Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar...
by MarkMc on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @01:39AM
(#16685573)
Do we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater? We can have regulation that bans the use personal information for political ads but allows it for toothpaste ads
Re:Facebook has lost $100B in 10 days and now advertisers ar...
by socialist_coder on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @10:25AM
(#16688670)
I hope so. My concern is that it is hard to define what a political ad is sometimes. For example, if you have an ad that claims that some specific ethnic group gets food stamps more than another, is that a political ad? Because those are the kinds of ads that Russia was buying.
The Facebook site is evil and should be destroyed because of 2 reasons, in my opinion.
Firstly, the news feed is solely designed to get you to stay on the site for longer. And what that means is you get an echo chamber. So, idiot people get idiot posts that agree with them. It's not just a problem on one side of the political spectrum, it's a problem for any extreme view. Anti-vaxxers, left wing communists, and right wing fascists all get into their echo chamber and never get out.
Secondly, the advertising platform that Facebook has created is too powerful. It lets you micro-target people in a way that is absolutely perfect for political ads. You find people vulnerable to an emotional message and bombard them with your emotionally responsive ads.
Facebook ads are good for non-political things as well, but in this case, we'll have to throw the baby out with the bathwater I think.