
Facebook promised to fix political ads on its platform. It hasn't - MilnerRoute
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/01/tech/facebook-election-ad-problems/index.html
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pimmen
In 2014 there was a mini scandal in Sweden about Facebook allowing a page
titled "Vitmakt neger slakt" (roughly translating to "White power nigger
slaughter") dedicated to what you expect a page with that name, with
absolutely no irony attached, be dedicated to stay up despite multiple reports
of hate speech [1]. A spokesperson from Facebook Sweden had to explain himself
and he said that the reports were sent to a team in Dublin to be reviewed.
When asked if the page was viewed by any Facebook staff who can read Swedish
at any time during the review process, since it is clearly hate speech to
anyone with half a brain, he couldn't say. The page was taken down a few hours
after media ran the story.

I have a hard time feeling sorry for Facebook about all this work they have to
do now to make sure the political discourse on their platform isn't bonkers.
They're killing off a lot of media companies and now they're shocked,
_shocked_ , that all those ethical demands people made to the media industry
is being directed at Facebook instead. What the hell did they expect?

[1][https://www.metro.se/artikel/facebook-plockar-inte-ner-
neger...](https://www.metro.se/artikel/facebook-plockar-inte-ner-negerslakt-
sida-trots-anm%C3%A4lningar-xr)

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scblock
I wouldn't expect them to fix anything. When you have the ethics of a company
like Facebook it's much easier to claim you're going to fix something and then
keep doing it. You can't cut off the money faucet if that's all you care
about, especially when you know you're not actually going to get in trouble
for it.

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vertexFarm
Exactly. The past couple years have been an exercise in the inadequacies of
the honor system. There are no consequences; we can't expect either industry
or government entities to self-regulate out of basic human decency. Their
efforts to fix the problem amount to nothing more than a cynical PR move. They
halfheartedly assuage doubts until the news cycle shifts again. There are no
consequences for anyone.

~~~
ilovecaching
I guess you haven't heard about the fees and penalties levied against
companies who fail to conform to FTC regulations and government mandates.
There's plenty of regulation. It's simply a hard problem to solve.

The media just wants to spin the story so people will stop looking at FB and
Google for news and pay their subscription fees.

~~~
ardy42
> I guess you haven't heard about the fees and penalties levied against
> companies who fail to conform to FTC regulations and government mandates.
> There's plenty of regulation. It's simply a hard problem to solve.

I've heard plenty about them. The fees and penalties are often so small
compared to the revenues of the companies they're levied against that they
seem more like a cost of doing business than a punishment that could actually
change behavior.

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dmalvarado
Can't they just make money while selling 0 political ad space? The whackamole
infrastructure and the toll it takes on literally everyone and everything
involved has got to be worse then not selling political adspace at all.
Imagine a Facebook where you didn't have to feel rage at your stupid uncle
sharing some dumb, over-simplified text graphic. Might actually be a net
positive.

~~~
ilovecaching
Facebook is a platform where you can promote your business or political agenda
and still reach a large amount of people regardless of your budget. The media
doesn't cover all of the good that digital advertising does for people who are
trying to make a difference and wouldn't be able to afford an ad in a major
news paper.

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creato
The person you are responding to was talking specifically about political
advertising. Your response is defending all advertising?

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biophysboy
As somebody who left Facebook several months ago and has been skeptical about
its public utility for longer, I honestly wonder if this problem is simply too
large.

Even if they have some super duper fake news detection mechanism, surely it
will generate false positives due to the sheer volume of political ads?

CNN is claiming neglect. They are probably right. But I think FB is
overwhelmed too. Especially now that they have news vultures like Vice dunking
on them post-Cambridge Analytica.

~~~
EpicEng
>I think FB is overwhelmed

Then perhaps they should stay out of political advertising.

~~~
biophysboy
I agree.

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Circumnavigate
Until these corporations are properly held accountable we can expect the same
old.

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echevil
It is indeed a hard problem to solve.

I guess more traditional news media are not free of such problem as well. Who
knows if every single ads on their site is not problematic, or if their
reporters are not secretly sponsored by problematic sources

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reaperducer
_I guess more traditional news media are not free of such problem as well._

Traditional media is more hands-on and face-to-face. There are salespeople
involved, and better money trails. This is largely because the salespeople get
a cut of the money spent.

Since Facebook decided to cut the salespeople out and automate the ad buying
process, there are no gatekeepers. There is no salesperson wondering why an ad
buy for a local congressional race is paid for with a check from a Russian
bank.

Facebook and others are trying to build makeshift gatekeepers through AI. But
AI, while very interesting, is still not up to the task.

~~~
ilovecaching
The traditional media also pumps out loads of fake news, FUDs, and Ads by
super-pacs. The only thing the traditional media isn't doing is selling enough
ads to have a world scale impact, because they're a dying form of media
compared to social networking and the search.

When I'm on twitter I see a nice mix of utter crap and useful information.
When I read the NYT it's just a carefully curated selection of total crap.

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reaperducer
_When I read the NYT it 's just a carefully curated selection of total crap._

Based on that statement, I have to believe that you don't actually read the
New York Times. You read a very small subset of NYT articles, probably online,
that appeal to your anger response.

If you actually read the entirety of the New York Times, you'd feel
differently. Or at least foolish for making such a sweeping statement.

~~~
echevil
I think it's equally problematic if you simply trust everything you read on
New York Times (or any other media)

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code4tee
Expecting a company to self-regulate itself to stop a certain sub-population
of potential customers from buying its services is, not surprisingly,
ineffective.

~~~
ilovecaching
It's not self regulation. You're misinformed. There are millions to billions
in penalties that the FTC and other agencies can give out to organizations for
all sorts of crap.

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a1369209993
> billions in penalties

And yet, Facebook is still solvent, because surprise, surprise, the non-self
regulation isn't happening.

Self regulation is all that's left, and it is, not surprisingly, ineffective.

