Facebook Considers Political-Ad Blackout Ahead of US Election (bloomberg.com) 59
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Facebook is considering imposing a ban on political ads on its social network in the days leading up to the U.S. election in November, according to people familiar with the company's thinking. The potential ban is still only being discussed and hasn't yet been finalized, said the people, who asked not to be named talking about internal policies. A halt on ads could serve as a defense against misleading election-related content spreading widely right as people prepare to vote. Still, there are also concerns that an ad blackout could hurt "get out the vote" campaigns, or limit a candidate's ability to respond widely to breaking news or new information.
Facebook doesn't fact-check ads from politicians or their campaigns, a point of contention for many lawmakers and advocates, who say the policy means ads on the platform could be used to spread lies and misinformation. The social-media giant has been criticized in recent weeks by civil rights groups that say it doesn't do enough to remove efforts to limit voter participation, and a recent audit of the company found Facebook failed to enforce its own voter suppression policies when it comes to posts from U.S. President Donald Trump. Hundreds of advertisers are currently boycotting Facebook's advertising products as part of a protest against its policies.
Facebook doesn't fact-check ads from politicians or their campaigns, a point of contention for many lawmakers and advocates, who say the policy means ads on the platform could be used to spread lies and misinformation. The social-media giant has been criticized in recent weeks by civil rights groups that say it doesn't do enough to remove efforts to limit voter participation, and a recent audit of the company found Facebook failed to enforce its own voter suppression policies when it comes to posts from U.S. President Donald Trump. Hundreds of advertisers are currently boycotting Facebook's advertising products as part of a protest against its policies.
Great Idea!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
That would be a wonderful idea. It just needs to be extended to all platforms and while we are at it, let's just make it so political ads can only run for one week prior to the election. That might help as well.
Re:Great Idea!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should we allow political advertising at all? The very purpose of advertising is to persuade people to do something that they otherwise would not have chosen to do without having their arms twisted. Do you really want political leaders who have to resort to tricking the public into electing them? Officials whose record is so weak that they cannot get elected without smearing the other person or making people fear what will happen if they don't get elected? This is how we have gotten to where we are now.
The best thing that could happen, at least from the perspective of making our politicians suck less, would be a 100% nationwide ban on all political advertising, period. Want to get elected? Spend the time to record compelling videos that talk about your positions on the issues, and put them on your website. Put a statement in the voter guide that people get that summarizes your positions. Make headlines by saying interesting things. Then let people decide based on your positions and your record. Everything else is meaningless.
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Yeah, I realize that. Sometimes I think we'd be better off just letting them vote randomly, because at least it will hopefully be Gaussian. :-D
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Without more choices, we'll always get what we always got. Good and hard.
Now, more than ever.
Re:Great Idea!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
An additional purpose to convincing people of your political position (and your association with it) is discover-ability.
Incumbent politicians get a ton of free press as a result of being in office and because they've been around for years, are relatively well-known to voters already. Politicians also get lopsided press. If you ban them from speaking, that just means the press gets even more influence in defining them for voters. So you're basically asking to have more of the people the media likes better elected.
Challengers, on the other hand, need to be able to advertise in order for most voters to even register who they are, let alone what they stand for. Especially when it comes to primary elections.
The main result of restrictions on political advertising, donations, etc... is to advantage incumbents against challengers and media conglomerates against smaller groups. Which is of course, why many incumbents are in favor of those restrictions and vote for them and why much of the media loves them.
Fortunately, they tend to also violate the Constitution, and so get overruled by the USSC. No shutting up your political opponents using the law.
Sure, it'd be ideal if voters decided based on position papers and facts, but many voters don't respond to those, so the political consultants go with what works, instead.
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Does this apply to the New York Times, CNN, and Fox News? Do the major media companies get to completely control what the public learns?
Re: Great Idea!!! (Score:3)
They already do.
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Why should we allow political advertising at all?
Because the Constitution has not yet been repealed.
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Ah, but to play devil's advocate, paying someone to broadcast or print an advertisement is neither speaking (freedom of speech) nor publishing (freedom of the press) per se. It is an act of (likely interstate) commerce, which can be restricted under Article I. For example, cigarette ads are illegal on the air, and have been for 50 years.
I'm not saying it wouldn't get struck down by the courts, because it very well might, given that political speech is some of the most protected speech out there, but from
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Why should we allow political advertising at all?
Because you can't ban it even if you want to. Trying to define what a political ad is has become impossible. Are memes political ads? Can you even trace where they came from?
If Facebook does ban them the money will just go on fake "amateur" stuff, astro-turfing videos and botnets. It's actually better to allow political ads with proper attribution.
How would that even work these days (Score:3)
Is an ad that is tangentially political, considered a political ad? Say an add for BLM where money raised from the ad was partially or wholly forwarded on to the DNC, or the same deal for some Republican group selling MAGA wear - since it's clothing, is that political?
It seems like there are very few ads you could even have anymore that could not be considered "political".
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It's funny how these articles seem to rely on anonymous sources with an agenda and contain lots of inflammatory accusations with very little detail on what they're actually about or who is involved.
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You really want to outlaw voting and breeding for about 90% of the US population?
I'm not saying I disagree, though...
Obama was lauded for his social media game (Score:2, Informative)
Trump's social media team is better than Biden's (I assume in part because Trump has had a strong PR team ever since his reality TV days). So I understand why left wingers want to shut it all down.
Seems a bit hypocritical though.
"Considers" (Score:2)
Ads aren't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Users are. All it takes is a handful of fake accounts to share malicious stories to the right rubes and that story will spread like wildfire throughout the herd.
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Couldnt they do that by word of mouth? How did people filter out campaign lies before cancel culture?
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How many people can you talk to, in person, in a day and how much will they actually remember what you said? Now compare that to the number of "friends" someone may have on Facebook and how easy it is for them to send them all a link that can easily be revisited over and over again. Then you'll start appreciating how information can exponentially propagate on social media. I also am not sure what "cancel culture" is.
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Cancel Culture is when you dont like someones point of view you go after their livelihood rather than debating the points with them. Kevin Spacey. Mel Gibson. Etc
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The impact of the what you say is also far less than in real life. If I have 20 friends in real life what they say is 5% of the input I am getting and maybe 1% of my opionion. if I have 500 facebook friends what one says is just .02 % of external input and probably .004% of my formed opinion. Facebook is just not that influential. Unless you are a loser who only has Facebook friends.
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This is completely anecdotal based and counter to all the research that is out there on social media.
Re: Ads aren't the problem (Score:2)
It's impossible. "I don't know how Nixon won! I don't know anyone who voted for him!"
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Just like they do now: Not at all, they just swallow whatever lie fits their own world view.
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And even just fanbois run amok can do it too.
If social media companies really cared about restoring civility and such to their platforms, they'd just ban all political speech whatsoever including the sharing of news links/articles. Probably the safest would be "if you didn't create this content, then you definitely can't post it and even if you did create it, you can't post anything political"
Now contrariwise, let me add that other countries actually do media blackouts in final run to elections and they ar
FB is not untouchable (Score:2)
What facebook doesn't realize is that alternatives are ready to jump on the train and take their audience. I've no clue which one it would be but that's also irrelevant.
Facebook seem to think they are so big, they are untouchable. Piss of enough of the audience and facebook will just be the next myspace - abandoned.
They already lost advertisers over politics and protests. Now they want to proactively ban certain advertisers. If i was a stock trader with fb shares i'd be worried at this point.
My advice to Ma
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Their problem at this point is that they cannot not get involved. If they take money from everyone, the left will call them alt-right nazis and the right will call them riot supporters. And no, that they tried to remain open for everyone won't help, you let nazis and rioters talk on your platform, you OBVIOUSLY support nazis and rioters, at least in the narrative of the respective groups.
Facebook cannot win in this fight, the most sensible move is just what they're doing now, try to distance themselves from
Equal platforms (Score:2)
The reason we need ads is networks long ago stopped being neutral. We now watch Fox News or CNN and see only single sided issues. The political ads provide a band-aid solution to the larger gashing wound of this lack of civil discourse. Instead of politicians and their supporters presenting their ideas at length we now have short hit pieces.
I would very much like to go to older rules. This way we would not be forced into bubbles, whether it is digital recommendations or broadcast TV.
If they really want to stop fake news... (Score:2)
How about a Facebook blackout?
Revenge of the H1Bs (Score:2)
Trump says to Silicon Valley - No H1B for you.
FB says to Trump - No political social media for you.
Re: Revenge of the H1Bs (Score:2)
Trump says to transnational billionaires ... ...
Transnational billionaires say to Trump
Let's be clear what's going on.
Clearly this is racist (Score:2)
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That's like playing hide and seek with a 3 year old where he closes his eyes and declares that you can't see him if he can't see you.
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Some 3 year olds are not called Donald.
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Considering what you are doing with that strawman you really ought to marry it.
Make ads webpages with date title authorship (Score:2)
Part of the problem with Internet political ads is their hit and run nature.
How about we make each political advertisement into a web page.
Each web page can be required to have a corresponding metadata page with the date of publication, name of author, search terms used, and full name and invoice number of the organization who paid for the ad.
We are going to deal with the extrapolitical candidate smear by requiring those organizations to also post their ads and their ad metadata.
Facebook already has this ma
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Name of author: Fakemyname Inc.
Belonging to anonymous shareholders.
Now you again.
too much money at stake (Score:2)
In a way, it's a microcosm of Trump himself. All attention is money. Good, bad, legal trouble, impeachment hearings, hate, love, and anything in between. Attention equals money, honey.
Please listen to some personal messages (Score:2)
The chair is against the wall.
Jean has a long mustache.
There is a fire at the insurance agency.
Oh, good! (Score:2)
Won't stop fake news (Score:2)
You can be certain that fake news outfits like heatstreet will still get political smear articles trended by the facebook editors, despite having almost no traffic. Like last election.
Questionable (Score:2)
So basically, misinformation can flow freely (by unofficial channels) but accused politicians won't be able to respond with a formal announcement.
How about just banning deliberate misinformation? That'll cover a lot of political ads anyway.
What is a political ad, exactly? (Score:2)
It's a great idea in theory, but who then becomes the arbiter of what is a "political ad", and what is not?
Is a union-sponsored ad defending or attacking a specific party "political", despite not being paid for by any political party?
What if I run my own business, and would like to advertise my support for one candidate or the other?
Now what if that business's sole purpose for existing is to do that? And who gets to decide that?