"initial push" being the operative term ... posts can be shared to a broad audience by giving fb money, which they did.

So boosting the post, but that wouldn't count as a political ad. I'd like to see what Facebook would count as a "political ad".

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.

Obviously we don't know yet, but I would be absolutely shocked if they don't basically flag everything about well-known politicians as "political", and paying to boost something like that should fall under the new restrictions. It would be trivial for most large tech companies to make an automatic "political post" classifier at this point. The post "boosting" use case is a pretty easy target too because blocking someone from paying to boost something is fairly low-risk.

You'd be surprised at how influential memes are these days ... as ridiculous as it is to consider, they are absolutely political speech, and can be used as propaganda.

Is this a serious question?

Maybe ask why America is the only democratic nation with uncapped campaign spending.

America is also the only democratic nation with First Amendment. In other democratic nations (like Britain) you can now be investigated, fined or jailed for posting a video or retweeting or sharing something on Facebook. I somehow prefer the former.

And you can in America too.

"Jailed for a Facebook post:" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/facebook-com...

No, it's not jailed for facebook post, it's jailed for a facebook post calling to an immediate specific violent action against a specific person. If a mafia boss tells his capo "let's whack that mofo", then it'd be very disingenuous to claim the mafia boss was prosecuted for speech, not for organizing a murder. Obviously, free speech protections do not apply when the speech is a part of a crime - either one that happened or one that is about to happen. Saying "let's burn this specific guy's house down" is well within the limits that should get police's attention.

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.

You read his comment right? He publicly posted "...It's time to strike back. Let’s burn this motherfucker’s house down." About a police officer. It is not right to post that.

First amendment is just symbolic of course. Once your speech encroaches on enough profit, it will be brought down in no time by the same forces that prevent campaign finance caps.

In America you can also freely speak slander on the internet and the victim will have to live with it for life.

> Once your speech encroaches on enough profit, it will be brought down in no time by the same forces that prevent campaign finance caps.

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.

> Maybe ask why America is the only democratic nation with uncapped campaign spending.

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".

Actually since Citizens United this is effectively pretty much the case.

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.

> Actually since Citizens United this is effectively pretty much the case.

This is a gross misunderstanding of the Citizens United ruling.