<story><title>Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban</title><url>https://thehill.com/policy/technology/468216-zuckerberg-doubles-down-on-facebook-political-ads-policy-after-twitter-ban</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>landryraccoon</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m sorry, I don&amp;#x27;t follow.&lt;p&gt;If a group wants to post on social media, they can just post on social media. Ads increase the reach of those with money. That is exactly what they do and nothing more. Why would we want to further amplify the voice of those who have money? The fact that the cause is the abolition of X or the support of Y is a non sequitur, in either case it is the viewpoint of someone with the money to promote their voice.&lt;p&gt;I have very little concern that the opinions of those with large quantities of money at their disposal are underrepresented in politics, or do not have the ability to make their voices heard.</text></item><item><author>Lazare</author><text>I notice you don&amp;#x27;t address his actual point though.&lt;p&gt;If, let&amp;#x27;s say, a group advocating for the abolishment of asset forfeiture wants to communicate their message, and the media is not covering it, it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to &lt;i&gt;put&lt;/i&gt; ads are on social media, since that&amp;#x27;s where the eyeballs are (cf, the collapse of the news media). If social media bans those ads then while the group clearly still has free speech, they will have little way to meaningfully exercise it.&lt;p&gt;You might say - and I&amp;#x27;d certainly agree - that the real problem is a world where everyone is on Twitter and Facebook to the exclusion of all else, and thus a world where 3-4 CEOs can unilaterally decide that nobody needs to hear anything about asset forfeiture (or whatever). And yet, that&amp;#x27;s the world we&amp;#x27;re in.&lt;p&gt;(You also don&amp;#x27;t seem to understand what &amp;quot;free speech&amp;quot; is. By your logic, a law banning the purchase television ads for Democratic candidates - but allowing the purchase of television ads for Republicans - would be okay, because after all, those ads cost money, so it&amp;#x27;s not restricting the Democratic candidates right to free speech. That&amp;#x27;s absurd, no?)</text></item><item><author>Traster</author><text>&amp;gt;Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of &amp;#x27;free speech&amp;#x27; with paid advertisements. To put it another way, if advertising on Facebook is part of my free speech, surely Zuck must run my adverts despite the fact I have no money to pay him for them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AnthonyMouse</author><text>&amp;gt; The fact that the cause is the abolition of X or the support of Y is a non sequitur, in either case it is the viewpoint of someone with the money to promote their voice.&lt;p&gt;What you&amp;#x27;re missing is that all viewpoints you&amp;#x27;ll ever see are intrinsically those of someone with the money to promote their voice.&lt;p&gt;Suppose you have an idea in your head and you want to get it out there. The first thing you have to do is express that idea. Write it down or create a video etc. That takes time, which is an opportunity cost. If it takes you an hour, that&amp;#x27;s an hour you couldn&amp;#x27;t spend working for money, which means that somebody who has to spend that time working for money doesn&amp;#x27;t have the time to express their idea.&lt;p&gt;On top of that, the more time you spend polishing your expression, the more convincing you can make it, so right off the bat there is a direct relationship between time&amp;#x2F;money and speech.&lt;p&gt;Then you need to get people to look at it. If all you do is write a document that sits in a drawer in your house, nobody will ever see it. So you need to spend more time distributing your idea, or get other people who are willing to spend their time distributing it.&lt;p&gt;Political advertising is just paying a third party to do that for you. It costs &lt;i&gt;less&lt;/i&gt; than hiring a staff of people to promote the idea &amp;quot;organically&amp;quot; (otherwise it would be poor value for money and nobody would pay for it), which means it enables people with &lt;i&gt;less&lt;/i&gt; money to get their message in front of people.</text></comment>
<story><title>Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban</title><url>https://thehill.com/policy/technology/468216-zuckerberg-doubles-down-on-facebook-political-ads-policy-after-twitter-ban</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>landryraccoon</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m sorry, I don&amp;#x27;t follow.&lt;p&gt;If a group wants to post on social media, they can just post on social media. Ads increase the reach of those with money. That is exactly what they do and nothing more. Why would we want to further amplify the voice of those who have money? The fact that the cause is the abolition of X or the support of Y is a non sequitur, in either case it is the viewpoint of someone with the money to promote their voice.&lt;p&gt;I have very little concern that the opinions of those with large quantities of money at their disposal are underrepresented in politics, or do not have the ability to make their voices heard.</text></item><item><author>Lazare</author><text>I notice you don&amp;#x27;t address his actual point though.&lt;p&gt;If, let&amp;#x27;s say, a group advocating for the abolishment of asset forfeiture wants to communicate their message, and the media is not covering it, it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to &lt;i&gt;put&lt;/i&gt; ads are on social media, since that&amp;#x27;s where the eyeballs are (cf, the collapse of the news media). If social media bans those ads then while the group clearly still has free speech, they will have little way to meaningfully exercise it.&lt;p&gt;You might say - and I&amp;#x27;d certainly agree - that the real problem is a world where everyone is on Twitter and Facebook to the exclusion of all else, and thus a world where 3-4 CEOs can unilaterally decide that nobody needs to hear anything about asset forfeiture (or whatever). And yet, that&amp;#x27;s the world we&amp;#x27;re in.&lt;p&gt;(You also don&amp;#x27;t seem to understand what &amp;quot;free speech&amp;quot; is. By your logic, a law banning the purchase television ads for Democratic candidates - but allowing the purchase of television ads for Republicans - would be okay, because after all, those ads cost money, so it&amp;#x27;s not restricting the Democratic candidates right to free speech. That&amp;#x27;s absurd, no?)</text></item><item><author>Traster</author><text>&amp;gt;Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of &amp;#x27;free speech&amp;#x27; with paid advertisements. To put it another way, if advertising on Facebook is part of my free speech, surely Zuck must run my adverts despite the fact I have no money to pay him for them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lonelappde</author><text>Why do people with extra time get to be heard more than people with extra money? I don&amp;#x27;t have the ability to take 20% time off my work to promote my message, but I have saved up some money.</text></comment>