
Facebook Says It Won’t Back Down from Allowing Lies in Political Ads - i_am_not_elon
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/technology/facebook-political-ads-lies.html
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bl4ckm0r3
Why isn't anyone focused on the fact that, anywhere in the world, there are no
consequences for political lies? Politicians can, and usually do, lie on tv,
on the radio, on billboards, on their entire career and nothing happens. Why
is this a platform problem?

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DauphinWaffles
Its a crime to mislead the public in the UK.

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DonaldFisk
No it isn't. There was a petition to make it a specific offence (
[https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/200372](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/200372)
). However, the Government responded by pointing out that one of the seven
principles of public life is "Holders of public office should be truthful."
There don't appear to be any legal consequences for not upholding that or any
of the other six principles. There is an offence of Misconduct in Public
Office ( [https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-
offi...](https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office) ), in
which dishonesty is mentioned, but only in the context of fraud and similar
behaviour.

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sebastianconcpt
_“In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to
design their own policies,” Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product
management overseeing the advertising integrity division, said in the post.
“We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from
those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be
scrutinized and debated in public.”_

Actually not that bad!

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anonymousDan
Ya the problem is it's not public, as noone is able to see the individually
targeted lies they tell in order to refute them.

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SubuSS
In theory facebook could force a full audit / history of the ad varieties used
in targeting and provide it to journalistic folks who want to do such
analysis.

In practice, that is not very different from a politician saying what is
necessary to get the votes to different people: Now s/he is enabled to do it
from behind the desk.

I look at it as an exercise in building analytic capability and resistance to
mis-information. This is one (if not costly) way of ensuring people realize
the downsides of insular and self confirming thoughts and go back to actual
analysis and funding trustworthy news mediums. At one point Radio was the
devil, then it was TV and so on. Almost each generation goes through this. For
some, the learnings don't kick in without grave costs and in a weird way, it
is darwinian.

If the biggest worry is influencing votes, There is a big money in researching
ways of exposing these lies in a people accessible form. The problem with the
current rhetoric IMO is that it is more around 'Here is all the information,
you make the call' to a set of folks who lack time / energy and may be even
the analytic bandwidth. Usually when people hear an 'But actually, xyz science
studies say this' \- no one goes, 'Oh shit, let me change my opinion'. They go
' Oh shit, he is pointing at my ignorance'.

What we want is to build trust with the voter base and not make them feel
alienated. We want trustworthy pundits who make information accessible and
ways to cross check what these folks say and provide the same information
without putting down folks. We want the cross check setup to be non-partisan
and fair instead of it being 'I belong to the other side, am going to call
this bad no matter what they do'. We want real repercussions for feeding
misinformation - not just in actual words, but in the style of communication.
We want clear delineation of facts, opinions and assertions.

IOW this is a huge opportunity: educating the masses on issues and ensure they
vote with right information.

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softwaredoug
Facebook might just be backing into optimizing for their audience. So Facebook
might still be successful in 5 years, but dominated by a more conservative
crowd, while the rest go elsewhere.

And so perhaps it’s a sound business decision to align the business to the
audience with these moves... In the same way Fox News will wink or even
sometimes promote misinformation, Facebook basically is culpable at the same
level, but making a business decision that that’s the kind of media company
they want. Especially as the rest of us leave, and the conservative echo
chamber reinforces itself further.

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rpastuszak
> “Our approach is grounded in Facebook’s fundamental belief in free
> expression, respect for the democratic process and the belief that, in
> mature democracies with a free press, political speech is already arguably
> the most scrutinized speech there is,” Facebook’s head of global elections
> policy, Katie Harbath, wrote in the letter to the Biden campaign.

Even the mature democracies are vulnerable when it comes to misinformation,
manipulation or treating democracy not as "the will of the people" based on
the rational mind, but a behaviourist's playground.

Looking at the past 3 years or so, FB people should be the first ones to know
that.

> “In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to
> design their own policies,” Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product
> management overseeing the advertising integrity division, said in the post.
> “We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from
> those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be
> scrutinized and debated in public.”

When I think about Libra and read this, I'm happy that the regulations around
crypto are much, much more strict.

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mikece
If I’m not mistaken, since politicians usually avoid objective statements —
such that they could be construed as truth or lie depending on your point of
view — for Facebook to get into the censorship business would be a signal that
they aren’t an open platform and they would become liable for any lies or
harmful information they missed.

And it’s money: as Zuckerberg said on Capitol Hill, Facebook makes money by
selling ads. Specifically, they can charge a premium for _targeted_ ads
because they know so damned much about everyone on their platform. Want to
blast an ad to promote your campaign to everyone? Standard CPM rates apply.
Want to target left-handed hikers who drive a GMC truck, are allergic to
penicillin, like Reggae music and NHL hockey? Facebook can give you that list
almost instantly but it’s going to cost a LOT more than the standard CPM to
run those ads to that group. THIS ability is what makes Facebook so valuable
to advertisers and to Facebook shareholders.

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antris
They already deal with censorship on a variety of categories where the line
between acceptable and unacceptable are blurred. Nudity, hate speech,
targeting, harassment, all kinds of illegal / semi-illegal trade and activity
happening in various groups throughout the platform etc. No moderation can
ever be perfectly objective and no platform cannot be completely open for all
kinds of content, unless it's structured like Tor. And we all know what
happens at Tor.

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mikece
Yes, if they detect something illegal they remove it. Perhaps "censorship" was
the wrong word. If they begin establishing the precedent they will censor or
editorialize content which isn't illegal (all of the things you mentioned)
then I think they become legally liable for things they don't edit, like
slander which is a matter for civil rather than criminal courts (at least in
the US).

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RandomInteger4
Having a ministry of truth totally sounds like an idea that can't backfire. /s

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hc91
Did anyone expect anything else from this garbage fire of a company?

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moretai
Shouldn't the onus be on the consumer, even if they aren't educated?

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mrits
Fear of tricking elderly in voting for Trump is the new "think of the
children" argument for censorship.

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frockington1
Heaven forbid an elderly person willingly like Trump. They must have been
tricked by the scary person of the day Russians/Arabs/Chinese

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ericzawo
Why is this flagged?

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ourmandave
Well nobody wants to deny the Russians their 1st amendment rights. /s

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frockington1
What is wrong with Russians or any other nationality having the ability to
speak freely? If anything we should be interacting with oppressed regions more
to help understand each other

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hans1729
I think the parent suggestively implied 'facebook wants to benefit from
russian inteference in foreign elections, because money'

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frockington1
Why not allow Russians to post whatever they want? I don't think we are as
fragile as the media believes.

As an American, I posted funny memes supporting Brexit. Was I part of some
American interference conspiracy or do I just find pictures of a green frog
funny?

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hans1729
From a social psychology-perspective, I think we are _far_ more fragile than
you suggest here, but I'm not in team "make facebook responsible for the
moderation of political speech", and I don't want to derail the conversation.

That being said: while HN's audience likes to think of itself as less gullible
than the average internet-user, there is no escape from social proof et al.;
see the prevalence of the appendix "/s" \-- on the internet, no one knows if
you're serious, and whenever you contribute to political topics, it's probably
wiser to play it safe (instead of going for the luls), because someone _will_
get it wrong.

And, looking at brexit or the last U.S. election, i'd have thought it became
more than clear that we need to refine "our game"; you were not part of an
"american interference conspiracy", but you _did_ interfere, take from that
what you will

