For instance (from Wikipedia):
> In April 2016, Correct the Record announced that it would be spending $1 million to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about Clinton.[1][4] The organization's president, Brad Woodhouse, said they had "about a dozen people engaged in [producing] nothing but positive content on Hillary Clinton" and had a team distributing information "particularly of interest to women".
... and Hacker News, Reddit, Twitter, etc.
When I'm discussing politics with friends on Facebook, at least I know I'm talking to real people whom I've met in person. This isn't true with most other platforms. (Except some followers on Twitter...)
It's just rather difficult to distinguish between the two.
But those ways didn't help Donald Trump get elected.
Whatever it is, we're going to see that "ads which influence the public for political aims" are going to bleed juuuust on the other edge of that definition.
Also interesting that Facebook's response to this issue is to collect more data -- this time about "advertisers with specific political agendas", which seems like an interesting database to mine (although maybe not that hard to collect, idk).
In this context, Facebook decides. Broadly, the FEC has jurisdiction over defining and regulating "electioneering communications" [1].
[1] https://transition.fec.gov/pages/brochures/spec_notice_broch...
Anonymous or pseudonymous political speech is very valuable for a robust democratic debate, and it is extremely sad - though not exactly surprising - that it is being eradicated under the guise of "transparency" and "protecting the elections from foreign influence" and all kinds of bullshit like that.
The top image here (http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/11/house-democrats-release-r...) is one of these Russia ads. However, I wouldn't call that a political ad, just a terrible meme that happens to be about Clinton and the election.
Maybe ask why America is the only democratic nation with uncapped campaign spending.
"Jailed for a Facebook post:" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/facebook-com...
Even then, in this case, Peralta was not prosecuted. Which is probably OK if he was just extremely stupid and not actually intended to proceed with burning the house down. But specific violent threat is not the same as just speech, and one should never present it as such.
In America you can also freely speak slander on the internet and the victim will have to live with it for life.
It is fascinating that you do not recognize how contradictory your statement is. "Campaign finance caps" is the limitation of speech, so if "the forces" prevent it from happening, they are not shutting down any speech - they enable it. With that, I have never heard any of the organization opposing campaign finance caps ever shutting down any political speech. Can you name 2-3 cases?
I can name a case where a prominent politician, known for support of campaign finance limitations (and running an extremely well-financed campaign), tried to suppress clearly political speech against that politician, under the guise of campaign finance laws. You know this case as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
> In America you can also freely speak slander on the internet and the victim will have to live with it for life.
Slander is a verbal spoken defamation. Defamation is a persistent form is called libel. Both are actionable offenses in the US. Of course, proving libel is not easy. Neither it should be.
Where on earth do you get an idea like that?
No, the US is not the only democratic nation with uncapped campaign spending, for any plausible definition of "democratic" and "campaign spending".
The caps in other countries might not implemented in an umbrella dollar amount but as rules like no TV ads, or the dollar amount could only apply to certain items. Often it is a cap on donations which effectively caps spending. At the end of the day, democracies generally must limit campaigning influence because if they don’t, they might end up with skewed democratic process, possibly a reality show star as president.
This is a gross misunderstanding of the Citizens United ruling.
"For even greater political ads transparency, we have also built a tool that lets anyone see all of the ads a page is running [and are] creating a searchable archive of past political ads."
"In order to require verification for all of these pages and advertisers, we will hire thousands of more people."
Sounds like Facebook has a lot more work to do.
Let's say I'm a foreign intelligence agency and want to influence people through ads. Feels like I just need to set up a shell corporation based in the states. Once I'm authorized, I can load the creative offshore.
It solves the problem of Facebook getting bad PR.
I'd be shocked if Zuck gives 2 shits about any of this, beyond thinking about how he can utilize facebook to get himself elected.
I don't know if HN has taken any steps to combat the right-wing/Russian propaganda campaign that's impacting most US social websites, but it'd be naive to think the site hasn't been targeted.
I think that's a Facebook targeting problem, not a problem with the people buying the ads.
Somehow Facebook has no idea where I am, and I get local ads for all kinds for businesses in random cities to which I've never been.
There's also the concept of extended targeting. For example, as an advertiser, you run Los Angeles ads in Palm Springs because there's a lot of people who live in or frequently visit Palm Springs who also have homes/businesses in Los Angeles. Ditto to LA-Las Vegas, SFO-Reno, Chicagoland-Wisconsin, Minneapolis-Southern Manitoba/Western Ontario, Houston-Austin, San Antonio-Padre, Cincinnati-Carolinas, etc...
Of course, there may be controls the user has when creating ads that may've been messed up, I'm not sure, but I honestly only recall a few ads that were in my area so that I could, if inclined, act on them. The vast majority? The only way it would work is if they sold me on their platform so hard that I sold my house and bought into their district in their state.
Why,? The world would be a better place with less pointless political advertising
If we want to get special interests out of everything like we claim, then we need to have the platforms for people to get themselves out there to be both effective and cheap enough to do so.
Who gets to define "pointless?"
More specifically, the filtering would be informed by the biases and prejudices of those who control the gates. As it always is.
It doesn't apply to online ads, which has become a serious problem with the amount of money flowing into Brexit from illegally-anonymous sources.
>Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads.
How does this interact with the First Amendment? If I'm paying for a local TV company to run an add, wouldn't restricting my ability be in violation? What if I buy the local TV company and choose which ads are ran?
Edit: What about non-political or non-issue ads that still have a political component? For example, if I was a billionaire wanting to cause some certain political divides, I could definitely create ads that still cause great controversy. For example, spend some money developing a bullet proof school outfit, and then advertise it heavily. It is a bunch of extra work and expenditure I wouldn't do if I could just run gun control ads, but if those were banned are you going to ban any advertisements related to any merchandise that is related to political issues?
The first amendment only frees your speech from state suppression.
Except when they want to hide behind the legal defence of “common carrier”. Can’t have it both ways.
It doesn't interact with the First Amendment at all. Private corporations can make their own rules about what speech they will and will not allow. The First Amendment only deals with the government's ability to censor individuals, not a private entity's policies regarding allowable communications. Most Americans don't seem to understand this.
> I think many Americans understand this very well, and thus resorting to narrow legalistic view of the issue misunderstands their position.
You're being disingenuous here or at the very least you put way too much faith in the average American's knowledge of basic civics / their own government. I've had to point out that the First Amendment doesn't apply to private employment numerous times in the past (i.e., this is not my first comment) in situations where the other commenter literally did not understand the Constitution and the basic history surrounding it. The demographic reading Hacker News is not at all indicative of the U.S. population at large and usually consists of college-educated, middle class knowledge workers.
[edit] Clearly the original parent does understand the First Amendment.
> You're being disingenuous here or at the very least you put way too much faith in the average American's knowledge of basic civics / their own government.
You don't need to known details of government functioning to value free speech. Valuing free speech is one of those natural values most people - at least in American culture - embrace by default, without much need of educating them on the details.
> [edit] Clearly the original parent does understand the First Amendment.
That very well may be (though OP recognized their error in an edit), but the comment I responded to talked about "most Americans", not just one online commenter.
Obviously the threat is assumed. But can congress explicitly threaten a company? Is this all congress needs to do to run around the first amendment in the 21st century - threaten internet companies to do it for them?
Just like it's not a First Amendment violation for you to refuse me to paint racist slogan on the side of my house, does not mean it's a First Amendment violation for me to refuse to run your ads on your site.
Interesting!