<story><title>Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/technology/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-political-ads.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>AnimalMuppet</author><text>If Facebook decides which political ads are truthful, then either they reject &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; political ads (because when was the last time someone ran a political ad that was wholly truthful?), or else they have do decide where to draw the line.  Wherever they draw the line, they&amp;#x27;re going to reject someone&amp;#x27;s ad, and be exposed to screams of how they&amp;#x27;re biased for the other side.  That&amp;#x27;s not going to end well for them.&lt;p&gt;I mean, just running them all is &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; getting Zuckerberg raked over the coals[1], but I think picking and choosing which ads are &amp;quot;truthful enough&amp;quot; is going to be worse.&lt;p&gt;And that&amp;#x27;s if Facebook is actually completely unbiased.  If this becomes a vehicle for the biases of those at FB charged with judging the ads, that&amp;#x27;s even worse.&lt;p&gt;[1] Zuck was getting raked over the coals in the name of truth, but I suspect it was at least partly because those who did so thought they would benefit politically if FB censored their opponents&amp;#x27; ads.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>j-c-hewitt</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s really a question of whether or not Facebook should submit to FEC regulation or not. Other media outlets that run political ads need to submit to FEC regulation. Why does Facebook get an exemption? Newspapers literally have to run political ads by their editorial board and TV has to do something similar. It&amp;#x27;s one of the reasons why political ads are so bland and content-free: they don&amp;#x27;t want to make any claims that could be evaluated as true or false.</text></comment>
<story><title>Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/technology/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-political-ads.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>AnimalMuppet</author><text>If Facebook decides which political ads are truthful, then either they reject &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; political ads (because when was the last time someone ran a political ad that was wholly truthful?), or else they have do decide where to draw the line.  Wherever they draw the line, they&amp;#x27;re going to reject someone&amp;#x27;s ad, and be exposed to screams of how they&amp;#x27;re biased for the other side.  That&amp;#x27;s not going to end well for them.&lt;p&gt;I mean, just running them all is &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; getting Zuckerberg raked over the coals[1], but I think picking and choosing which ads are &amp;quot;truthful enough&amp;quot; is going to be worse.&lt;p&gt;And that&amp;#x27;s if Facebook is actually completely unbiased.  If this becomes a vehicle for the biases of those at FB charged with judging the ads, that&amp;#x27;s even worse.&lt;p&gt;[1] Zuck was getting raked over the coals in the name of truth, but I suspect it was at least partly because those who did so thought they would benefit politically if FB censored their opponents&amp;#x27; ads.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jonbronson</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a fallacy to believe that the ability to determine the truthfulness of the content of an ad is binary. 100% or 0%. It&amp;#x27;s a spectrum. There are obvious truths, shades of gray, blatant misinformation, and everything in between. At the very least, they should clearly disallow verifiably false information. An advertisement aimed at Black voters with the wrong day for voting? That&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;clearly&lt;/i&gt; voter disinformation aimed at voter suppression. How close Facebook gets to the gray areas is by no means an easy problem, but it&amp;#x27;s patently false to pretend they can do nothing.</text></comment>