
Facebook Isn’t Just Allowing Lies, It’s Prioritizing Them - dredmorbius
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/facebook-political-ads.html
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RcouF1uZ4gsC
The NY Times isn't just allowing lies, it's prioritizing them. By allowing a
certain law professor to publish opinion pieces that contain hyperbole,
innuendo, and other misleading rhetoric, the NY Times is increasing the reach
of this law professor. If it had not been for this opinion piece, millions of
readers would otherwise have been unaware of this law professor, but are now
exposed to his rhetoric thanks to the NY Times.

~~~
mostlysimilar
Honest question: can you pay more money to NY Times to get your opinion piece
more exposure? Can you target individual readers as an audience based on data
NY Times has on them?

~~~
Spivak
I mean you can buy ads same as Facebook. It’s hard to SEO the NYT but if
anyone could pay to get their posts a bigger organic audience on FB nobody
would buy ads.

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Spivak
Man the NYT editors must really hate FB to post an article like this every
week. It’s not like I _like_ Facebook or anything but this is just exhausting.

They’re a forum with user generated content and ads. They’re undertaking a
huge moderation effort already — trying to have their army of underpaid
moderators also police facts is just a problem that can’t solved because lies
are cheap to spread and expensive to refute.

You could say something snarky like “well FB just shouldn’t exist then” which
doesn’t take into account any replacement someone on HN would approve of would
have _worse_ moderation than FB.

The format of massive scale public square social media is the reason this
happens. And unless you want to tell the world to get off Twitter and eat
their vegetables there’s only so much you can do to keep fights from breaking
down in a huge public meeting of people who are addicted to arguing and 0
distance away from every conversation.

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tzs
> They’re a forum with user generated content and ads. They’re undertaking a
> huge moderation effort already — trying to have their army of underpaid
> moderators also police facts is just a problem that can’t solved because
> lies are cheap to spread and expensive to refute.

That argument is unconvincing, because Facebook already _does_ fact check ads
and disallows ads that lie. Here is their policy [1]:

> Facebook prohibits ads that include claims debunked by third-party fact
> checkers or, in certain circumstances, claims debunked by organizations with
> particular expertise. Advertisers that repeatedly post information deemed to
> be false may have restrictions placed on their ability to advertise on
> Facebook. Find out more about Fact Checking on Facebook here.

The controversy is over Facebook's recent decision to exempt political ads
from this fact checking.

Political ads are only a small part of Facebook's revenue, so it is very hard
to believe that they have the resources to face check all the other ads but
not to check the political ads.

[1]
[https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/mis...](https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/misinformation#)

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50656E6973
Mass media in general has been profiting off rumors, gossip, and falsehoods
for a long time.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism)

The difference here is FB is doing it algorithmically on a much larger scale.

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bhupy
> By refusing to stay out of politics, the company is building the case for
> its own breakup.

Wouldn’t this be an unconstitutional basis for breaking up a company?

A popular jab at Zuck/FB is that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to private
corporations, but only to the government.

Once a government decides that Facebook’s maximally permissive view on
speech/ads is unacceptable, and goes on to pursue punitive action against it,
isn’t that within the realm of the sort of government action that the First
Amendment prohibits? How is that any different from the government applying
punitive action against CNN or the NYTimes for publishing ads it deems
dangerous/unacceptable?

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Gibbon1
> Wouldn’t this be an unconstitutional basis for breaking up a company?

Smells like to me that everyone knows Zuckerburg knowingly took money to run
targeted campaign ads from foreigners. Which is both criminal and pierces the
corporate veil. If the next government can prove it in court they can kill
Facebook. And the stockholders can claw back all of Zuckerburgs wealth.

~~~
bhupy
That wasn't the argument made in this article.

It would be extremely difficult to prove that Zuck _knowingly_ took money to
run targeted campaign ads from foreigners, so that's probably not an option.

~~~
Gibbon1
> That wasn't the argument made in this article.

Who cares. Zuckerburg is being told by basically everyone to 'cool it' in all
sorts of ways without actually talking about the actual reason. If he keeps
doubling down it's going to end badly for him.

~~~
jfnixon
Yeah, after all mob rule > rule of law, at least nowadays.

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Jaygles
At least the authors of paid ads and their intent can be reasonably sleuthed
out by those interested in learning their origin and truthiness. The mass of
ad agencies that put their content out through fake accounts with every
attempt at hiding their content's true source(s) are more worrisome for me.

Maybe, if Facebook doesn't require an ad's content to be truthful, just
placing a disclaimer such as "CONTENT IN THIS AD NOT GUARANTEED TO BE TRUE"
will be enough to dissuade its consumers to believe everything they read.

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buboard
This kind of bla bla is getting boring.

> By refusing to stay out of politics, the company is building the case for
> its own breakup.

What does NYtimes think will change if FB and instagram separate?

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rory096
This is an op-ed by a law professor at Columbia, not the Times' editorial
opinion.

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csallen
Who decides who's allowed to publish op-eds in the Times and what topics those
op-eds will be about?

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softwaredoug
Op-Ed authors submit essays, and editors accept or decline. More info here:
[https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115014809107-How-...](https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115014809107-How-to-submit-an-Op-Ed-essay)

~~~
masonic

      and editors accept or decline
    

I think that's the very point @csallen was making.

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weci2i
All things already mentioned in the comments here aside, it’s somewhat
personally infuriating to see headlines like this. Facebook recently disabled
my account because they can’t make sense of who I am (I wrote about it and
posted here earlier). I don’t know what’s going on with their algorithms but
they whacked my very legit account while allowing unfiltered political news.
Seems the priorities are all out of order.

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cyrksoft
What about traditional media lying all the time? By citing "sources"
journalists can say whatever they want without any kind of accountability.
This is just old media crying for losing to new media platforms.

~~~
narrator
True. The number of "anonymous sources say..." stories in the New York Times
has gotten to the point of absurdity. Might as well be getting the news from
4chan.

~~~
alwayseasy
That's not how it works in real media organizations like the NYT. Here's a
nice example of how AP explains "anonymous sources" to its journalists and
readers. It's harder to trick the New York Times than Jacob Wohl and QAnon
believers thought: [https://www.ap.org/about/news-values-and-
principles/telling-...](https://www.ap.org/about/news-values-and-
principles/telling-the-story/anonymous-sources)

~~~
narrator
Except for those two years worth of anonymous sources say "Mueller is going to
take down Trump any day now" stories.

~~~
alwayseasy
Reading comprehension is a prerequisite to good media literacy.

