Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads

Re:Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads by rayiner on Monday October 28, 2019 @03:48PM (#21380854)

We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse. Because you know that any such institution would just let pass false information that just happens to comport with liberal beliefs, while giving enhanced scrutiny to assertions from other viewpoints.

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Re:Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads by whatthesmack on Monday October 28, 2019 @11:20PM (#21384023)

I was just going to upvote and keep scrolling, but I saw the three replies to your post critique something you said that I strongly agreed with.

> We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse

This so true in this day and age. The quality of journalism has collectively nosedived, but the journalists keep producing and continue to guide the “conversation”. I’m not quite sure what those who disagree with the statement actually do believe is going well and why journalists need to have even more control over the conversation.

> ...would just let pass false information that just happens to comport with liberal beliefs

This is the natural course for a technology company in modern society. The biases of tech company employees is clearly more left-leaning. If Facebook employees or contractors were deciding what’s true and false, the information displayed on Facebook would (does?) have a leftist slant. This is a bad thing to any fair-minded person and why Facebook shouldn’t be regulating free speech in political ads.

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Re:Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads by ska on Monday October 28, 2019 @04:22PM (#21381205)

  We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse.

This statement doesn't make sense to me. Nothing to do with conservative vs. liberal biases; just that the majority of current political discourse does not go through even nominally journalistic outlets, let alone rigorously journalistic.

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Re:Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads by JumpCrisscross on Monday October 28, 2019 @05:27PM (#21381901)

> We don’t need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse

How does "a permanent, public repository of political ads" give journalists any advantage? I just mentioned them as one potential user of a public database.

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Re:Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads by JauntyHatAngle on Monday October 28, 2019 @07:03PM (#21382707)

If anything, I think journalists need more influence on political discourse. Currently the discourse is controlled by media companies, not journalists - and there is a big difference there.

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