Re:Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads
by int_19h on Tuesday October 29, 2019 @05:08PM
(#21392045)
So long as it deters misleading ads, does the mechanism really matter? It doesn't have to be strict consensus.
Re:Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads
by justin66 on Wednesday October 30, 2019 @10:37AM
(#21398191)
I am not at all sure it would deter misleading ads, since the truth or falsehood of a given claim or set of claims does not necessarily matter much to a chunk of the population. I am pretty sure the mechanism the OP described might reward especially outrageous ads designed to break out of the cage and go viral, in the manner I described.
I'm not saying it's not worth a try.
I believe I understand the implied difference between sequestering a video somewhere where it can be evaluated by the public and simply "blasting it to users" alongside content they are consuming, but I wonder if sequestering videos in this way would have the effect you think it will have. It's a system that would reward highly provocative videos with the potential to immediately go viral regardless of their intrinsic merit or truthfulness.
> A lot of people got triggered by the term "journalist."
Right. The issue with the system you're describing is, entirely too many people will react to an online story from the NY Times pointing out a dozen untruthful things about the latest, newly introduced and sequestered angry political ad from whoever by delighting in the distress caused by the lies in the ad, joking about how the libs have been owned, passing links around to the video, and generally spreading falsehoods about the critiques of the ad and the people doing the critiqing. If the whole trolling effort is successful then it will become a meta-story about stupidity and falsehood among the people who aren't dumb enough to believe whatever is being asserted in the ad, but the one thing that will not happen is everyone joining together to condemn the falsehoods in the ad.
> I'm using that term broadly, to include anyone from a hobbyist with a blog to the mass media.
Right, and as nice and democratizing as that can be, the practical effect is often to legitimize bullshitters and put them on the same level as serious people. I am afraid in the example above that is part of how these ads would go viral.
Or maybe it's not all that bad. I guess I hope not. I do think your idea is interesting.