Re:Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over ...
by marcell on Thursday October 08, 2020 @02:34AM
(#24716463)
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.
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.