Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

Re:Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over ... by KiranRao0 on Wednesday October 07, 2020 @06:37PM (#24713625)

I would love if Facebook could simply remove all political ads. The problem then becomes what classifies as political ad. This can be very obvious (vote for president = political, buy cereal = not political), but it can also be far less obvious.

For example, would an ad for in support of an oil pipeline be considered a political ad? What if it's in support for an outcome of a referendum? Or an Ad for a charity? What if that charity is the EFF/ACLU in support of changing policies?

It's an extremely difficult problem to differentiate what is considered a political ad and what is not and I don't exactly trust Facebook to do so.

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Re:Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over ... by dgellow on Thursday October 08, 2020 @07:08AM (#24717969)

The thing is: it doesn't have to be perfect. If you already remove the ones that are obviously political ads, you already reduce the noise by a lot.

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Re:Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over ... by bob33212 on Thursday October 08, 2020 @08:31AM (#24718509)

Some people's entire Facebook feed is political. Facebook knows that if you remove the political aspect from Facebook all those people will jump to Twitter or Reddit or whatever to get their daily 5 hours of politics.

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Re:Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over ... by baq on Thursday October 08, 2020 @06:47AM (#24717860)

everything can be made political, most things are political. humans are political animals. it's a great success of politicians who are gatekeeping non-politicians from making political statements (e.g. pressuring book authors to 'keep their political opinions to themselves' on twitter, etc.)

even weather can be made political, see sharpie-wielding POTUS making amends to NHC forecasts.

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Re:Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over ... by mentos on Thursday October 08, 2020 @09:17AM (#24718816)

The same way the pandemic opened up the opportunity for remote work, I'd love to see Facebook _experiment_ with maybe 6 months of no political ads and see what emerges in its place.

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Re:Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over ... by bobwall on Thursday October 08, 2020 @10:42AM (#24719488)

I'd love to have the world experiment with no Facebook for 6 months and see what emerges in its place.

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