(googler, opinion is my own).

Google did the same thing: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/25/21456323/google-election-...

As there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week), the tech companies seem to be getting in-front of a potential problem to keep campaigns from drumming up any kind of fear about the election results after the polls are closed.

>Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald Trump. If it looks like he might win, we can attack the legitimacy of the vote and install Biden instead.

There's been one camp consistently attacking the legitimacy of the election and it's not Biden's.

My take on all of this...

Lots of states are pushing for larger scale vote-by-mail than has ever happened before. Some states have been doing this for a long time (Oregon, Colorado), but they have the processes in place to handle elections. Other states are trying to do it in a few months with no real prep ahead of time. We're already seeing this lead to ballot printing problems, ex:[0].

To build on that, many of these states aren't allowed to even open/proces absentee/vote-by-mail ballots until election day or after[0.5]. That means that problems with these ballots may not be caught ahead of time. Along with that, having to processing millions of ballets (when they are used to 5-digit amounts of ballots), means it will take a lot longer to handle those ballots. This will lead to a delay in knowing the results. As well, mail-in-ballots get rejected at a much higher rate than in-person voting[1], which will lead to lawyers fighting over which ballots are valid if things are close.

Democrats are more likely to vote-by-mail than Republicans[2]. This means those delayed ballots will likely swing towards Biden, which means as days go on for counting, Biden's lead is likely to increase (which is totally fine, but it will definitely stir up controversy).

Then you have lawmakers and judges changes the rules[3]. There are a few cases going on around the country where there is a push to allow late mail ballots to be counted. In this case, a Judge decided to allow ballots to arrive up to 3-days post election. These kinds of cases are going on around the country and still being fought.

It's going to be messy.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-politics/virginia-vo...

[0.5] https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-t...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/22/904693468/more-than-550-000-p...

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/...

[3] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/pennsylvania-becomes...

It never ceases to amaze how one of the world's oldest and proudest democracies is absolutely useless at the basic table-stakes competency of a democracy, running a free and fair election.

I guess Americans just love their broken legacy system too much...

Americans love winning to the extent that we cannot tolerate losing. Culturally, we are all but encouraged to cheat if we are ahead in order to maintain our lead (we deserve to win), in the event of failure we point the blame at someone else (we would have won if not for those meddling kids!), and when even that doesn't stick we just ignore reality (actually we did win).

He has said a few times now that he (pretends to) suspect that ballots counted after election day will be increasingly fraudulous and that therefore the earliest estimates are regarded by him as most accurate. Thereby stacking the cards of chaos in his favour, which has been his motif all along of course.

Can't really see how he'll be removed over this seeing he's preparing for and even fuelling this chaos.

Unless Trump somehow has a massive blowout electoral win based on Nov 3rd voting, it won't matter how much he crows about "winning" the election. Well over half the country doesn't trust the guy, and the international community basically doesn't trust him at all. Republican leadership are, at best, ambivalent.

Anyway, look at Belarus: a free and fair election was won by an ~%80 margin by a Trump-like figure. Big deal, he still is in the process of getting removed from office.

Macron just last week welcomed the 20% Belarus loser as the "President-elect" to France, and refuses to recognize the Trump-like winner. That's Color Revolution 101: the election really doesn't matter, what matters is its legitimacy. Protests, the media, and any kind of election problems all help to delegitimatize an election, and allow Trump-like figures to be removed in the name of "integrity" should they actually win. This playbook works.

As I've said elsewhere, I think Biden will win big electorally, including on Nov. 3rd, so all of this ground-preparation will ultimately not be needed. Better safe than sorry though…

> There's been one camp consistently attacking the legitimacy of the election and it's not Biden's.

This definitely isn't true. Both parties have been repeatedly claiming that a loss for their side will be evidence that the election isn't legitimate.

All mainstream Democratic Party discourse has been revolving around the delegitimisation of the results of the 2016 election, and an insistence that exactly the same process is happening during the 2020 election. It's the only reason we're paying attention to Facebook ads, because Facebook developers who claimed to be doing academic experimentation having too much access to user information has been tied through vagueness and innuendo to the claim that Russian government-sponsored targeted ads on Facebook delivered the 2016 election to Trump.

Saying "the media promotes Biden unopposed" when the most popular media source in the US (Fox) leans the opposite direction is obviously wrong and disappointing to see here.

About half the country believes that Fox is legitimate media.

Given that legitimacy is exclusively a product of belief, they qualify as a 'legitimate media' source.

> About half the country believes that Fox is legitimate media.

> Given that legitimacy is exclusively a product of belief, they qualify as a 'legitimate media' source.

If we accept the first part as fact and apply the standard implied by the second, then Fox is in a hazy gray area of equally legitimate and not-legitimate, rather than clearly legitimate.

Which seems (ignoring the people who haven't heard of it or have no opinion) about right:

https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/media-polarization-app...

> If we accept the first part as fact and apply the standard implied by the second, then Fox is in a hazy gray area of equally legitimate and not-legitimate, rather than clearly legitimate.

This is almost exactly mirrored on the other side of politics. See https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/u-s-media-polarization...

> This is almost exactly mirrored on the other side of politics.

No, it's not, if you actually pay attention to the details of the study. Fox is the only source in the study in that weird middle ground, all four of the other top 5 sources Republicans rely on are on the same list for Democrats, and 3 of the other top 5 Republicans trust are on the comparable list for Democrats, and all the ones on either Democratic list that aren't on the corresponding Republican list (as well as, more obviously, those that are on the corresponding Republican lists) are significantly positive in net trust, while Fox is in that weird middle and Hannity on radio (the other one on the Republican trust list) is far in net negative territory. There are differences on the opposite sides of the spectrum, but not the kind of symmetry implied by “mirrored”.

The other half believes that Trump called neonazis and white supremacists very fine people and told people to drink bleach to fight coronavirus. Let's not pretend only one side is biased and uses misinformation for its purposes.

Coronavirus: Outcry after Trump suggests injecting disinfectant as treatment

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177

There is a difference between "suggests injecting disinfectant as treatment" and "tells people to drink bleach". There are many possible treatments being suggested for covid, but that doesn't mean you should try them until they are confirmed to work.

Is there a difference in the outcome? I'm pretty sure that it's not a good idea to inject bleach, but I'm no doctor.

Language only conveys information as accurately as it is interpreted. Ambiguity invites varying interpretations. While ~everyone here knows better, half of the people Trump leads are of a below-median ability to fill in the blanks.

Ambiguity is great when you are running an election and you are trying to appeal to the greatest number of people -- it is not good when you need to convey information in situations where human life is on the line. The reasons we have seemingly obvious warnings on household chemicals are written in blood.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6923e2.htm?s_cid=mm...

It also seems to be a given that you have a convenient definition of legitimacy. But I do so like contributors who are boldly confident in their pronouncements.

CNN / MSNBC are the Democrat version. There are some interesting polls on trust of media by political affiliation from 2012[0] and 2019[1] (these are multi-page sites, interesting stats to poke around).

Then pair that with this interesting talk by Matt Taibbi[2]. His basic argument is that most news organizations target a specific demographics and only cover things that reinforce the beliefs of that group. Fox dominates that for conservatives, while liberals tend to have a wider range of organizations to go to.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/09/27/section-4-de...

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/09/27/in-changing-...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG1qJeDI9Ok

FWIW this misses the context that they'll already be banned 1 week before Nov 3. This just extends that ban beyond the election.

I predict they walk that back when they realize the huge market for post election day ads for steering the narrative of when to stop counting votes.

See 2000 for a great example.

They were already going to be banned temporarily from 27th of October[0], this is just now a permanent ban.

[0]: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/167836590566506?id=28...

What's the reason not to ban them immediately?

That would significantly advantage incumbents and unfairly change the rules of the game in the 9th inning.

Rhymes with "revenue". 2016 I made a large (for me) investment into FB certain that the revenue would appear, and it worked out quite handsomely. I can't stomach it this time.

$$$

Really? For a few last months of revenue versus potentially stopping an election result from being bought?

It's Facebook you're talking about. I'm not sure why you'd think they would make the right choice instead of chasing $.

Do you think they favour a fair election over $$$? Do you think there is anything they favour over $$$ at this point?

I suspect the lead-up to an election is like the Christmas season for political advertisers. So, it's hard to look at it as "few months of revenue" when in fact it might count for the majority.

Right. It's either already decided and no money left to be had or not yet decided and the majority of the money is yet to be captured.

The mistake here is thinking that (generally speaking) allowing questionable behavior is a "whole of Facebook" decision.

Instead there is some VP in charge of "ad sales for mid-West US" who looks at their target numbers for a bonus, looks at the ~$100M+ spending planned by the campaigns in that area in the next month[1] and goes "I don't want to sell an election but it is and important free speech issue that campaigns are allowed to get their message across".

Stopping that is a decision that has to be made at the top, by one person who then needs to argue against a lot of people whose financial interest is in the opposite direction.

[1] https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/electio...

It violates the principle of free speech (even if it does not violate the letter of the law in the first amendment). There is nothing inherently bad about paying $1000 (or $1M) for a political ad.

For a mental image, someone paying for a political ad could be running for school board in a medium sized city. A ban on all political ads would restrict that person's ability to explain why they want to be on the school board, and would restrict that person's ability to advocate for new policies in their school district. Why do you want to impose a ban on this?

Facebook is not committed to the principle of free speech in advertising, and prohibits advertisements for a great many things that are legal to advertise.

Whether or not FB has this commitment right now, they should have this commitment. A ban on political ads would go against a hypothetical commitment to the principle of free speech.

Every large advertising platform I can think of has rules about what they will accept that are narrower than what the laws that apply to them require. For example, it's generally legal in the US to advertise firearms, but most large advertising platforms refuse ads for them.

Again, I’m describing a goal. You are describing the status quo. The existence of a bad status quo doesn’t negate what the goal should be.

In my view, the goal of FB should be to allow for free speech, especially in the context of politics.

If Facebook was a simple publishing platform the way it was in its early days, I'd be inclined to agree. The same goes for an ad network with only broad targeting capabilities, e.g. that the viewer is likely an adult in a particular candidate's district.

Restricting political advertising using Facebook's hyper-targeted advertising platform strikes me as a responsible decision. I'm not sure there is a bright line between persuasion and manipulation, but if Facebook is trying to prevent the latter, that's more ethical behavior than I expected from them.

Note that limiting hyper targeting is very different from banning all political ads, as GP was suggesting, and as Twitter has done (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/technology/twitter-politi...). Even then, I don't think it's a good approach. I'd observe that you can do hyper targeting via snail mail, door-to-door campaigning, phone calls, and SMS. Also, this is still a type of policy that assumes people need to be shielded from speech, and that they aren't able to make good decisions without guidance from FB moderators.

Personally, I think disclosure is the best policy. For example, make it easy to find all the ads a particular politician or group has posted. FB has already implemented a many things in that area.

What about freedom to not do work on behalf of someone else? Is my work not my speech?

I don't buy that argument, which just rewards whoever has the most money to throw at the advertising market (Bloomberg's signal failure in this regard doesn't invalidate the general problem). I like the clearly labeled and non-sensationalistic statements in voter information booklets, myself.

I am of course speaking in general terms about future elections rather than making drastic adjustments in the middle of this one.

If you ban advertisements on Facebook, you end up favoring people with pre-existing set of followers. Typically this will be an incumbent, or perhaps celebrity candidates.

Moreover, FB banning political ads doesn't end the advantage of having more money. It just channels that money somewhere else (TV ads, hiring door-to-door campaigners).

How can you say that banning FB ads similtaneous muzzles free speech (in your other comment) and also has no quantitative impact on speech?

It certainly muzzles speech. It is likely to lessen the advantage of money in politics, but does not eliminate it entirely.

I don’t believe eliminating the influence of money from politics is a desirable or achievable goal. If you do think it is desirable and achievable, then a ban on FB ads makes sense, but you should also presumably advocate for a ban on TV ads, newspaper ads, paid campaign events, paid campaign staff, and so on.

Something about stable doors and horses.