Meta allows ads saying 2020 election was rigged on Facebook and Instagram

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/15/facebook-ads-2020-election-rigged-stolen-instagram-policy

by antiviral • 3 years ago

76 142 3 years ago

grecy• 3 years ago

It feels like a dangerous time for society when it is so easy to spread lies to a massive percentage of the population that undermine the the very Democracy that society is based on.

msandford• 3 years ago

Here is an article detailing a substantial set of changes made to the election process just before 2020. These might have all been perfectly legal things to do but when you make enough changes all at once some people start to wonder.

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

awb4• 3 years ago

I skimmed the article and it seems to outline how folks knew Trump wouldn't concede if he lost, so they were preparing to fight disinformation and preparing for potential legal battles.

Could you elaborate on the changes you're taking away from the article that made people wonder about the integrity of the election?

alkonaut4• 3 years ago

People do have a right to wonder. And the process should both be transparent to observe, and possible to drag through courts if there are more questions. And with this election it sure was dragged through courts, for years. And there has been no evidence of any substantial irregularities. Changes or not, no one seems to find much to suggest the election wasn't decided fairly.

frogperson• 3 years ago

Targeted advertising and the bubble it creates is so powerful and dangerous.

llamaInSouth2• 3 years ago

This democracy is an illusion anyways

helaoban• 3 years ago

Lol. The opposite is true. We live in time when lying to the population has never been more difficult.

Before the internet, information control and media capture by the state was near total, and lying to the entire population was the default practice.

pauldenton5• 3 years ago

The Spanish American war seemed to have a lot of lies and a journalistic duopoly controlling access to information which had one bent or another

whatshisface4• 3 years ago

So there's a fifth circuit ruling out there explaining in detail how the Biden administration pressured a willing Meta to implement the administration's misinformation policy through moderation. Here they are allowing the other side's worst statements through.

Hopefully this makes it clear that misinformation control in practice really benefits whoever the platform wants to hedge against being in power with no concern for our own interests.

Here is the ruling if you would like to see what they have been doing: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pd...

mikeyouse4• 3 years ago

Techdirt has a good series outlining the clowinsh nature of the 5th circuit - https://www.techdirt.com/tag/5th-circuit/ - they often make just very problematic rulings not backed by law or precedent. In the ruling you linked, they make repeated references to "demands" that were supposedly problematic but when the full context is provided, they're completely benign. Just really bad faith efforts from the Court for political purposes.

Techdirt / Mike Masnick's post about this ruling, the district court's insane prior one, and trying to square the circle of free speech and government coercion:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/11/5th-circuit-cleans-up-di...

pauldenton5• 3 years ago

Techdirt/ Mike Masnick also repeatedly claims there is no disproportionate censorship and that Democrats and Republicans get censored an equal amount. He's very much been in a Silicon Valley bubble since 2016

cryptoz• 3 years ago

Well that's tricky right, since the 2020 election was rigged all kinds of ways in favor of the Republicans. So if you're going to allow political ads at all - which clearly they shouldn't - why would you ban things that are truthful?

Of course I'm aware that the 'rigged' line is typically aimed at the Democrats "rigging" the election since they won - but there is no evidence of that, while there is a plethora of evidence that Republicans rig the heck of out everything they can.

Seems like it would be much better to just ban political advertising.

doitLP2• 3 years ago

Amazing how the different parties have such diametrically opposite views… if it wasn’t so serious it would be comical. In the last 24 hours I’ve heard the following from a republican and a democrat: “obviously we know they tampered with the election. It’s proven”

I’m aware of the “stop the steal” and dominion nonsense from the right. But what hard evidence exists that the Republican Party rigged the 2020 election?

JohnFen4• 3 years ago

There is no meaningful evidence that the election was rigged by any party. That's why nobody has brought any forward.

ianlevesque• 3 years ago

Limits on ballot drop-offs that mostly affect urban, democrat leaning counties: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/27/politics/texas-supreme-court-...

Destroying equipment the USPS would use to handle the unusually large number of mail-in votes: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/21/politics/usps-mail-sorting-ma...

All coinciding with a large, engineered, split in pandemic cautiousness about attending in-person voting stalls between the two main parties. There are more examples, gerrymandering is a decades-long one, but most of what I've read & heard about 2020 was about forcing people to wait in long lines or vote in person when that would favor one party over the other.

InitialLastName2• 3 years ago

Here are multiple instances of Republicans committing or attempting voter fraud in 2020:

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-government-and-poli...

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/republican-mail-b...

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2021/12/13/3-residen...

amalcon3• 3 years ago

For the most part, when Democrats talk about this sort of thing, they mean legal but undemocratic or counter-majoritarian tools like the electoral college, not having enough polling places, limited voting hours, voter purges, etc.

I try to push back on using the word "rigged" for these things because A) Just describing the actual things is equally convincing and B) It normalizes that kind of verbiage in political discourse, whereas I think it's definitely better that such verbiage remain kooky. Not endorsing it, just observing a common sentiment.

alkonaut4• 3 years ago

Most people claiming republicans "rig" elections tend to mean gerrymandering, ensuring long waitig times in predominantly D neighborhoods, banning people from giving those in line water and so on. Mostly things that are legal (at least by the letter of the law). Not sure I'd call that "tampering" though.

But of course the last hail mary was to have the fake electors and all that. People will literally do prison time for that. And "tampering" might be part of the description of those crimes somewhere.

newsclues2• 3 years ago

I'm sorry I thought it was admitted that the election wasn't fair.

somewhat_drunk• 3 years ago

Prove that it wasn't fair.

whatshisface4• 3 years ago

In the electoral college, some voters are able to vote with three times the weight of others due to differing populations within districts that have equal college votes. Here is one source I found on Google, but the calculation is easy and there are plenty of other articles that reach similar conclusions: https://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-t...

If you add in gerrymandering, it's the truth that most of our elections are "rigged" or "unfair" in a very real sense to anyone who believes in majoritarianism.

pianoben2• 3 years ago

Admitted by who, exactly? And unfair in what ways?

newsclues2• 3 years ago

“They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

cowsup• 3 years ago

Meta will now allow political advertisers to say past elections were “rigged” or “stolen”, although it still prevents them from questioning whether ongoing or future elections are legitimate.

I think this is a pretty terrible attempt to cater to both sides. Implying that an ongoing election is illegitimate is "against the rules," but saying the current incumbents are illegitimately there is "allowed?" Why?

voisin3• 3 years ago

Because Zuckerberg et al are addicted to ad revenue and some model shows that this drives usage. Fuck Facebook and every single one of its corrupt employees.

tmaly• 3 years ago

if you look at how much money is in play during elections, you can understand why he is allowing it.

Dig1t• 3 years ago

Why is a private company calling the shots on speech in a free society to begin with?

bananapub2• 3 years ago

what should they have to publish?

anything? bomb instructions? child abuse imagery?

only legal things? legal where?

ceejayoz2• 3 years ago

For the same reasons you can kick a guest out of your house when they start screaming slurs.

Their house, their rules.

I think this change is a bad call, but it’s absolutely their call to make.

2muchcoffeeman• 3 years ago

This isn’t free speech. These are ads.

They are allowing ads to spread false information.

Not just some rando on the web with conspiracy theories. They are taking money to publish disinformation.

dataflow9• 3 years ago

Aren't past elections the only ones that matter as far as this discussion goes? Who ever even says future or ongoing elections are rigged? Even Trump finds the ones he wins to be legitimate.

wmf4• 3 years ago

In this case we're talking about elections from years ago.

There's probably a plan to preemptively "warn" that the 2024 election is rigged, then if you know who loses he can say that he's not a sore loser but in fact he warned us all along that it was rigged. We may expect overwhelming psyops to this effect from Nov 9, 2024 to Jan 20, 2025.

93po• 3 years ago

What’s the phrase? Peaceful transition of power? I think the problem is mostly calling a present or future one rigged. It causes idiots to trespass in the capital and get shot by secret service. The likelihood of the events at the capital happening today for an election three years ago is real slim

wmf4• 3 years ago

Social media is in a no-win situation where quelling conspiracy theories gives the conspiracy mongers a seemingly-legitimate grievance ("I'm being censored!") that they can exploit for even more clout.

bb885• 3 years ago

It's a distinction without a difference.

hcurtiss• 3 years ago

I get that everybody wants to ride this particular hobby horse, but in the wake of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, and the behavior of these platforms during the pandemic, I'm not sure I wouldn't rather live with lies I have to filter, than the "truths" they identify for me. I no longer trust the "experts'" definition of "misinformation," and I suspect I never will again.

cdme2• 3 years ago

Turns out outsourcing public discourse to a wholly unscrupulous private entity was, perhaps, not the best decision.

YetAnotherNick• 3 years ago

There wasn't any law that forbids saying election was rigged. Outsourcing caused other type of problem of not allowing certain views, not not banning illegal stuff.

organsnyder• 3 years ago

Parts of this aren't new, though—advertising in media outlets has always been a privately-operated domain.

wholesomepotato• 3 years ago

Public discourse was and should always be in the private domain. Anything else is totalitarianism by definition.

ceejayoz2• 3 years ago

TIL public school board hearings are totalitarian.

voisin3• 3 years ago

There’s a difference between private domain and privately regulated.

rTX5CMRXIfFG2• 3 years ago

Corporations censor speech and any content in their platforms that they deem undesirable or threatening to their profits. That’s totalitarianism by definition, and yet private.

Public discourse squarely belongs to the public, and hosting it must be perceived and intended to be a kind of public service; otherwise we can just go back to the good old days of gathering and debating in public squares.

cdme2• 3 years ago

The negative outcomes are hard to argue with given Meta's scale. Having viable and vibrant journalistic outlets (that Meta had a hand in killing) and just talking to people, unmediated by a platform were both healthier.

bb885• 3 years ago

"Public Discourse" being "Private"? Public is in the name, though. So that statement seems... well... weird?

"Public" and "Private" and "Government" mean different things at different times.

In this case I think you mean Public Discourse is not controlled by the Government. And that's where a lot of confusion is coming in.

mwbajor2• 3 years ago

Why is it no problem to say that the 2000 election was bogus? It was, and its not a big leap in logic to say that our "leaders" only got bolder since then.

edit: I dont care about my groupthink points/karma, I truly would like an answer. I dislike both political parties equally and have no skin in the game so please, someone take a stab at an answer to my question.

alphabettsy2• 3 years ago

My opinion.

The 2000 election was essentially decided by the courts based on mostly agreed upon facts. The outcome depended on interpretation of the law.

In the most recent election the facts themselves are not agreed upon and there are many many unsubstantiated allegations.

mwbajor2• 3 years ago

Yea, got that. The folks who had a vested interest in the system basically picked the president and they found a reason to do so (the chads and close results). Have our leaders ever shown restraint in any of the power we have given them? How does this HN community constantly and correctly bemoan our increasing security state but looks past the rapid gerrymandering, vote harvesting and other funny business because of the wrong letter after a persons name? At this rate, our politicians are most likely going to fix or attempt to fix an election at some point. It might have happened, it might have not.

pauldenton5• 3 years ago

It seems like it would be better to resolve those disputes in the court instead of dismissing them all on procedural grounds like the doctrine of laches

javajosh• 3 years ago

What is the go to URL that people like that summarizes the debate around censhorship vs speech rights? Like so many other things, it seems to me that both sides have a very strong case, but that ultimately, in all matters, practicality wins. In this case, speech freedom is ideologically correct, and Meta is being short-term practical (money!) but long-term impractical (undermining democracy will undermine key infrastructure upon which Meta depends). E.g. censorship is generally very bad, even extremely bad, but this particular set of claims is a contagion to which large swaths of the public are vulnerable to, and which present a clear and present danger to US democracy. Furthermore, this isn't a case where there is any nuance: every claim of fraud has been undermined. To anyone paying attention to these claims and their response knows the score; so to see the population get swayed because of their own ignorance and prejudice is a sacrifice too great for the altar of "free speech". Especially when you factor in how much less free speech will become if they win.

bb885• 3 years ago

You mean Truth Social where Trump called his enemies "vermin"? Or do you mean something like the NYTimes, which Trump calls "Fake News"?

I have no idea whether Trump would be an Authoritarian or not if he wins president again, but propaganda around Jews was why Germany had no issues with death camps being run in their name.

Unfortunately all media is profit driven, with the notable exception of PBS and NPR. At some point you're going to trust someone. My neighbor across the street trusts Fox News, e.g.

dataflow9• 3 years ago

Why are "rigged" and "stolen" lumped together? I thought one means the rules are unfair (legal), and the other means the rules were broken (illegal). These are... very different, no?

lokar• 3 years ago

I think their claim is the election rules were changed illegally at the last moment.

dataflow9• 3 years ago

I didn't glean that from the article. Which rules were allegedly illegally changed at the last moment?

pfannkuchen5• 3 years ago

They were factually changed outside of the normal process right? The question is whether a state of emergency justified the change? I wish everyone wouldn’t get so mouth-frothing when stuff like this is discussed, it makes it hard to tell what is really going on.

ethanbond• 3 years ago

This is one of the dozens and dozens of claims that were made, including boxes full of votes, hacked voting machines, etc.

standardUser3• 3 years ago

"Rigged" can mean lots of things, including something being illegally stolen. Such as a rigged boxing match.

dataflow9• 3 years ago

"Rigged" can mean lots of things, including something being illegally stolen. Such as a rigged boxing match.

Perhaps this is just my ignorance of boxing but I dare say that example didn't enlighten me. I can't think of any case in sports (or elsewhere) where I've seen "rigged" to mean illegal conduct. I thought that's generally called something else, like a foul.

bakugo• 3 years ago

You know a "conspiracy" is just fact when even Facebook can't deny it anymore.

billfor• 3 years ago

The difference between conspiracy and the truth is about 6 months

manuelabeledo2• 3 years ago

Are misleading political ads this profitable? Or is it just that big tech don't want to spend another dollar on moderation?

llamaInSouth2• 3 years ago

profitable for who?

sanswork3• 3 years ago

Yes. Political spending during major elections makes up a huge part of advertising revenues so financially it makes sense to err on the side of permissive.

Even general government advertising projects are extremely profitable for online advertisers since in almost all cases the only metric tracked is how much was spent by the project/department not how effective it was so you can get away with showing it to lower valued traffic(high bot chance for example) and still make the same amount.

wmf4• 3 years ago

I don't think it's about the money. It's probably about being hauled in front of Congress and being threatened with (essentially) nationalization again and again.

manuelabeledo2• 3 years ago

... being threatened with (essentially) nationalization again and again

I can't think of any major company in the US that has been forcibly nationalized in the past 30 years, excluding failed banks.

tppiotrowski• 3 years ago

I sense a learned helplessness when it comes to these topics. To say that Meta should police these posts hints at the fact that there is no hope for rhetoric or persuasion and that people are not rational.

Have we completely given up on making a good counter argument instead of disallowing things to be said in the first place?

Suppressing speech has downsides (loss of trust, centralization). Allowing speech also has downsides (misinformation, instigation, hate). How do we decide which is the way forward?

JohnFen4• 3 years ago

the fact that there is no hope for rhetoric or persuasion and that people are not rational.

Right now in the US, the political state has degraded to the point where I this this is a truer statement than anyone wants.

metajack• 3 years ago

The money tends to be on one side of these things, and money amplifies the message substantially.

You can argue that the election was fair all you want, but who is going to pay to run all the ads to impress that message on everyone?

It's already the case that clickbait headlines and lies are naturally more engaging, so amplifying them with money seems to drown out any rational counter dialogue.

bigstrat20032• 3 years ago

Have we completely given up on making a good counter argument instead of disallowing things to be said in the first place?

In short: yes. I haven't given up, nor has everyone. But my experience has been that a shockingly large number of people (possibly even a majority) in the US simply assume bad faith from those with whom they disagree. They aren't even trying to discuss, because they believe that their ideological opponents are unable or unwilling to have a civil discussion. So they are trying to use tools like control of the public square (Facebook in this case) to suppress ideas they believe are dangerous.

I personally believe that this view is quite mistaken. I've had plenty of discussions with people I disagree with, and while we may not have changed each others' minds we at least could walk away with respect for each other at the end of it. But I certainly seem to be in the minority, and that troubles me deeply. Sidestepping discussion in favor of other, more heavy handed, approaches is imo far more dangerous to a democratic society than the ideas that people are trying to suppress in the first place.

trafficante• 3 years ago

The think-tank -> influencer/trad media pipeline has been optimized to the point where it successfully has captured the long tail of most potential public political discourse.

On virtually any hot button topic, ready made points, counterpoints, and counter-counterpoints have already been disseminated and tested via the crucible of social media.

I don’t even bother engaging in impromptu debates anymore, because it feels like extremely lame high level chess where everyone knows all possible openers and defenses 72 moves out.

bcrosby95• 3 years ago

Have we completely given up on making a good counter argument instead of disallowing things to be said in the first place?

Kinda depends upon the subject. I assume you've never argued with a flat earther or a pizzagate believer. It's a waste of time. You can ignore them or silence them, bringing good counter arguments is gonna be a waste of your time.

swframe2• 3 years ago

It is suspected that "fiction spreads faster than facts" on social media. It is also suspected that "when you present the facts to someone who wants to be believe a lie, that person will hold on more strongly to their belief in the lie".

dogman144• 3 years ago

This is why it’s so distasteful when ex-Meta trust and safety hires attempt to lead the disinformation space via various think tanks or publishing risk taxonomy.

They worked at, profited, conveniently left with vested RSUs, and then turn around and try to sell the solutions to a problem they supported. Like taking lung cancer advice from cigarette company scientists.

Such a morally bankrupt company, and only in a bad way bc they wrap up their work in such flimsy ideals.

1970-01-01• 3 years ago

I don't see this going well for any of the sites if things do get ugly again in 2024. Hard federal prison time would be on the table if these ads are tied back into another coup d'état.

pauldenton5• 3 years ago

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/04/politics/kavanaugh-protests-u... Let's just treat everyone who storms the capital and disrupts the function of government the same.

ddj231• 3 years ago

It seems like an endless cycle. It was said that Trump’s win was rigged via Russian collusion. Then that Biden’s win was rigged via voter fraud. So seemingly every election will be considered “rigged”

alphabettsy2• 3 years ago

Sure, but one is very much not like the other.

One allegation was that Russia assisted by providing information, basically corruption or collusion, the other allegation is that democracy is dead because votes were literally thrown out.

bb885• 3 years ago

Do you not believe in an honest media to sort this stuff out?

If not, then we're all fucked.

slowhadoken• 3 years ago

I don’t know a lot of people who are confident about presidential elections.

standardUser3• 3 years ago

Would they allow a Coca Cola run an ad that claims Pepsi donates to the KKK? How about an ad that claims "our competitors" donate to the KKK?

If you claim an election is "rigged" or "stolen", those scenarios require a culprit. Who rigged the election? Who stole it? A very serious smear is being made that has no basis in reality, and I don't think that kind of defamation is generally allowed just because the parties being defamed are ill-defined.

firecall• 3 years ago

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087047638/the-truth-in-polit...

While the Federal Trade Commission regulates truth in commercial advertising, the FCC does not do the same for political ads.
Some have called for a "neutral government regulator" to oversee political speech, but there's no broad, serious movement in Congress for something like that.
In fact, various courts have repeatedly upheld the First Amendment right of candidates to essentially say what they want on federally regulated broadcast channels. Local broadcast television stations (think ABC, NBC, CBS) can't reject ads, even if they're blatantly false.

bb885• 3 years ago

That assumes the FTC is actually neutral government bureaucrats. We assume the same with the Justice Department, but this may no longer be the case if Cheetos gets back into office.

bartwr• 3 years ago

Being cynical, conspiracy, or half joking (or maybe all of the above? :) ): this means that the big tech bets on the orange guy coming back.

Let's entertain this idea: They have much better behavioral and sentiment analysis tools than anyone else (this is why they are so much better at ad targeting! Their ads work and everyone in marketing says are worth this extra cost). And if they knew he will (obviously not certain, just with a high enough probability), wouldn't they try to play a bit safer for him to avoid an immediate retaliation?

weeblewobble3• 3 years ago

It’s an interesting line of thought, but I don’t think it really works as stated. Even if Meta thinks trump has a 10% chance of winning, it makes sense to cozy up to him in ambiguous and deniable ways.

pauldenton5• 3 years ago

Hey maybe they're just treating Donald Trump like Hilary Clinton or Stacey Abrams. Claiming elections are rigged when you lose didn't start in 2020 or even 2000

lucasyvas• 3 years ago

X, YouTube, and Meta all have the same policy?

Jesus fucking Christ. If any of you work at any of these places you are part of the problem.

incomingpain• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...

Republicans in state legislatures submitted 425 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states—with 33 of these bills enacted across 19 states so far, by October 2021.

It would seem to me a rather unified reaction to the election. Like as if they may have seen things in their state or other states which indicate they don't believe the election was fair.

Personally, I saw many things which left my perception that this was absolutely not a fair election. Perception is what matters here, not actual results because that's impossible to gauge.

When in Detroit you throw out all republican challengers/observers, lock the doors, and board up the windows. I have no manner of saying they cheated, but the perception is that cheating occurred.

But more importantly, Biden straight up said the Democrats have "most extensive VOTER FRAUD organization” in history." You can watch the original, it's not modified, it's not any sort of deepfake going on.

After he said this, you cannot just brush it off as a verbal gaff or misspeak in that he meant VOTER PROTECTION. Nope, no way. It was upon the entire democratic party to fix the perception. If indeed they don't have an extensive voter fraud organization... it's their responsibility to prove it. They had to prove a negative... or realistically the gaff is that he shouldn't have admitted to it publicly.

Meta allows ads saying 2020 election was rigged on Facebook and Instagram

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