Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that falsely claims that a certain candidate has dropped out of the race, or that the election date has been changed?

Do you think that Google should allow an advertisement that falsely attributes words or actions to a certain candidate? (e.g. imagine an ad that falsely claims "Candidate X has changed her position on issue A.")

If you have different answers for some of these questions, then your view is more complicated than "I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims."

There is a huge difference between an "ad" that is designed to compromise a bank account through phishing and a ad that is designed to sway political opinion even if it's untruthful.

In fact out of those 3 the former isn't even an advertisement necessarily despite the fact that it might be presented to the user through "google ads".

If you have a political message, it makes sense to force you to tailor that message on very broad terms. Hearing something you might disagree with is part of life and very important to critical thinking.

This is not intended to be an opinion on false statements in political advertising.

I'm not sure this is true. I know I don't see ads from all sides. In my experience the targeted ads just reinforce the echo chamber.

If we believe in the "market place of ideas" where validity and accuracy are the sole determiners of success then none should have artificial support. So all ads should be banned. If an idea fails in this market place, then it is reasonable to assume it is a bad idea. Leveraging it is just as bad when done by Soviet approved posters or Exxon paid for ads.

The echo chamber is an example where paid ads will actually _worsen_ the situation: Ads are aimed at target audiences driving them into more extremes by seeing exaggerated or false statement they would not have seen if there were no ads. Also, those echo chambers backed by moneyed interests will thrive and expand while those not money backed will fade. So instead of at least having some hope of uneasy balance between two extremes, you get head long plunge into just one of them.

The "market place of ideas" makes no mention of the speed, likelihood of transmission, or intended audience. The best candidate with the best message still needs to get the message out in a timely fashion (before the election and to the core constituency!). The best product at the best price doesn't matter if the business runs out of money before it can drum up sales... not to mention, real world concerns like collective action problems.

I'd argue the market place of ideas is only the best idea in comparison to the rest.

I believe this is 100% true. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do not have the skills to handle this. Look at the anger that appears on this site when certain topics are brought up.

So people have a hard time dealing with ideas they disagree with, but I doubt that forced interaction with those ideas will improve the situation.

We can see empirically that the most common reaction is to double down on your own ideas, get defensive, and generally react in a very self-centered and egotistical manner.

That's the current situation. Would banning political ads make this problem worse? I think I can see the logic here - people will only seek out what they agree with.

But it's not like political ads are the only way that they might be forced to see something they disagree with. The only way to do that these days would be to be completely off grid somewhere and never to see anyone else.

It's also the case that political ads probably provide the worse kind of perspective of views you disagree with.

The solution to the problem is to find a way to get people to break out of their ego-based thinking. A lot of magical things can happen when people are honestly committed to finding the truth, instead of protecting what they think the truth is.

I would suggest that this is change, not a norm in the last few decades.

So, unfortunately, the vast majority of people no longer have the skills to handle this.

> ... double down on your own ideas, get defensive, and generally react in a very self-centered and egotistical manner. > ... find a way to get people to break out of their ego-based thinking

Yes. I think at least in western society (and I start to see this in Asia too) the self-importance crept in, replacing self-reliance.

How did we get here, and how do we "break out"?

Propaganda is not a new thing and the reason it was and is widely used is because it works.

"But it would not work on smart people like me, but only on millenials or ...". Hint: If everybody considers themselves smarter than average...

Before people had time to think about news and talk to people with different views and get push back. That additional friction slowed the spread of misinformation and guaranteed it would mix with the information. When given both, a sufficient portion of the population was able to determine which was which. Then these people could moderate the discussion with targeted persuasive arguments. Sure, a lot of people still believed the misinformation, but they were less confident about it.

Now the information and misinformation travel separate channels. By the time they meet odds are the people involved are already emotionally invested in one or the other.

I am not so sure that we changed so rapidly. It would also make sense that this is not new, and it has just become more apparent in the last few decades, as people have been increasingly communicating with with more other people than ever before.

I think the vast majority of people never had the reason/opportunity to acquire critical thinking skills. It has been discussed by philosophers hundreds (if not thousands) of years ago, so I think it's safe to assume it's not new.

But regardless, I believe the real issue here is that we are not doing much to teach people to think critically.

Everything about modern American culture; a nation of throwaway everything. Throwaway food, throwaway tools, throwaway friends, throwaway jobs.

> and how do we "break out"?

I dunno but maybe listen to and work to solve the things people complain about?

Income inequality, global warming, healthcare including mental health, education, penal system, politics

People who are unaffected by all that haven’t “broken out”.

hearing one or two things you disagree with is part of life, hearing 100 things you disagree with a quarter of which are paid for by super PACs or in rubles isn't, that's a recipe for losing your mind.

'echo chamber' should become the unword of the year or something because apparently the free speech mantra has now turned into a license to shove opinions into other people's faces, a good portion of which aren't even authentic.

No there isn’t. There is truth and then there is people too lazy to do the investigation that uncovers the truth because it takes real work, real people, time and energy and unfortunately is not profitable.

All the "righty" or "conservative" orgs i know about are mostly opinion pieces.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/05/17/exclusive-facebook...

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/06/13/exclusive-facebook...

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl...

I just noticed that they even publish stuff in opposition to Trump: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/12/11/exclusive-text...

Note that I found "right wing investigative journalism publishing sources" to be ambiguous, because you could mean a "publishing source" as in a place that publishes things or specifically that you want a list of references as found in academic papers or on wikipedia. If I guessed wrongly, perhaps you could clarify.

I'd love counter examples, This is not about filter bubbles.

EDIT: on Further consideration, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist might qualify, but they typically don't seem to do expose pieces.

Even Fox News does some actual investigative reporting, notwithstanding that most of their airtime is spent on opinion and propaganda.

I actually read Fox News daily for a few months to try and see this, but I didn't, and eventually stopped after they autoplayed played someone getting fatally hit by a truck on their front page.

https://www.foxnews.com/category/news-events/fox-news-invest...

Where you find things like this:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/veterans-face-more-delays-on-agen...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/jon-stewart-burn-pit-victims-psa

It's not sexy contentious lies, it's factual reporting about veterans and 9/11 first responders. So naturally, it doesn't get promoted by algorithms designed to push clickbait to the fore.

It would be more helpful to think of churches/parochial schools as businesses.

If parochial schools are businesses then school vouchers are sending retirees social security checks rather than operating state-run homes for the elderly. It allows people to buy what they want in the market (from businesses) instead of being restricted to a choice between a government facility and nothing -- not even a refund of the tax dollars not needed to pay for it when you don't use it.

People are free to choose as it is. No reason to provide the public’s democratically distributed money.

Reason and Cato are corporate funded think tanks pushing a corporatist agenda. If you look at CATO's front page piece right now, for instance, it's not an investigation it's an opinion piece on how hard it is to complain in the WTO inspired by their backers:

https://www.cato.org/publications/free-trade-bulletin/trade-...

https://www.cato.org/blog/why-nsa-deleting-call-records

You also get pieces like this, which are full of factual information whether or not you agree with their policy position:

https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/new-nation...

And it's hard to see which "corporatist agenda" pieces like this are pushing:

https://reason.com/2019/11/21/with-this-forfeiture-trick-inn...

Which isn't to say that they're unbiased. Everybody has an opinion. But everybody has an opinion; that's why you need more than one news source.

That doesn't mean we should totally ignore what media and think tanks have to say, they can still produce good critiques and investigations -- whether Brookings or Cato. Even explicitly partisan muckrakers like Greenpeace or O'Keefe's Project Veritas occasionally expose a valid case of wrongdoing no one else noticed. These organizations are very selective and hyperbolic in what they focus on, due to their narrow mission and ideology and the natural limit of time/energy, but if you combine all of their varied output you can get enough slices to approximate the pie.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/19/dark-money-democrat...

...uh, isn't that exactly the policy announced here?

>Google is extending a ban on political campaigns targeting advertising at people based on their supposed political leanings.

>It said political groups would soon only be able to target ads based on "general categories" such as age, gender and rough location.

Wait, you mean ban all ads completely and make Google lose 100 billion dollars of revenue and make advertisers waste more money on non-targeted ads increasing costs of products and make users pay subscription fees for currently ad funded services like Google Search? Otherwise I don't see how your statement makes any practical sense

Phrased in terms of opportunity cost, it's appropriate, again if a bit high.

Media gets YUGE dollars from politics. That flow of money in politics is one of the biggest problems in the US.

Many want to fix it. That risk, in terms of the financial opportunity assessment under discussion right now, would reasonably ratchet that number down further.

> A staggering $24.1 billion of Google's $27.77 billion revenue for Q3 2018 was from advertising – roughly a 22% increase from $19.8 billion in Q3 2017.

source: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busin...

A great example is the lady scientist character from the Chernobyl series. She herself was a fabrication, but represented the factual voices of opinions of hundreds of USSR scientists. Because you can’t write a story with 200 main characters.

You're just opposed to the extra measure of removing ads that are based on their fact-checks of political issues? I favor removing on the basis of both, but I do think these are VERY different categories.

In any case, it is almost impossible for someone to be truly neutral, especially in US politics. Having a company decide that they are the arbiter of this is dangerous. Especially google, which tends to come off as leaning towards one side of the debate.

What do you find objectionable about a low-pass filter that simply removes obvious lies?

So deciding what is and isn't banned becomes an inherently political statement.

You can exclude ads that mention or are paid for by any PAC, candidate for public office, or are advocating for or against any particular public policy decision, or mention the topic of elections or voting.

This would eliminate the majority of them, leaving bad actors that don't care about Google's requirements anyways. Another option would be to simply make certain keywords unpurchaseable.

Recognizing the truth or falsehood of a statement or series of statements can be complicated, but we're doomed as a species if an objective definition of truth stops us in our tracks.

Besides, we have precedent here. Have a look at their policies surrounding what's allowed in health ads[1], they're pretty extensive, objective, and granular.

[1]: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/176031?hl=en

They already do that with their own employees. They censor and control what statements they print to control for accuracy. Journalism concerns in part determining what true statements we should print. I think the Economist and CBO do a good job of separating the facts from the fiction. I would trust them to fact-check statements. I would not trust CNN or Facebook or the Democrats to fact-check statements.

At the same time, if we're talking about advertising, in the US we can just rely on what constitutes political advertising under the law.

I would imagine that there would then be an incentive for potential donors to, rather then giving cash, pay for messages that fly under the radar but are designed to support a particular campaign.

But there is nothing inherently wrong about removing pure garbage ads.

Of course, one might object that it would give more visibility to harder-to-discern bad ads, and make the consumer less wary of ads if they are less used to see them with obviously wrong information. Double edged sword as always, and I would certainly ban them. Or every ad, for that matter. But that's google, it is their business model, so what are you expecting?

If China says the majority of Hong Kong support immediate reunification, backed by a statement from the Hong Kong government, is that an "obvious lie"? It comes from what is considered to be an authoritative source of truth.

If Google can overrule a government's statement, by disagreeing with China, does that mean they can overrule the official statement of any government?

That gives them the power, and incentive, to approve some statements that come from the White House, and not others that might damage their own reputation.

Or rather, knowing Google, approval of these goes through a machine, with unknown bias, and suddenly Google is only approving right-wing messages. All Democrat messages get disapproved. Or vice versa.

It places Google in position as the ultimate source of truth, without giving them the responsibility that comes with that.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-fake-lab...

Being the largest source of information in the world while being completely indifferent as to whether that information is true or not is an amazingly nihilistic, amoral position to take.

I think the most sensible thing for any ad agency to do is to ban _all_ political ads.

It may become difficult for them to differentiate what is and isn't a political ad (an ad for a gay dating app could be construed as a political ad in some nations), but they need to remove themselves from any seat of responsibility.

It's true enough that Google will experience some pressure to kowtow to the governments or powerful interests who have the ability to lean on them, and that is probably a pretty good argument to get out of the business of political advertising altogether. "What is truth anyway, man????" is not much of an argument.

I'll try not to take offense at that.

I'm just someone who has lived under an authoritarian regime where what is "truth" has been actively manipulated by the powers that be - dissenting opinions were made illegal.

> "What is truth anyway, man????" is not much of an argument.

That wasn't the "crux" of the argument.

No advertising company should be in the business of deciding what to report as truth. If they are, complying with local laws about what is "truth" may in fact be completely antithetical to the pretense of fact checking.

The most sensible solution for someone like Google is banning political advertising altogether - not putting themselves in a position where they may be required to act as propaganda mouthpieces.