News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Facebook reverses on paid influencers after Bloomberg memes by shkkmo on Friday February 14, 2020 @04:12PM (#22330443)
> Because then the government gets to control what is or is not allowed. And I guarantee that whichever party is in power at the moment will use that to try to stay in power.

The BCRA (McCain–Feingold) was a fairly balanced piece of legislation with reasonable and practical limits that was passed in a bipartisan manner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipartisan_Campaign_Reform_Act

I see no reason why limiting corporate financing of electioneering means we are on a slippery slope to a loss of individual political speech.

Re:Facebook reverses on paid influencers after Bloomberg memes by SpicyLemonZest on Friday February 14, 2020 @04:34PM (#22330628)
The Citizens United case showed the slippery slope we were on. Michael Moore was allowed to release a movie about how a particular presidential candidate was bad just before the 2004 election. But when Citizens United tried to do the same thing in 2008, the FEC said it was a campaign ad and stopped them. If the law had been allowed to stand that way, we would have ended up in a world where popular media figures have special speech privileges you or I don't get.
Re:Facebook reverses on paid influencers after Bloomberg memes by shkkmo on Friday February 14, 2020 @04:42PM (#22330693)
I don't think your facts are correct.

Farenheit 9/11 was released 4 months prior to the 2004 election and is thus outside the 60 day window and not prohibited by Mcain-Feingold.

I would have wholeheartedly supported that movie being blocked as electioneering inside the 60 day window.

Edit: Specifically, Citizens United was prohibited for paying to show or advertise within 30 days of the democratic primaries.

> The United States District Court for the District of Columbia held that §203 of BCRA applied and prohibited Citizens United from advertising the film Hillary: The Movie in broadcasts or paying to have it shown on television within 30 days of the 2008 Democratic primaries. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC