Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/technology/facebook-political-ads-ban.html

by coloneltcb • 6 years ago

124 228 6 years ago

nytimes.com

ceejayoz• 6 years ago

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

Of course.

sleavey2• 6 years ago

What's the reason not to ban them immediately?

pb72• 6 years ago

$$$

dchi• 6 years ago

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

marcell6• 6 years ago

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?

weeboid2• 6 years ago

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.

sg47• 6 years ago

Something about stable doors and horses.

hyldmo• 6 years ago

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...

koolba• 6 years ago

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.

jsendros• 6 years ago

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

kyrra• 6 years ago

(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.

ogre_codes6• 6 years ago

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.

newacct583• 6 years ago

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.

MattGaiser• 6 years ago

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

ogre_codes6• 6 years ago

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

systemvoltage• 6 years ago

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

jariel• 6 years ago

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'.

SpicyLemonZest2• 6 years ago

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.

ogre_codes6• 6 years ago

Information or Lies?

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

nl2• 6 years ago

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.

ogre_codes6• 6 years ago

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.

torben-friis• 6 years ago

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)

bmarquez• 6 years ago

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.

Barrin92• 6 years ago

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.

baby• 6 years ago

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.

wastedhours• 6 years ago

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.

enkid• 6 years ago

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.

hnracer7• 6 years ago

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.

srtjstjsj3• 6 years ago

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...

hogFeast3• 6 years ago

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.

IanDrake• 6 years ago

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.

teddyh2• 6 years ago

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.

pjc505• 6 years ago

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.)

TheAdamAndChe• 6 years ago

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.

grep_name• 6 years ago

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

ponker• 6 years ago

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.

tim3332• 6 years ago

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.

throwaway0a5e• 6 years ago

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.

itsoktocry4• 6 years ago

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?

dgellow2• 6 years ago

That would be just way too easy to game.

paganel2• 6 years ago

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.

rsynnott2• 6 years ago

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).

tekkk• 6 years ago

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.

paganel2• 6 years ago

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.

pjc505• 6 years ago

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)

cm21872• 6 years ago

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

bbrree665• 6 years ago

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.

belorn• 6 years ago

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.

phjesusthatguy32• 6 years ago

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).

ogre_codes6• 6 years ago

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.

bognition• 6 years ago

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

rsynnott2• 6 years ago

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.

lettergram2• 6 years ago

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”.

Nursie• 6 years ago

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.

mc32• 6 years ago

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.

ogre_codes6• 6 years ago

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?

lootsauce• 6 years ago

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.

pootyblowfish• 6 years ago

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.

Upvoter33• 6 years ago

I just wish they would get out of politics altogether.

KiranRao0• 6 years ago

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.

baq2• 6 years ago

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.

dgellow2• 6 years ago

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.

bob33212• 6 years ago

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.

mentos• 6 years ago

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.

bobwall• 6 years ago

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

bretpiatt• 6 years ago

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...

vmception• 6 years ago

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.

divbzero• 6 years ago

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.

smcleod• 6 years ago

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

BestCatalonia• 6 years ago

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

smileysteve• 6 years ago

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.

commandlinefan• 6 years ago

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

duncan_bayne• 6 years ago

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.

engineer_222• 6 years ago

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.

driverdan2• 6 years ago

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.

weakfish• 6 years ago

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!

sdfkkksdfsdff• 6 years ago

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.

bladegash• 6 years ago

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

mensetmanusman• 6 years ago

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.

nindalf• 6 years ago

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...

engineer_222• 6 years ago

Nationalize Facebook.

bhupy• 6 years ago

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

noworriesnate• 6 years ago

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.

jacobush• 6 years ago

No, split it up in 50 BabyBell-Facebooks.

nsx147• 6 years ago

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

richardARPANET• 6 years ago

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

ravenstine• 6 years ago

Precisely. Anyone denying this is kidding themselves.

castratikron• 6 years ago

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.

untog• 6 years ago

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.

schwinn1403• 6 years ago

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".

lanevorockz• 6 years ago

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.

zo15• 6 years ago

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.

dsugarman• 6 years ago

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

anjel2• 6 years ago

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.

maybeOneDay• 6 years ago

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?

anonymouswacker• 6 years ago

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

marketingtech• 6 years ago

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.

schwinn1403• 6 years ago

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. :(

netcan• 6 years ago

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.

save_ferris• 6 years ago

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.

NortySpock• 6 years ago

"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...

sailingparrot• 6 years ago

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.

mrfusion• 6 years ago

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.

driverdan2• 6 years ago

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.

zo15• 6 years ago

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.

splintercell2• 6 years ago

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.

dangjc• 6 years ago

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.

joquarky• 6 years ago

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

weeboid2• 6 years ago

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)

shadowprofile77• 6 years ago

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?

mixmastamyk• 6 years ago

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.

Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

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