Political advertising should be banned entirely in my opinion.
As a side note, I wish there was less exposure to political opinion in general. I think there's a problem in how a single celeb, or a close friend talking about their political views can be so influential. Not because they've made a particularly good argument, but because that person is trusted or looked up to.
I often wonder how we would vote if we were blind to the opinions of the media, celebs and friends. I find it fascinating how political memes exist and evolve for almost no reason. How one generation can be almost universally opposed to something like gay marriage, then suddenly in just a generation the majority of the population is in almost religious support of it.
Would this happen if we were forced to think about politics for ourselves instead of relying on the main stream opinion for what's right and wrong? As someone on the spectrum I find frustratingly difficult to find anyone with their own takes on the popular political topics of the day.
> Political advertising should be banned entirely in my opinion.
How can society change for the better if you can't communicate and try to convince people of your ideas in the public space? If you see a problem and think you have a (political) solution, you should be able to advertize your solution.
There is a de-facto ban on political advertizing (or "worldview" advertizing) in Germany, and it is really frustrating. The army can run ads looking for recruits, but you cannot run an ad for a peace campaign. There are ads for cigarettes, soft drinks, and alcohol, but most places won't let you run an ad to advocate, lets say, better healthcare.
Basically, this just helps cement the political status quo.
Advertising allows relatively cheap, very low effort, access to mass manipulation of a population.
If people had to actually effort to share knowledge - as we evolved to having to do, to excel at story telling to pass on knowledge through generations - then that cost would prevent the kind of rapid indoctrination and rallying people based on hate, emotional and irrational thinking - thought that hasn't been checked with critical thinking.
Process of indoctrination can only exist when fear is constantly present, suppressed-repressed reaction - emotional or otherwise - when ego mind guard is constantly active; Ekhart Tolle in The Power of Now references this and the insanity that this leads to.
This. All ads present a very one sided story, for products this is fine as you would need to pay for it, hence the negative consideration. For a political opinion it’s just there to influence and appeal to inherent bias in the direction of the ad.
It's one reason I love the spirit of Tesla and Elon Musk: Tesla doesn't advertise. This means only once a product is good enough that it starts getting talked about, word of mouth - and that is the perfect mechanism, counterpoint, for a company to only gain attention when deserved vs. paying for it; the VC-finance industrial complex of course has allowed products, organizations, to bypass this most important mechanism of friction for "knowledge" propagation via pumping out select advertising messages, and only in last decade via highly targeted ads - allowing relative precision.
The convergence of these different factors in the last decade, including automation taking away jobs from Americans who want to work - along with regulatory capture that has allow bad policy and ability to pay $0 in taxes like Amazon - leading to societal unrest, increased suffering, allowing for a democracy that can be easily destabilized.
We see this now though - so we can steer the ship, leading to America once again becoming strong - an economic powerhouse, recapturing and rerealizing the rhetoric of American patriotism. Once these systems rebound with new guidance, the innovation of free minds directing resources efficiently toward health - toward being free and standing strong for our brothers and sisters, local and global - will lead to an unstoppable force - which hopefully will not require conflict to hold or expand the line of peace as different nations choose to adopt these systems for themselves - with our support and guidance.
Not sure what you're referencing re: explicit intentional policy?
Re: Bad policy - certainly there is policy that was crafted to benefit industry at the cost of society, the environment, surely lacking good policy. Like why is VAT in existence in ~160 countries around the world but not in the US? Do you consider that lacking of policy? That's more regulatory capture leading to politicians being elected who protect the interests of those who helped pay to get them voted in.
I'm talking about NAFTA and other trade deals like it. You referenced automation as taking jobs from Americans, when in reality trade deals arguably had much more of a role in doing that. I misread the second point, but I'm not sure what VAT has to do with anything here.
> How can society change for the better if you can't communicate and try to convince people of your ideas in the public space? If you see a problem and think you have a (political) solution, you should be able to advertize your solution.
It increase impact of money. Who have more money more likely to win.
What if we require that every $1 spent by someone on a political ad must also be balanced by a $1 subsidy for the opponents' ads? Seems fair to me and would reduce the impact of money. (I'm sorry but I forgot who proposed this idea.)
How do you determine the ‘opponent’? If I want to argue against racism which racists do you give the money to? Just any racist in the street? Some organised racist group? Which one? What if my obvious opponent denies they’re racist are they still entitled to the money?
Okay, but wouldn't you consider an ad campaign "political" if it was about voting that oil refineries can't dump run off into a water supply? Would that mean that the same folks running the anti-dumping, environmentally friendly campaign also have to donate money to the oil companies for their pro-dumping initiatives?
I'm not trying to be mean, just pointing out an unintended consequence of such a system.
I'm not convinced, but there's a possible setup: a fund. Entities donate to the fund, and then the money would be distributed among the candidates (either equally, among a smaller number of qualifying candidates, or for all candidates, proportional to e.g. a party's representatives in the legislative branch)
(This would do nothing about money buying influence — as long as the donors are known, their wishes would be carried out by at least the major parties)
I understand the practicality of that. But it sets up an expected-value loop, where a dark horse candidate can expect very little reimbursement. Which limits how much campaigning they can do. So they get few votes.
> How can society change for the better if you can't communicate and try to convince people of your ideas in the public space?
There is a difference between marketing and advertising thats not being recognised.
Marketing is the process of promoting an idea or group, not advertising.
Advertising is one of the channels used in marketing, it's the most expensive and reaches the most people, it's the ideal channel for propaganda.
If you banned political marketing then yes you would effectively ban promoting political ideals all together.
However if you ban political advertising you can effectively limit propaganda with little to no negative side effects to grass roots political movements. This is because grass roots politics use other marketing channels and don't have the budget to be able to compete with the propaganda budget of a foreign government.
Even if grass roots did have the money to advertise other channels like social and word of mouth are more effective for them, banning political advertising would still work in their favour.
The thing is such a ban ammounts to a subcontractor ban - those who own them may still advertise. It is less fungible but still a propaganda channel and made more exclusive as parties need to buy the whole hog instead of the ribs metaphorically.
Foreign governments funding grassroots and "grassroots" is an old trick to the Cold War as well from both sides.
In America you get a voter packet with detailed information on the Candidate's position on key issues, plans, etc. To me this is far superior to a 30s ad clip produced by some marketing agency that specializes in being hip for college students.
This strikes way too close to throwing the 1A out the window, in all the ways that touch the everyday activities.
That sci-fi book you wrote, with Lord Admiral character? It was a manifesto for a new governance system. That meme you shared online a month ago? It's now associated with a particular candidate. Your proposal voiced in parent's meeting at school? It's a political position favoring a particular social group.
Not to say everything is political, no. However any single aspect of life can, and many ultimately will, be talked about and negotiated on by a politician or a political movement at some point.
I often wonder how we would vote if we were blind to the opinions of the media, celebs and friends.
The biggest difference would be among candidates and the policies they propose. Presently the celebs & the media gate-keep which opinions & political programs are acceptable.
We effectively have two Overton Windows, and the candidates are constrained to the overlap of the two. The first Window is the usual voters' preference, expressed freely in the privacy of the voting booth. The second Window is maintained by the media - only the candidates that espouse certain views & policies get to be listed on the ballot, endorsed by mainstream parties, etc. All other ones get to be "crazy crystal lady"[1] at best, and maybe even "celebrated & defended by Russia's propaganda machine"[2].
But there is a difference between advertising and propaganda/activism.
Printing a book that brings you to an understanding of a political idea [1] is one thing. Passively sticking your posters on other people books (after paying) is another.
Propaganda gets a lot of well deserved criticism as it is often dishonest, we simply tolerate similar dishonesty in advertisements.
[1] Whether by truth or lies does not really matter in a sense here.
You don't need a complete ban, just sensible financial limits. In the UK, campaign spending by political parties must not exceed £30,000 ($38,000) per candidate. That's enough money to inform potential voters of your policies, but little enough to reduce the influence of money in politics to a minimum. The EU referendum was highly controversial because some campaign groups may have spent over £15m ($19m) nationally, which I understand is chump change in the US.
* A person who hides his discontent about a fashion, policy, or political regime makes it harder for others to express discontent.*
One socially significant consequence of preference falsification is widespread public support for social options that would be rejected decisively in a vote taken by secret ballot.
Most people's political views are molded by first their parents, then by their social circles. We're an "average" of the people we hang around with. It's extremely rare for someone to be an outlier in political views. Not saying it's impossible, but it always takes effort. Most people don't like "effort". Most people don't even vote. Their opinions normally only exist as empty words.
As much as political advertising sucks, I have to agree it should still happen. Finding ways to squash political opinion, good or bad, has unintended consequences. It's not like "politics" is a new thing. It's always been a talking point. Whether at home, work or the market square with someone on a literal soap box (where the term comes from).
> How one generation can be almost universally opposed to something like gay marriage, then suddenly in just a generation the majority of the population is in almost religious support of it.
2 reasons.
1. That isn't actually what happened, DADT was in the 90's, for example, and
2. Each generation learns from the mistakes of the generation before it (and makes mistakes of their own).
DADT was the death knell of anti-gay sentiment. It was the military drawing a line in the sand, and when that line got stepped over, drawing another line in the sand. It was inevitable that line would be stepped over as well.
I had a thought recently: What if we voted for policies instead of people? A bunch of policies are put forward, we vote on those, then we choose people to implement them/oversee their implementation. I'm sure this falls down under any level of analysis, but as someone who has avoided politics all his life, it seems soooooo ridiculously silly to hold this popularity contest / PR event we call elections.
The problem is when the voters see a government with expenses > revenues and send someone in to implement:
1) Increase government spending on services by 10%
2) Reduce taxes by 10%
3) Run a balanced budget. No borrowing or tricks.
The politicians need to have some level of freedom to deal with impossible voter demands and then you get back to voting for people who are most likely to make decisions the voter likes.
I've long wondered if it's easier to influence people in more densely populated areas. There's so much concentrated advertising and messaging to such a large number of people, it seems inescapable.
What constantly reinforces this idea is the amount of, what appears to be emotionally driven political conversation that comes from densely populated areas.
Totally agree. All ads present a very one sided story, for products this is fine as you would need to pay for it, hence the negative consideration. For a political opinion it’s just there to influence and appeal to inherent bias in the direction of the ad.
You might find the BBC documentary “The Century of the Self” interesting. It’s a four part series and the first episode is a little slow but I found it really interesting to see how quickly businesses and politicians learned to influence the masses.
> How one generation can be almost universally opposed to something like gay marriage, then suddenly in just a generation the majority of the population is in almost religious support of it.
This is a bit ironic way to phrase it since (in some areas) the previous generation was against gay marriage under the influence of religious institutions. (to a significant degree anyway) The new generation has very non-religious support for it.
As much as I fear the China with regard to censorship, I think this could be a wise move for all social media platforms.
There are two reason why I think this:
a) Political advertising on social media is very hard to police as you can create huge amount of versions of each ad and target very different audiences.
b) Political advertising at volume favors the richest campaigns with the largest amount of knowledge about their targets.
By blanket removing political advertising from these platforms more focus would have to be made for more traditional forms of political work (door to door etc) and thus a slower more deliberate political climate.
It is by no means panacea but a good start.
Norway has always forbiden political TV-advertising, something that I think has helped the debate stay a bit less polarized, though that has changed with the advent of Facebook and it's ilk.
This isn't about political ads, it's about silencing any politics on the platform.
There are over 80 million US downloads of TikTok as of October 2018, with an active user count of 40 million [1]. This means China's authoritarian regime is influencing the political discussion of 40m+ US citizens.
You say this ban is good, I disagree. In the US, a lack of informed political discussion is one major factor keeping young voters away from the polls. It also prevents global free speech from reaching 400 million Chinese users.
This isn't about political ads, it's about silencing any politics on the platform.
That's not true at all, at least not on the surface. Do you have any proof of anyone being banned as a user for posting political content?
From the article: “Any paid ads that come into the community need to fit the standards for our platform, and the nature of paid political ads is not something we believe fits the TikTok platform experience,” says Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s VP of Global Business Solutions, who recently joined the company from Facebook.
“To that end, we will not allow paid ads that promote or oppose a candidate, current leader, political party or group or issue at the federal, state or local level — including election-related ads, advocacy ads or issue ads,” he says.
But isn't TikTok specifically talking about paid ads in this article?
Our parent wrote that paid political advertising is favoring those with the greatest amount of money to spend and therefore (as far as I understood) reducing the quality of political conversation. (Which sounds plausible to me, since money is a factor largely unrelated to quality.)
You seem to imply that paid political advertising is increasing the quality of the discourse. Is that right? If yes, I'd love to know why!
The forum is the right place for political discussion, regardless of what the forum is. As for the political discussion being "informed", that is subjective.
How is political defined? What happens in the US is that if certain financing is unavailable to be used in a certain way, like direct support of a candidate or party, then that money is shifted into “issue advertising” which presents a topic of political disagreement to favor one side over another. Within the information domain of a political debate, there may be human activities that are non-political but political organizations disguise themselves within, for example, adoption services in the abortion debate. Many messages, such as car advertising have an implicit political message that public funding of roads is positive and liberating. Maybe Norway has the line between political and everything else figured out or maybe there is a cultural definition that makes it easier, but banning political advertising seems very difficult.
Seems simple enough to me: if it's funded by a political party or candidate, it's a political advertisement, regardless of the content. There are always ways of illegally hiding candidates' expenses, but most of the time it should be obvious who funded an ad opposing or promoting a politician.
Why not ban all advertising? Isn't that the discussion we should be having?
If we're going to accept that advertising is an ever-existing industry in our lives, then shouldn't the conversation be not about what kinds of advertising we should ban, but media awareness in general?
Bans should be reserved for the most egregious, such as products that kill (tobacco) or explicit incitements to violence, for example.
Ideals are unfortunately insignificant here. Companies are all about doing the legal minimum, especially if that is in line with profit maximum. Right, wrong, or indifferent.
Also, I believe they have absolute editorial latitude. They’re not a utility.
Don’t want to wet-blanket your post because I do think companies should be idealistic, bold, and consistent with their policies, notwithstanding what laws or constitutional rights dictate. But you can’t compel them to be, and arguing that they should be leads you down a path of moot argument and friction.
Doesn't mean the public should let them get away with it, or whitewash it. Ideals mean something to the public (I hope). We should make that plain. Its about the only leverage we have.
Censoring information about Hong Kong protests may be taken as a bad thing. But it seems obvious to me, that banning pro LGBT content in app for kids is very desirable.
Disagree. Kids can learn about all sorts of people. Not sure where that comment was supposed to be going. Should images of black people be banned from apps for kids?
Yeah it is effectively normism deciding "respectability" and "morals" which are actively antimoral. I see no difference between that and banning depictions of mixed races families to "discourage miscegenation".
It is the category of "stop interfering with my indoctrination of my kids with that pesky reality"!
As a side note, I wish there was less exposure to political opinion in general. I think there's a problem in how a single celeb, or a close friend talking about their political views can be so influential. Not because they've made a particularly good argument, but because that person is trusted or looked up to.
I often wonder how we would vote if we were blind to the opinions of the media, celebs and friends. I find it fascinating how political memes exist and evolve for almost no reason. How one generation can be almost universally opposed to something like gay marriage, then suddenly in just a generation the majority of the population is in almost religious support of it.
Would this happen if we were forced to think about politics for ourselves instead of relying on the main stream opinion for what's right and wrong? As someone on the spectrum I find frustratingly difficult to find anyone with their own takes on the popular political topics of the day.