and a cap. Parties are entitled to a TV slot and I believe each candidate gets a free constituency mailshot as well. Beyond that the amount of money that can be spent is supposed to be capped.

It looks like it's more about the technical limits that create uncertainty about how this could be enforced. From Google's article on it,

> For example, the TTPA defines political advertising so broadly that it could cover ads related to an extremely wide range of issues that would be difficult to reliably identify at scale. There is also a lack of reliable local election data permitting consistent and accurate identification of all ads related to any local, regional or national election across any of 27 EU Member States. And key technical guidance may not be finalized until just months before the regulation comes into effect.

- https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/political...

Good riddance to bad rubbish

This doesn’t mean that it can’t be used for political manipulation.

For example, one can run ads claiming that they are an agency helping refugees collect the government issued houses and cars to induce outrage against refugees to boost the sentiment for the right or they can run ads claiming that they are into business of helping the rich avoid paying taxes in exaggerated amounts to boost rhe left leaning politics.

The last few elections were tainted with right wing populist spending money that at first glance isn’t theirs, also it was exposed that the american personna Tim Poool was receiving money from Russia connected sources to boost certain ideas.

There are also many creative ways like foreign countries making large ad spending on social media people who boost positions that they support. Then people start noticing that and produce content just for that.

Then there’s the case with Twitter where if Musk follows you and retweets or likes you you make good money because the algorithm increases your exposure, if he stops doing that you fade out so you have to create content that pleases such people.

True

Why not make transparent all speech involving opinions or attempts to change anyone's mind, so that the listener can "understand who is behind them"?

It seems Facebook simply doesn't want to.

It would lower the value of said "messaging", because who speaks does make a difference when people evaluate trustworthyness. Lower value = less profits for ad platform. I hope that answers the question of "why not" :)

Would just a given policy ad be allowed?

So my candidate is known for pushing "ban ducks from ponds", it's not his only thing but he's known for it.

So then I put out a bunch of ads about dealing with the scourge of ducks on ponds to get that problem in people's heads ...

That ok?

the first sentence of the article describes the conditions

I feel like there's a lot of room inside those conditions for questions. Perhaps other people see these decisions as far more obvious? I do not.

"That's political" is already a common phrase often used to dismiss what people don't agree with.

We're just talking about paid ads, not what you discuss with your cousin.

That example is to show how folks can decide something is "political" even if it's just something they don't like. That can apply to anyone, including people deciding if an advertisement is political or not.

Indirect propaganda schemes of your duck kind aren't effective. Some will be caught by the rule, some won't. So what? The rule still makes the media environment a lot cleaner.

Can you clean every last spec of dust from your driveway/sidewalk? Well, you don't have to, cleaning the big shit and mud is good enough.

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