
Facebook and Google are considering banning micro targeting for political ads - jonplackett
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/07/google-facebook-considering-ban-micro-targeted-political-ads
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jonplackett
This seems like a positive move. If you can’t isolate your messages you have
to be more generally appealing, and probably honest.

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Jeff_Brown
+1. Also it removes the ability to send contradictory messages to different
audiences.

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duskwuff
It also removes the ability to target problematic messages to audiences which
are more likely to receive those messages favorably. Which is good!

For example, if a candidate were to promise to "drive <group> out of the
country", they should not be able to limit that message's visibility to
audiences which exclude that group.

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jonplackett
exactly. you force them to just deliver one message to everyone and it has to
be consistent. it would force all parties back towards the political centre
ground.

i hope this happens, and quick. we have an election happening here in the UK
and facebook just said they're happy for the tories to use misleadingly edited
clips in their ads.

a massive problem deserves a massive response and this should be it.

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paulz_
I've wondered if you could fix some of the problems with the modern internet /
political landscape by making targeted advertising illegal.

You would still have advertising, but less incentive to collect data on
individuals.

I would love to hear feedback / criticism on this idea.

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dominotw
> making targeted advertising illegal

how do you define targeted though? General definition would make almost all of
the political ads illegal.

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elliekelly
You could prohibit targeted advertising based on membership in a "protected
class"[1] (race, religion, sex, etc.) - I think one of the problems with
targeted political advertising on social media is that a lot of it seems
created for the purpose sowing conflict between these groups. I struggle to
come up with a legitimate reason a candidate would ever need to tailor their
messaging based on those groups.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group)

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olliej
The targeting can easily be neighbourhood, so you can say neighbourhood 1
(that likes Pizza) gets messaging that says candidate A loves pizza and
everyone should get a free one, and also tells that neighbourhood that
candidate B hates pizza. Then in another Neighbourhood that hates pizza they
advertise the opposite.

You can get a reasonable approximation of that targeting in real life as well,
but it is harder to hide that that is what you’re doing. Whereas with online
targeting you are never aware that the other ads exist.

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jackdeansmith
To me, this seems like a very balanced approach. Interested in the HN take,
what level of targeting would be appropriate to allow? I can think of
arguments both for and against even relatively broad targeting based on
location and demographics.

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jonplackett
i would say age, gender, location, and leave it at that!

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jonplackett
maybe not gender actually, now I think of it, and maybe not age or location
either.

force them to just broadcast the same message to everyone, and that's it.

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jackdeansmith
Yeah I've been going back and forth on this. I think some location targeting
is important though. For example, if you're running for mayor I don't think
you should have to advertise to the whole state or country. I think the real
question is should you be able to sub-target the voting populace? (i.e. I'm
running for a statewide race but only want to advertise to certain cities)

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olliej
If you’re up for election in region X, then your ads should have to be shown
to everyone in region X.

