
Spotify Becomes Latest Tech Company to Hit Pause on Political Ads - happy-go-lucky
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/28/792078881/spotify-becomes-latest-tech-company-to-hit-on-pause-political-ads
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dinofacedude
Can't blame them. If I owned a software company I wouldn't touch politics with
a mile long pole.

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smt88
While I agree and think I generally approve of tech companies banning
political ads, these bans are still not an apolitical move.

They're going to disproportionately affect underdog and non-incumbent
candidates, as well as anyone who needs the voters purged in places like
Georgia.

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3fe9a03ccd14ca5
I think it will affect the incumbent the most. Trump used the impeachment
fiasco to do record fundraising, and now he’s heading into 2020 with a massive
war chest.

With major platforms banning political ads, they’re increasingly making that
war chest less valuable.

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bdcravens
I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to spend that money on
traditional media.

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throwGuardian
It's all a big coincidence, the timing of this, affecting a party that's not
popular among tech titans, no breach of ethics here at all. Everyone remembers
the groundswell opposition from tech, to the Obama campaign's use of social
media and targeted advertising, right? No?

Wait, was the media and tech sprawling with fawning reviews, declaring the
Obama campaign a genius use of tech?

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emeerson
Is this even addressing the root cause of 2016 misinformation campaigning? I
was assuming most misinformation was distributed as user-generated content,
not ads.

How much was Spotify exploited as a media platform for campaign
misinformation? Its cute that Spotify is doing this, but I think Facebook +
Twitter were the big distribution channels (and probably Reddit is closest to
the “astroturf core”).

Edit: grammar

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jvagner
Spotify is doing what they want to do for their platform. I’m not sure what
you want Spotify to do about the user generated content on Facebook and
Twitter.

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guest2143
Can't they just charge a lot more? Like $10million per ad?

It's a surcharge to avoid political ads, but hey Mr. Bloomberg, if you need to
get attention... we will collect your money.

What would they do with this extra money? Fund open source foundations?

...wait... is $10Million too low? Is there that much money in politics?

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solarkraft
This is how the system currently works. The best financed (so: most popular
with business people) candidate gets heard the best and often times is pretty
easily elected.

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throwGuardian
Remember when they praised the Obama campaign's efficient use of tech/social-
media, including targeted advertising? Why do you think this new fangled
opposition to political ad spend is timing itself right before the 2020 ramp
up?

Hint: it's because tech Titans and their cronies can't tolerate an opposition
campaign being just as good at tech/social-media targeting. Not because of
some new found puritanical, ethical hate of politics

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goatinaboat
Remember MySpace? Music oriented social networking with no politics or
invasive tracking. Good times.

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hurricanetc
The issue is that people are able to be targeted with surgical precision
because of mass data collection. Banning political ads is just a half ass
treatment of the effect.

And sociopath Zuck doesn’t even see the need to do that.

