Yes, it's not like this is a problem that hasn't been dealt with in other media.

I think one of the things that makes it more difficult in the case of facebook is that the ad targeting makes it possible to serve specific ads only to very specific groups.

This means that if the ads say untrue or damaging things, most people will never know, as opposed to newspaper or TV ads. In my mind this argues for at least as strict controls, if not more stringent.

This was dealt with in other media the same way that Facebook decided to deal with it.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...

TV networks are required to air even untruthful ads as not to run afoul of regulations governing political ads. It's also likely that campaign laws requiring all political ads to be true would be unconstitutional.

Either way, the very fact that the Elizabeth Warren campaign is promoting a fairly blatant falsehood (and many people are happy to parrot a false talking point in the name of truth) is a symptom of the same problem that would force any reasonable entity to make the same decision Facebook just did. Truth isn't very popular, especially in politics and people (on every side of most political issues) would lose their mind if falsehoods were strictly banned.

I think it’s important to mention that Elizabeth Warren is displaying a blatantly false ad to illustrate this exact point: she thinks that it’s ridiculous that Facebook is airing obviously false ads and has no accountability.

The blatantly false part I'm talking about isn't "Mark Zuckerberg is endorsing Trump" which everyone understands to be the obviously false statement, but the subsequent argument that is still being repeated here that "If Trump tries to lie in a TV ad, most networks will refuse to air it."

A whole bunch of comments here are along the lines of: how come Facebook isn't required to abide by the rules that other media companies have to follow? But this is the exact opposite of how things are - small media companies can adopt whatever standards they want, but the broadcast networks have to air even false political advertising, because these types of regulations are more about protecting fairness and free political speech than about the truth. This is an example of Facebook subjecting themselves to the highest possible standards, instead of making arbitrary editorial decisions that smaller actors can get away with.

It's not the same high standard when they allow targeting of specific people and groups highly vulnerable to bullshit with no one else included who might identify it as such.

How would this be any different from advertising on certain shows or talk radio that peddle huge amounts of BS and are almost exclusively consumed by gullible people?

Again, the point is that the standards followed by broadcast TV are higher than the standards followed by, random media companies that aren't regulated. And what Facebook is doing here aligns closely with how public institutions that are held to the highest standards operate. The general principle regarding the freedom of speech is that the closer you are to being a public institution, the more open you ought to be in terms of the types of speech you accept.

So the criticism here isn't merely wrong, it's exactly backwards.

I can freely choose what shows, radio stations and other media I see, and see the same ads as their audience. In the case of targeted ads, I can't move from demographic to demographic as I please, so some campaigns are inaccessible to me.

To me, that opaqueness separating one filter bubble from the next is an important quality. It may raise the effectiveness of propaganda campaigns significantly.

> It's also likely that campaign laws requiring all political ads to be true would be unconstitutional.

That can't possibly be true. The cornerstone of democracy is informed voters.

That can't possibly be not true. The state has not and can not have any role in determining what is "true", if only freedom of speech has any value. As soon as the state gets to decide what is "true" and ban speech on that basis, freedom of speech is destroyed. In the USSR, there was a section in the criminal code banning "knowingly false statements defaming the state and the social order". Obviously, people who were punished under this section were ones that said anything that the communist regime didn't like, and their statements always were "knowingly false", because the same communist regime decided what is false and what is not. I don't think the US should follow this example. That's why the Constitution exists and why the First amendment is the first one. Because it's that important. Yes, the price of it is somebody can say something you don't like. You'll survive it.

Seems like a straightforward first amendment violation to me, exactly because nobody agrees on what's "true".

Defamation, for example, is not protected by the First Amendment, and deciding whether some information is true or not is crucial to determining whether it constitutes defamation.

This is irrelevant - there are all kinds of speech that are generally accepted to be outside the scope of free speech. Political speech that includes false claims does not fall under that and never has. If taking down "false speech" was something the US government can easily enforce, we'd make China look like a shining beacon of freedom. And the proper recourse to such speech is the court, not poorly paid and overworked social media moderators.

Also, it's important to keep in mind that the Trump ad in question does not make claims that are easily proven to be false - they are merely BS claims that are entirely unsubstantiated. I don't think they'd be taken down even if a rule against false claims existed and was properly followed. There's no evidence given for such claims, but not all claims without evidence are false.

Part of the regulation could be that Facebook can only serve stateless political ads. If a politician wants to advertise, they can't pick and choose any parameters.

It would be better if advertisers had their own pages where all of their advertisements would be shown as posts with the parameters they used for targeting.

Basically Facebook needs to make the whole process maximally transparent, and claim it is just a telephone line, and only people telling the lies are responsible for the lies.

That sounds like Facebook's Ad Library feature[1]. It doesn't show you the targeting parameters used, but it does show the age/gender demographics the ad was actually shown to.

[1] E.g. https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...

What if we just banned targeting users and groups of users and instead only allowed ad targeting based on the content of the web page?

Basically a smart version of a banner ad.

I'd support this but moneyed interests would not. Advertisers wouldn't have an excuse to build the digital panopticon anymore, and a lot of the effort to build it would be wasted. That'd be too much justice for this world.

Surely there are some parameters that would make sense? I don't want to see political ads from a local election across the country. There's also no reason for me to see an ad for the Republican primaries if I am voting in the Democratic primaries. Etc

"Surely there are some parameters that would make sense?"

For sure...

"I don't want to see political ads from a local election across the country."

They should be targeting eligible voters. If a local election is taking place across the country, then, of course, you shouldn't be seeing the ads.

"There's also no reason for me to see an ad for the Republican primaries if I am voting in the Democratic primaries. Etc"

No, this defeats the purpose. We should be trying to expose people to more viewpoints - not creating more echo-chambers.

FEC rules don't really cover who sees what, they cover what anyone can see.

Now we can expand on those rules to dictate who can see what, but no matter who views the ad, it would likely be bland, and confer no new viewpoint at all. Lest it fall afoul of FEC rules.

What we're really talking about with FEC rules, is a return to the middle, because extremist views can be shut down by pointing out misleading content in the ads and subsequently rejecting them. Whereas the bland, meaningless stuff will always be free of any misleading content, and be subsequently approved.

> Whereas the bland, meaningless stuff will always be free of any misleading content, and be subsequently approved.

I'm not sure what media you consume, but TV and radio ads always seem filled with misleading content about political rivals.

Your 4th paragraph contradicts your 6th.

>> Part of the regulation could be that Facebook can only serve stateless political ads. If a politician wants to advertise, they can't pick and choose any parameters.

> Surely there are some parameters that would make sense? I don't want to see political ads from a local election across the country. There's also no reason for me to see an ad for the Republican primaries if I am voting in the Democratic primaries. Etc

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. A couple factors need to be balanced: the ads need to have the minimum targeting to not be wasteful and pointless, but they can't be so narrowly targeted that oversight by the media and voting public becomes difficult.

I think the right balance is something along the lines of: 1) coarse-grained geo-targeting allowed down to an MSA at the narrowest and 2) no targeting based on interests, demographics, or ideology.

I was honestly thinking for national elections when I wrote this.

There are some parameters that make sense, for example targetting congressional districts.

What I'm mostly against is zip code, ideology/interest, racial/sexual/etc factors being taken into consideration.

Why would you buy such an ad given that almost every election in the US is geography bound?

Even TV & newspaper ads are regionally bound.

Well you kind of have to allow targeting based on location/home location.

I like this solution but they wouldn't. It brings them back to the problem of trying to tell which ads are political in nature or not and policing normal ads for such content.

Some parameters will still be picked for them, right? It would be a bit silly to show ads in Dutch to Danish people that can't speak Dutch.

Television advertising isn't stuck in the dark ages. Political candidates run and create ads targeted at specific counties or districts.

Next to Facebook targeting, that is the dark ages.

True, but that level of targeting isn't completely unprecedented. Direct mail was an extremely targeted form of political advertising and faced zero content regulations. (Much of the targeting was achieved by buying magazine subscription data from magazine publishers; you could target households pretty effectively based on which magazines they subscribed to.)

Agreed. The fact that it's harder to do on the web for whatever reason shouldn't mean they get to ignore the rules.

I see this sort of paradoxical mindset all over the place: X breaks the rules but X is just so successful, or so full of potential, so shouldn't we just bend or break the rules for it? But the fact is that X is probably successful or full of potential in large part because it's been breaking the rules, and the rules exist for a reason.

If there were rules governing political ads in social media, they would look very much like Facebook's policy. At least TV ads (which are more tightly regulated due to the use of radio spectrum, which are public goods) are regulated as to force TV stations to air even political ads they deem untruthful:

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...

From that perspective, Facebook deciding to censor untruthful political ads would be much more akin to ignoring the rules.

What this ignores is that there is a finite amount of ads one can run.

It would be easy enough for Facebook to classify ads as political/non-political and for political ads have more scrutiny over what they decide to air. And have strict penalties against those who choose to mis-classify their ads.

Or make political ads visibile publicly for anyone to search for details as to who created them, how much they paid, how many people were targeted.

All these are valid solutions to the problem, but Facebook doesn't want to do it, because if they can get away with what they're doing right now, they can make a ton of ad money.

> It would be easy enough for Facebook to classify ads as political/non-political and for political ads have more scrutiny over what they decide to air.

I doubt it is as easy as you think because not all political ads look like "vote for foo!"

They will evolve to look like governor foo paid company xyz which sells home security products to make an ad about how unsafe the country is...while governor foo runs on a platform all about reducing crime rates...etc

Look at some of the propaganda during the 2016 election era for instance

Facebook already classifies ads about "social issues, elections or politics" and those ads are subject to extra scrutiny[1].

[1] https://www.facebook.com/help/180607332665293

> Or make political ads visibile publicly for anyone to search for details as to who created them, how much they paid, how many people were targeted.

Isn't that already the case? You can already search all political ads and see who ran them, how much was paid, and the number of people who saw the ad.

Is it? I can’t find any documentation on how to query all the political campaigns that are currently active, who is paying for them and who they’re targeting. All of this information is critically important to be made public to ensure the integrity of our elections.

Did you look at https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/ ? It should show all active (and inactive) ads, information about the page that ran the ad, and who paid for the ad. It doesn't show targeting, but it does show amount spent and the gender/age/geography of who saw the ads.

This used to be more of a problem, but IIRC they have forced political ads to be publicly visible to anyone on the page that's running the ads.

>> Yes, it's not like this is a problem that hasn't been dealt with in other media.

And it was dealt with poorly. My whole life, minorities (persons of color esp) have been scapegoated in elections in ads on TV, etc. So, yes, political ad censorship has been dealt with by media, and the "deal" was that victims would be minorities.

In a sense, Facebook just makes it fair. Now anyone can criticize anyone, everyone gets to suffer equally. Those who don't like it should have spoken up decades earlier.

I'm posing anon for obvious reasons. My hope: Lets let Facebook win this round, so we as a society come up with decency rules that help all of us, rather than just defending protected groups.

> minorities (persons of color esp) have been scapegoated in elections in ads on TV, etc.

Do you have any sources for this?

IIRC, Willie Horton.

My whole life, minorities (people who earn more money than average esp) have been scapegoated in elections...

What if you said this? What happens when Bernie Sanders run a dozen ads saying the “rich” haven’t been “paying their fair share” and what standard would allow this to be consider truthful, or will the ad need to define words like rich and fair (good luck on that 2nd one)?

Yes, talking about corporations avoiding taxes is the same as talking about Mexicans and refugees coming to destroy your country. You really need a dose of nuance.

This was pointed out elsewhere but needs to be repeated:

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...

The regulations exist in the exact opposite direction as you claim - TV networks are required to air even untruthful ads as not to run afoul of regulations governing political ads, which means Facebook's policy is closely aligned with the actual regulations as they exist.

Also, most newspapers at least online are are outsourcing part of their ad placement to third-party ad tech companies so I'd be shocked if there was any editorial control.

> It's one of the reasons why political ads are so bland and content-free: they don't want to make any claims that could be evaluated as true or false.

I keep getting mailings in Ohio indicating that if I sign a petition to put a certain issue on the ballot The Chinese Will Know Where I Live And Come Get Me. It's a completely idiotic campaign, and of course, it's all blatant lies. (similar ads appear on television)

This place you're living sounds relatively pleasant though.

Direct mail is entirely different. The campaign doesn't need anyone's prior permission to do it, and it might not even be sent by the campaign.

Then, is Facebook the newspaper, or is it the mail (in terms of how it should have to treat political ads)? j-c-hewitt thinks it's the newspaper. But why that and not the mail?

Note well: I'm not saying that Facebook should be treated like the mail rather than the newspaper. But, given that they can target ads to individuals, that aspect seems more like the mail, at least to me.

Zuck's best way to 'wash his hands' of it is to adhere closer the newspaper standard. Though, if he does this, it may mean less money.

Facebook advertisements are a public forum. Moreover, there is an intermediary party that can exercise review.

Direct mail is not a public forum. Moreover, who would accept or reject a direct mailing campaign?

How are Facebook ads a public forum? They send an ad to the viewer of a page. They can, and do, control viewer-by-viewer who sees which ads. That's like sending an ad to a mailbox.

But I wish I could reject direct mail campaigns...

many of them are promoted posts, with discussion, and which are re-shared by individuals to their network.

OK, but that's like you got something interesting in the mail (or even email), and forwarded it to someone. That's still not a public forum.

We are going to wreck FB within 5 years with something far less centrally controlled, and you want to waste government resources on this? The company is 15 years old.

Math doesn't work that way or bitcoin would be toast.

Honestly if a lie that blatant even needs to be censored, then I think we can just say democracy is a failure. What concerns me are the lies / truths that depend very much on values and biases that would get caught out because of Facebook's own biases or people gaming the system.

I don't buy defeatist statements like this anymore. Let's be real, if it turns out lies actually do "need" to be censored for whatever basically measurable definition of need you prefer, are you literally going to give up on democracy? What are you going to replace it with? Unless you just give up on morality entirely, you're still going to try to find a solution.

That means that the only thing "...then we can just say democracy is a failure" accomplishes today is give you a clever-sounding way to avoid thinking about a hard problem. That's not a good thing.

You could give up on a particular implementation of democracy, without giving up on the whole thing.

Council democracy does not require politicians to try to appeal in absentia to hundreds of thousands of voters they ostensibly "represent", for example.

> You could give up on a particular implementation of democracy, without giving up on the whole thing.

Yes, that's pretty much my point.

>> are you literally going to give up on democracy

American democracy? Oh yeah I've absolutely given up. Candidates I like never even come close to winning. Often they don't win ballot access. I'll still vote, but I'm done contributing to campaigns or being optimistic about the outcome.

I would expect most of the ads in question here fall into one of two categories. One of them is considered false by one side, but an argument can also be made by the other, because each side is probably cherry-picking some data, looking at different contexts with different values, etc. I honestly don't think FB can do this at scale without bias, arbitrary judgment calls that don't seem fair and take too long to resolve, etc. So let's say they just let all those cases slide. The other category is things that are what we on HN would call blatantly false, where there is no supporting evidence, tons of evidence to the contrary, and it just violates common sense. Are we saying that we trust people who fall for the latter, and do no independent research before basing votes on things they see in FB ads, are people we should still trust to judge national economic plans and foreign policy in the debates? I'm sorry if this is defeatist, but I just don't think so. Those aren't people I even want to be on a jury of my peers. I'd rather just be judged by the man with the law degree and years of experience. Maybe this is a step in the right direction, but I just don't even think it's a drop in the bucket. With so many people who lack basic knowledge of civics but have the right to vote, I think we're just past the point of no return to idiocracy until there's some major collapse and we start from the ground up.

But the mere fact that we're having this argument is beyond me. After every election, which ever side loses goes grasping at straws. With Obama it was the birthers. With Trump it's social media ads. With the last 2 Republican presidents it's been the electoral college. I mean I'm sitting here watching the 49% (concentrated in a few dense areas), claim they have more of a democratic mandate than the 48% (spread out in very culturally distinct areas), when most people don't even vote. I see both parties as being inappropriately quick to judge and legislate matters that they're completely unfamiliar with. I'm pretty individualist, but US democracy seems to just be a constant race to a tyranny of the majority, with the legislature having abdicated many of their responsibilities to the executive. Violations of the law by the government just seem to get ignored because that's the way it is now. So if I did get to pick what we replace the current US democratic system with, I'd far rather go for at least a parliamentary system where instead of me thinking I have a representative for my geographic area, my party gets a share of the power and has to figure out a way to share power with the other parties. It's less direct, but if I don't get to be as self-governing as I want to be, I don't want to be governed by a bunch of people who fall for Facebook spam.

I agree. I feel like creating the illusion of a disinformation-free platform will only weaken peoples' ability to discern it. Taiwan has a hands-off strategy for dealing with it for that reason [1].

1: https://cpj.org/blog/2019/05/qa-taiwans-digital-minister-on-...

> Honestly if a lie that blatant even needs to be censored, then I think we can just say democracy is a failure.

The problem with what you are saying is, if we accept that there can be any curbs on free speech at all, "how could anyone be stupid enough to believe that?" is not a useful guiding principle for setting the threshold at all.

The classic example of speech that is not covered by the First Amendment is crying "fire!" in a crowded theater. Of course it's rather crazy for everyone to trample each other trying to escape a fire that does not exist when they do not even smell smoke. That is completely beside the point. We govern the speech based on the damage it does, the intent to do damage, and the utter lack of any redeeming qualities to the speech.

FYI, the example of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater comes from a case against someone who was claiming that drafting people into the military was involuntary servitude, and was illegal and worth resisting. I think they should have been allowed to say that.

Oh, I should have chosen a different example! I certainly think the argument that we cannot censor based on whether or not someone would be a bit foolish to believe the lies being spread still stands, but I'll leave it for now.

(Although I believe I share the OP's sentiment that the whole thing is not a sign that democracy is in great shape...)

It's surprising to me that they'd run it by the editorial board. How do you know?

I mean, sure, newspapers have policies for acceptable ads, but don't they try to keep editorial and advertising separate?

Example:

"The Minnesota Daily at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, houses its news staff and advertising staff separately and does not hold meetings between the groups."

https://splc.org/2018/10/student-media-guide-to-publishing-p...

Leaving aside the question of whether or not the FEC should regulate social media ads (and personally I think they should), as a practical matter, they can't for the time being. As of a few weeks ago with the resignation of a commissioner, the FEC lacks quorum, and the administration apparently isn't planning to appoint any replacements for the time being, which means they can't issue rules governing Facebook or anyone else, nor can they initiate enforcement actions or investigations, or issue advisory opinions about what campaigns or companies should and shouldn't do to comply with existing rules.

Not saying that the current administration is trying to abuse this, but having the executive branch able to paralyze the body governing elections seems like a massive loophole.

Is this something that congress could (technically, not politically) fix themselves, or do they really depend on a nomination from the executive branch?

> Is this something that congress could (technically, not politically) fix themselves, or do they really depend on a nomination from the executive branch?

You could have any vacancy for more than X-days be filled by the minority party. (i mean even nominating an acting member -- you don't need to get an approval)

Proposal assumes two parties and would codify this. Two parties is one of the ways Americans keep getting themselves screwed. No need to codify it. Maybe one day we shall fix it?

Other parts of norms and conventions in USG assume two parties as well.

They can't appoint people, but they could change the quorum rules to allow the currently sitting commissioners to regulate. It would require Presidential signature, though, or enough votes to override a veto.

This is a red herring - there's no law against untruthful political advertising. Such a law, broadly enforced, would likely be unconstitutional and how do you suppose that you enforce it? Also, if that was the law, it wouldn't be up to corporations to determine what is true and the responsibility would fall between the politicians and the regulatory body that decides what the truth is. That sounds to me like a totalitarian nightmare but I suppose YMMV.

I don't know why it would be any different constitutionally from false advertising in any other context. It's not a crime per se, but false advertisers can be held civilly liable for misleading consumers, and individual consumers can sue false advertisers, as can the FTC on the public's behalf (presumably it would be the FEC instead, but work similarly). The court system (so, presumably a jury) decides whether or not it's false.

Civil liability is an entirely different matter altogether but what's problematic about false advertising isn't that the claim was false, but more that you're breaking a promise. This isn't about free speech, but more about an implicit contract being violated. Political speech, on the other hand, is explicitly what the freedom of speech as a right is about.

Either way, I don't believe anyone would claim that in case of false advertisements, the responsibility falls on the publisher of ads, not the advertiser. It's not generally possible to evaluate the claims made in advertisements - if I were to say, something I'm selling will work for 10 years and will offer replacements if it breaks in the next 10 years, how would the ad publisher know if I would honor the claim several years later?

> one of the reasons why political ads are so bland and content-free

I'm not sure I would describe them as bland: https://youtu.be/LcjEe9guEIA?t=435. I bet the bland ones are by choice.

> a question of whether or not Facebook should submit to FEC regulation or not

There are official political ads by campaigns, and then there are non-official political-influencing ads/articles/etc. A new challenge will be defining how "political" something has to be for it to be considered a "political ad".

I honestly didn't know there was an existing system for this, though it makes sense. And given that it does exist, it's an absolute no-brainer that the world's largest media platform should be subject to mass-media regulation.

> Why does Facebook get an exemption?

Snail mail and email also get exemptions.

Let's not pretend like there was some overarching architecture for all of society's communication.

> Why does Facebook get an exemption?

Because it's not apples to apples.

Facebook is like NBC but it's also like Comcast. Comcast doesn't have an editorial board screening all the content that its product indirectly facilitates.

Newspapers basically are content creators and curators at the core. If newspapers stopped doing that, they basically wouldn't exist. If Facebook eased up on ranking, filtering, and promoting, it would just be the old thefacebook.com.

Agree not apples to oranges but disagree w/ comparison to Comcast. The ad platform is literally Facebook's (and Google's) core business.

This is not accurate. See the discussion here: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...

> But overall, it’s inaccurate to say that "most networks" will refuse to air an ad by Trump with a lie in it. We could find no evidence that most networks reject false candidate ads.

Not sure which TV ads you see, but the TV ads I see suck. Not all of them, but many of them talk about how someone voted for something and completely mis-construe the intent. So there has never been truth in political advertising, only a thin veneer of pretending that this is ok.

So I’m not sure that the boards have done their job.

I’d certainly call bs on them, and that’s on ads from my own party!

> It's really a question of whether or not Facebook should submit to FEC regulation or not. Other media outlets that run political ads need to submit to FEC regulation.

Only for political advertising related to federal elections. That's a subset of all political advertising.

I can understand why FB shouldn't be allowed to just exempt itself from the FEC rules that other media follow. But I don't think their policy on "no filtering for truth" is something the FEC bans in those other media, so I don't see the privilege.

If social media companies should be held accountable for the so-called integrity of our elections, shouldn't they presumably also be responsible for not censoring legal speech?