<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>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>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></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>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>bhupy</author><text>How is paid speech not free speech? The paid aspect is just a means to an end. Money itself should not be seen as speech, but speech that costs money is still speech. On a basic level, any self publishing on any form of media has a nonzero cost and you buy some service from some third party eventually. If free speech applied to you but not the person who supplied you a platform, then that freedom only exists in theory and is effectively useless as you can be gagged by way of action against who supplied you your megaphone.&lt;p&gt;The freedom of advocacy is inseparable from the freedom of speech. It costs money to print pamphlets, buy air time, pay people to stand on the corner, conduct opinion polls, etc.&lt;p&gt;Say that you or I have a novel political idea that we want to advocate for. How do you propose that we do so? We&amp;#x27;d probably form a non-profit, spend money contacting potential allies, convince them on the merits of our case and to donate to us, then spend that money on pamphlets, TV, radio ads, etc. That&amp;#x27;s freedom at work.&lt;p&gt;If paid advertisements are not free speech, then the concept of free speech  would cease to exist beyond street corner rants.</text></comment>