"It is astonishing to watch Dems and their allies in media corporations posture as opponents of "fascism" - while their main goal is to *unite state and corporate power* to censor their critics and degrade the internet into an increasingly repressive weapon of information control." - Glenn Greenwald
We have to take account of the fact that the internet and especially social media *is already* a repressive weapon of information control. The question sincere liberals (who knows, maybe there's some overlap with elected Dems?) is asking, is how do we counteract for that? I don't think they've hit upon a good solution yet, but I'm hopeful that there is one to be found. It's already pretty deregulated, so the answer is probably some form of regulation.
The main regulation would be to restrain the platforms from censoring news they don't want out. To keep the government out of leaning on them, like the FBI did Zuck.
The public square is a good place to start. Allow what is allowed in a real town or city public square. Simplistic, I know, but that's a starting point.
Allow me to slide this in before today's post turns into somebody's personal blog...again.
I agree with you SF, but how (and we've touched on this before) do you square that ideal with the equally important freedom of privately held entities to run their market-based businesses as they see fit.?
ALL social media platforms censor information, short of nationalization....how can you legally prevent any platform from censoring speech they don't agree with?
My point is, if you don't like what you're hearing, perhaps you should say something to the contrary instead of just trying to prevent others from speaking. There's room for a lot of posts, even at this blog. It's not a zero sum game.
@CI: reward the good posts, ignore the bad... @SF: social media has something which the public square does not: targetting. If I set up a PA in the main square and start yelling racist tropes, everyone can hear me and I'll probably get shouted down or beaten up or whatehaveyou. Social media helps me find the audience who is responsive to racist tropes and lets me shout at them without more enlightened people overhearing. This might not seem like a big deal, but it is.
Fascism was horrible in the days of Mussolini long before the days of the internet. Back in those days, gangs of barely-muscled men literally had to roam the streets with rolled up newspapers - and newspapers were thick enough to roll up and smite someone hard enough to notice then - and these pencil-necked men would go door to door demanding that people pay a subscription fee to hear their tales of oppression or else bigger and bigger scrolls of advertising would come wrapping on their doors. You literally couldn't just laugh at and ignore the caterwauling about nothing, no no, you literally had to give you name, address, and pay a fee to hear more about how someone like Glenn Greenwald was being oppressed so you could laugh at it. And then, they had you. Other repressed voices now with your name, address, and knowledge that you love paying for badly written horror fiction would soon arrive with their own stories of oppression to tell, stories you'd never, ever hear if you only spent time paying attention to reality.
Fascism was almost a nuisance until clickbait was invented.
"...cuz racists should be prevented from talking amongst themselves..."
campaigns sending messages & memes to the racist faction of its audience which it would be embarrased to show to its non-racist faction has a bad effect on the public discourse. How to square this with free speech? I think there might be a solution where each campaign is obliged to make public all variations of its campaign materials, so their most extreme messaging risks putting off the moderates they're also targetting.
Jez, I think you've made my point. People can make racist and offensive statements in the public square, up to a point. In the US we do have laws about incitement, threats, etc.
CI, two words: public accommodation. Private Businesses in the US must admit everyone, given certain basic common standards.
The concept of public accommodation certainly applies to most businesses, but a key difference is that some/many/most social media platforms don't hold themselves out to the public in the same way that traditional businesses do, and given that they exist in the virtual space, there is really no lack of other available options, such as exists in the geospatial space.
A better (but not necessarily convincing for me) argument would be arguing the public accommodation theme with respect to web hosting services, designating the internet as 'critical infrastructure'.
Personally, I believe that any private business should have the latitude to discriminate in the transaction of their goods or services as they see fit. But I'm in the pretty distinct minority in that.
No reason gay wedding cakes can't be more prohibitively expensive. The insurance and storage costs of monkeypox frosting alone shoeuld adequately explain that.
@TC - Wedding cakes are a good example. There is a robust debate over protecting the ability of a business to discriminate against customers in providing goods and services.
I want not just the bear minimum legal standards, I want to disincentivize extremist messaging to vulnerable populations. Are you comfortable with campaigners targeting eg qanon fans with more conspiracy theory material? Or would you rather know which campaigns were indulging in those tactics so that you may punish them at the ballot box?
It's bad enough the Constitution enslaves lawyers to "work for" poor dumb criminals. Forcing Rebel Wilson to do porn would be almost as bad as forcing people to watch it.
This political advertisement has been rated E for Extreme.
Nuking the girl that was destroying wildlife and couldn't count was a little over top for LBJ to accuse a political opponent of wanting to do. Goldwater should have insisted destroying wildlife does not require nukes and knowing how to count is overrated anyway.
Jez, the problem with your approach is that the term "extremist messaging" is subjective not objective, to a die-hard free speech advocate your advocating disincentivizing extremist messaging is and of itself "extremist messaging". Has the UK torn down the speaker's corner in Hyde Park and put back up the Tyburn Gallows?
My approach doesn't require anyone to make that distinction. Just publish *all* variants if your Facebook ads. Even the factually inaccurate ones you only sent to EDL supporters.
No limits, they file their accounts. But so do millions of affiliated and unaffiliated organizations who collect under their own names and spend under their own names.
Maybe I don't need to: if these shadowy "non"-affiliates become shameful enough that the candidate has to vocally disavow them, then that is maybe sufficient to rob them of the faux legitimacy they currently enjoy.
I think if the Klan circulates messages of support for Trump, readers understand what that means. If the Trump24 campaign headquaters sends white-supremacist messages to Klansmen and the Klan-adjacent (safe in the knowledge that they can do so without offending normal republicans), those readers will think that those messages are extra legit because they're coming from a mainstream source. This is the type of legitimacy my suggestion might help with dismantling. You seem to be arguing in favour of advertisers' privacy. Why is that a thing? I'm in favour of individuals enjoying privacy, but I don't see any reason to extend that to paid-for messaging.
You miss the point. The Trump24 would never send that white supremacist message. They'd sub the messaging out to a 3rd party that you would then have to identify and "de-legitimize". And if you think that they (Trump24) ARE doing that kind of messaging, I recommend you check yourself into a psych hospital and seek treatment. Campaigns are risk avoidant. They wouldn't take the risk even if there were a "law" requiring self-reporting.
...or at least log on to the FBI Contractor servers for the NSA's database at the Washington DC offices of Perkins Coei where the FBI has it "parallel constructions" fabricated.
Don't get caught up on the details of my hypotheticals. Read up on cambridge analytica and peruse the kind of ads Leave campaigns were sending during the brexit referendum if you want concrete examples. There are others from other elections around the globe. SF calls for "more speech" -- I agree with him! But those misleading messages need to be in general circulation for that "more speech" to happen.
Double check the chronology... Facebook's banning and fact checking spree was a sticking plaster attempt (doomed imo) to correct for the Cambridge analytics style shenanigans which happened back when FB was letting memes go viral and be damned.
Why are you so keen to protect the system which allows campaigns to run ads that would put off moderate voters? Btw Obama ran a very effective social media campaign too, this is not one sided. I want good quality debate, you are defending the wild west.
Because I'm not so naive as to believe that Democrats won't cheat. Leftists are rule breakers. That's why they're leftists. The rules/laws they insist upon always only apply to "the other guy". They never apply to them. Look at which politicians DoJ and big city prosecutors forgive. Democrats.
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others. - Ambrose Bierce
Facebook's Zuckerberg is already "your guy"... mr Zuckerbucks gave millions to Democrats and happily Shadow-banned all things "Trump". Now you want to go after his advertisers? 'F you.
I want to try to actually fix the problem, which the shadowbanning does not achieve (and never could have). Zuckerberg is not on my side, he wants to rinse money out of his dataset. He was fine with Cambridge analytics (who had much murkier clients than Vote Leave). I'm.sorry they your partisan paranoia prevents you from aspiring to a political discourse less dominated by lies.
When will supposedly intelligent people on the left get it throug their indoctrinated skulls that a substantial percentage of ordinary people are pissed off and fed up with the ruling elite and their enforcers in the scolding progressives who are desperately trying to enforce their hopium smoke vision of the world?
It isn't partisan paranoiaa if they really are out to get you... just ask the 40 Trump staffers that just got visited last week by some 3am knocking Jan 6 Committee DoJ "thug enforcers"
@sf: i'm not saying there aren't. But I was appalled by the standard of debate from both sides of the Brexit referendum, and I would like to establish a more responsible discourse. I think it's perverse for anyone to object to that.
Sure, I want to expose all their messaging, but why should I have to discover it? Why should they be permited to hide it? Various Leave campaigns were pumping out messages to vulnerable audiences that would have appalled their mainstream targets. I just think campaigners to partake in discourse they aren't themselves ashamed of.
Face it. Tragedies will happen where you don't need to assess "blame". Inshallah/ ojala it doesn't happen. Doing regulatory rectal kegel exercises won't help
Perhaps you're limiting this statement instead of being broad and general.....but are you saying that there should be no online forum that is not open to government surveillance?
Right now we have government agencies who reject OIG oversight. And the DOJ no longer reliably responds to the gang of eight Congressional oversight. They couldn't tell anyone they were spying on and investigating a presidential candidate (Trump) because it was "too politically sensitive".
...whereas the very point of the gang of eight is to depoliticize sensitive issues and stop them from becoming political witch hunts by advising the best way to deal with sensitive political issues ala Clintons e-mail server. That was an issue that the AG should have kicked up to gang of eight, not the FBI Director.
The Democratic Party of Alabama kept "White Supremacy" on their banner and as their motto until the late 60's. The "Dixiecrats" didn't go off and form their own political party. 99.9% of them remained Democrats until they died. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore Jr - all Dixiecrats or mentored into politics by the same. Nothing really changes until the Democrats nominate Barack Obama - to the chagrin of former Democrats turned RINOs like Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and... Donald Trump.
The pattern is there, nobody's hiding it, and if that's your brand of politics, it ain't hard to find. Hard to convince people to vote for, but not hard to find.
Some campaigns *are* hiding it, is what I'm saying. I'd rather that shit be out in the open, as doing it in public limits it. If you want to campaign homophobia and white supremacy, go ahead but I think that tactic should carry the risk of alienating your potential moderate voters.
@CI I'm talking about political campaign activity, I think oversight is reasonable. If we make it a rule to make public all materials, if you're found to have hidden any ads, you could get fined and maybe trigger a by-election? But don't antiterrorist agencies have pretty good access to online comms already? I don't consider anything private unless I've taken responsibility for the encryption myself.
Jez, no government rule or law. Organizations sending "secret" messages to certain populations? Expose it to the broader population. Expose the double game.
The remedy for "bad" speech is "better" speech and more speech.
No, you're calling for self-reporting of something it's too easy to hide by forming a parallel seemingly unaffiliated and differently funded organization and making them take the fall to the "shameful" advertising.
If the platform (facebook) makes the ads it shows public, there's nothing the campaign can do to stop that. All they can do is pretend they were not affiliated, but they have to publish their accounts, right? Or is that somehow protected under the first ammendment too?
If the messages were branded to the unknown third-party shell organisation, then they weren't enjoying unearned legitimacy in the first place, so that's already a significant win IMO.
Yes, plus or minus the sarcasm. I think that's a result worth having. Maybe you're struggling to understand how people less cynical than you read the internet?
"but why should I have to discover it? Why should they be permited to hide it? " Why should your phone conversations be private? Why should I have to discover what you're saying, why should you be permitted to hide it? What's the difference? They're not your phone lines and it is not a private service, what's the difference between British Telcom and Twitter? Just some things to ponder.
That's precisely what I'm pondering. What is social media? Is it private, is it public, something in between? Does it depend on the platform? Is there a distinction between campaign ads and personal dms? Etc.
You're demanding the right to intrude into every conversation ever held, public or private. For that I say, in non-hyper spaces, that's impossible to do (in real life). You can't be everywhere in public to overhear every public conversation that other people have. Many "very private" conversations are conducted in very public spaces when no one else is around. You want access to the NSA database to spy... just like the FBI has been doing in its' "parallel construction" operations.
I can help you out there, I'm not asking for that. We can distinguish between broadcasting and conversation, yes? Is there a sense in which adverts on social media are more similar to broadcasting than to conversation? I'm talking about those bits.
If facebook is getting paid to show ads to some carefully sculpted subset of their user-base, why shouldn't facebook show the rest of us what those ads contain?
No, most stupid ideas are not technically challenging at all when you're not the one paying for data storage of a library of congress worth of materials produced every day.
Whatever happened to David Horowitz's / frontpagemag website's "Discover The Networks" map of financial and ideological connections of people and organizations on the left? Where you could seven-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon just about anybody to Saddam Hussein or whatever nutjob was currently out of favor...
You bought a slurpee from 7-11 which distributes gasoline from Conoco made from Venezuelan oil which enriched Hugo Chavez to back Colombian rebels that grew coca plants made into cocaine purchased by union officials that raided worker pension funds for George Soros that in turn invested in the John Kerry campaign to package Heinz 57 steak sauce to make well done steaks palatable while simultaneously causing brain damage via glycotoxin poisoning from overcooked meat to freeze dry and mail to Donald Trump's mail order service that runs survivalist food scams on right wing websites that sell subscriptions to financial doom newsletters funded by, you guessed it, Dennis Quaid, who played a psychic in a movie about government assassin's that kill people in their dreams like Freddy Krueger.
It's all your fault you Slurpee guzzling bastards.
Heinz 57 is not good on steak (steaks cooked properly - no more than medium rare - do not require sauce). Heinz 57 is damned good on batter fried shrimp however, and makes an awesome cocktail sauce with a pinch of ground horseradish ;)
TC: Our nation, like all of humanity, has always had conspiracy kooks, nutballs, unhinged ideologues, provocateurs, anarchists and societal firebugs. What's changed, is now the Infotainment Media Complex eggs it on.
Social media has a lot to do with propagating conspiracy theories too. I'm suggesting that we put paid-for messaging out in the open so that it may receive timely criticism... is that the same as control? How so?
Define "paid for" in a legally enforceable manner. Paid for by whom? A campaign? A person who supports or opposes a campaign? An influencer who has been promised a gift from someone who opposes a campaign?
Paid-for == the platform received a fee to run the ad.
I don't understand where our disagreement lies, so here's a terse restatement of the point I'm labouring: targetted advertising has enabled campaigns to run ads which would have been counter-productive to run on legacy media because they can be targetted to the niche audience who is likely to be receptive while remaining hidden from the mainstream audience who would be repulsed. Do you disagree with me that the moderating influence of the broad audience is desirable? If so, why is it desirable to conduct campaigns in the shadows? SF's stock answer (more speech, better speech) entails that speech be in general circulation so that it can be widely scrutinised and discussed, doesn't it? Do you disagree with him too?? Or do you agree that it would be great if we could wrangle it, but you find my "publish all ads" approach impractical?
I find it impractical. There are hundreds of billions of ads generated daily by every media source on the planet in every nation on Earth except N. Korea.
Implementation would require every ad in every country to carry a disclaimer that it was "paid for" and by "whom". The advertisers typically do not tell the websites who to target. The web sites and algorithms do the targeting based upon 3rd party (Acxiom) info about the advertisee's interests/ propensities. The advertisers also do not want to pay for ads that don't go to "receptive" advertisee's.
All of this data would have to be tracked and placed into a single known searchable space.
I disagree that advertisers will pay to send their ads to a "broad audience" (defeats the purpose of targeted advertising).
The "shadow campaign" saves advertiser money.
I agree with SF that the "opportunity" for more speech = better speech. I disagree that more SPAM advertising creates better speech. Eventually the trees of speech get lost in the forest. Eventually you need to turn up the signal to wipe out the noise.
Do you really want to pay advertisers to send you info that you're not interested in (more SPAM)?
Shadow banning is the preferred method of keeping the SPAM down to the Trump despicables. I wish I could decide what my personal SPAM parameters were that directed algorithmic functioning, for there are many things that are currently shadow banned that would be of greater interest to me than the results Google search engines provide. I would love a button that "flipped" Google result recommendations.
Jack's Magic Coffee Shop has all the data you want, Jez. They just don't want to share it with YOU. They know who all of us "despicables" are. We're all in their files.
btw - I started watching HBO's "The Rehearsal" yesterday. How people both "think" and behave "differently" when they know they're being watched (in attempts to influence how others perceive them). You might get a kick out of entering Nathan Fielder "Hyperreal World".
Is the Internet a simulacra (you know its fake) or a simulation (you think it's real and behave as if its' real). If it's the latter, you should try to realize that you've stepped into a panopticon. This is a hyper-real space where even my screen name and visual avatar is a deception, but even my screen "privacy protecting" deceptions can be pulled back to reveal the reality through the code. And this is done regularly by the owner's of Jack Magic Coffee Shop.
It's meant to influence you "psychologically" to behave as if we are "simulating" a social engagement and to behave as we might in "private".... as in a "real/ physical " social-network and not merely a virtual/ hyper-real one.
It's not as impractical as you fear. 1. i'm not saying, broadcast every rendering of every ad. Most ads appear more than once, no need to make more than one copy available. 2. it's not broadcasting, it's making them available. If a journalist or rival campaigner or ordinary citizen wants to peruse the political ads in some upcoming election, why couldn't he browse through them, without needing to be spammed by them. It would be so cheap to provide this that it hardly matters who pays for it, the advertiser of the platform.
Cambridge Analytica's whole jam was that they told facebook whom to expose to which ad. I'm not sure we need to publicise that data (it would breach privacy, wouldn't it?) but surely the platform already tracks this stuff to death so that it can bill its clients, and clients can track the effectiveness of their messaging?
I disagree that the ultra-targetted political messaging has anything to do with saving money. It's very, very expensive getting tracking the data to get the subpopulations right. I don't see anything good about having campaigns built on telling different subpopulations whatever it is they want to hear, those separate messages often contradicting one another. Let's hear every damn thing our political candidates have to say, please, so that we may judge them. Isn't that the point of democracy?
...and who to direct your counter-programming to. "Good Information Inc. aims to fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based information. As part of its mission, it plans to invest in local news companies. The group [is] led by Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist who previously ran a progressive non-profit called ACRONYM.”
So how would you know that "white supremacists" etc. were being "targeted"? Because there was a so-called "dog whistle" in an ad that ran to 200 people? Or would you then "unmask" certain recipients?
Nope, it's the "fear" of YOU (a potential voter) noticing the dog whistle/factual innacuracy or whathaveyou and thence witholding your vote. We don't need the identity of the targets to identify that. BTW if you want to dox supremacists, why not hire (son of) Cambridge analytica yourself? What's stopping you?
We have to take account of the fact that the internet and especially social media *is already* a repressive weapon of information control. The question sincere liberals (who knows, maybe there's some overlap with elected Dems?) is asking, is how do we counteract for that? I don't think they've hit upon a good solution yet, but I'm hopeful that there is one to be found. It's already pretty deregulated, so the answer is probably some form of regulation.
ReplyDeleteThe main regulation would be to restrain the platforms from censoring news they don't want out.
DeleteTo keep the government out of leaning on them, like the FBI did Zuck.
The public square is a good place to start. Allow what is allowed in a real town or city public square. Simplistic, I know, but that's a starting point.
DeleteAllow me to slide this in before today's post turns into somebody's personal blog...again.
DeleteI agree with you SF, but how (and we've touched on this before) do you square that ideal with the equally important freedom of privately held entities to run their market-based businesses as they see fit.?
ALL social media platforms censor information, short of nationalization....how can you legally prevent any platform from censoring speech they don't agree with?
You don't agree with all my posts, CI? Perhaps you can have them censored. I suggest you threaten a boycott.
DeleteThreaten to boycott my advertisers?
DeletePray to the Big Other to strike me down?
DeleteMy point is, if you don't like what you're hearing, perhaps you should say something to the contrary instead of just trying to prevent others from speaking. There's room for a lot of posts, even at this blog. It's not a zero sum game.
DeleteIt only becomes that on Election Day.
DeleteNope, you can seek all the attention and validation here that your self esteem needs.
DeletePull the chain and the monkey dances.
DeleteAhhh, validation........
Delete@CI: reward the good posts, ignore the bad...
Delete@SF: social media has something which the public square does not: targetting. If I set up a PA in the main square and start yelling racist tropes, everyone can hear me and I'll probably get shouted down or beaten up or whatehaveyou. Social media helps me find the audience who is responsive to racist tropes and lets me shout at them without more enlightened people overhearing.
This might not seem like a big deal, but it is.
...cuz racists should be prevented from talking amongst themselves...
Deleteps - Isn't it great that NSA is listening?
DeleteThey really need to tear down Speaker's Corner... and ban "soap boxes" from Union Square.
DeleteI guess "free speech" is no longer a G_d given unalienable right...
DeleteGive it a few years (and Elon Musk's Neuralink) and we'll be able to alienate "free thought" as well. Ain't technology grand?
DeleteFascism was horrible in the days of Mussolini long before the days of the internet. Back in those days, gangs of barely-muscled men literally had to roam the streets with rolled up newspapers - and newspapers were thick enough to roll up and smite someone hard enough to notice then - and these pencil-necked men would go door to door demanding that people pay a subscription fee to hear their tales of oppression or else bigger and bigger scrolls of advertising would come wrapping on their doors. You literally couldn't just laugh at and ignore the caterwauling about nothing, no no, you literally had to give you name, address, and pay a fee to hear more about how someone like Glenn Greenwald was being oppressed so you could laugh at it. And then, they had you. Other repressed voices now with your name, address, and knowledge that you love paying for badly written horror fiction would soon arrive with their own stories of oppression to tell, stories you'd never, ever hear if you only spent time paying attention to reality.
DeleteFascism was almost a nuisance until clickbait was invented.
;(
Delete"...cuz racists should be prevented from talking amongst themselves..."
Deletecampaigns sending messages & memes to the racist faction of its audience which it would be embarrased to show to its non-racist faction has a bad effect on the public discourse. How to square this with free speech? I think there might be a solution where each campaign is obliged to make public all variations of its campaign materials, so their most extreme messaging risks putting off the moderates they're also targetting.
Wouldn't all you have to do is publish one? So make up a fake racist persona and get them to send you one you lazy _....
DeleteWhy does somebody else always need a "regulation" to do something that you won't do yourself?
DeleteI have homophobic, misogynistic and other radical persona's. I never get these "secret" solcitations.
DeleteWait a minute... don't tell me. You're "projecting" again, aren't you. You're part of the Antifa wing of the DNC....
Delete:P
DeletePeople always mess with your anti-paranoia medication. ;)
Delete:)
DeleteHmm, I'm still trying to relate that to the topic...
ReplyDeleteWhich was the fascist? Let me guess....
ReplyDeleteJez, I think you've made my point. People can make racist and offensive statements in the public square, up to a point. In the US we do have laws about incitement, threats, etc.
ReplyDeleteCI, two words: public accommodation. Private Businesses in the US must admit everyone, given certain basic common standards.
The concept of public accommodation certainly applies to most businesses, but a key difference is that some/many/most social media platforms don't hold themselves out to the public in the same way that traditional businesses do, and given that they exist in the virtual space, there is really no lack of other available options, such as exists in the geospatial space.
DeleteA better (but not necessarily convincing for me) argument would be arguing the public accommodation theme with respect to web hosting services, designating the internet as 'critical infrastructure'.
Personally, I believe that any private business should have the latitude to discriminate in the transaction of their goods or services as they see fit. But I'm in the pretty distinct minority in that.
No reason gay wedding cakes can't be more prohibitively expensive. The insurance and storage costs of monkeypox frosting alone shoeuld adequately explain that.
DeleteFree speech for the ideologically handicapped!
Delete@TC - Wedding cakes are a good example. There is a robust debate over protecting the ability of a business to discriminate against customers in providing goods and services.
DeleteMore Hollywood actresses should definitely be forced to do porn... but never allowed to speak the words "C*ck" or "F*ck"!
DeleteWords are violence.
I want not just the bear minimum legal standards, I want to disincentivize extremist messaging to vulnerable populations. Are you comfortable with campaigners targeting eg qanon fans with more conspiracy theory material? Or would you rather know which campaigns were indulging in those tactics so that you may punish them at the ballot box?
DeleteIt's bad enough the Constitution enslaves lawyers to "work for" poor dumb criminals. Forcing Rebel Wilson to do porn would be almost as bad as forcing people to watch it.
DeleteShould we turn your Safe-Search filter on for you Jez, or can't you do it yourself?
DeleteAre we body-shaming beamish? Just adjust the horizontal...
DeleteForcing Rebel Wilson to do porn would be almost as bad as forcing people to watch it.
DeleteNow you're just discriminating against the 'chubby-chasers'.
This political advertisement has been rated E for Extreme.
DeleteThe following advertisements have been rated C for centrism.
Delete@Jez
DeleteI want to disincentivize extremist messaging to vulnerable populations.
Carl Jung said "People don't have ideas. Ideas have people."
You can not protect the stupid from themselves.
Do you get to control the "rating system" defining "Extreme" Jez? Or do I?
DeleteHow about the Misinformation Governance Board?
DeleteSince you don't trust me to control this, and I don't trust you, perhaps we should call it a regulatory Mexican stand-off.
DeleteThis political advertisement has been rated E for Extreme.
DeleteNuking the girl that was destroying wildlife and couldn't count was a little over top for LBJ to accuse a political opponent of wanting to do. Goldwater should have insisted destroying wildlife does not require nukes and knowing how to count is overrated anyway.
Jez, the problem with your approach is that the term "extremist messaging" is subjective not objective, to a die-hard free speech advocate your advocating disincentivizing extremist messaging is and of itself "extremist messaging". Has the UK torn down the speaker's corner in Hyde Park and put back up the Tyburn Gallows?
DeleteMy approach doesn't require anyone to make that distinction. Just publish *all* variants if your Facebook ads. Even the factually inaccurate ones you only sent to EDL supporters.
Delete...because no political organization would ever let an off-brand affiliate "shell" organization do its' dirty work for it...
DeleteYour request is ridiculous, jez.
I admit I am improvising. Do American political campaigns have spending limits? Do they submit their accounts?
DeleteNo limits, they file their accounts. But so do millions of affiliated and unaffiliated organizations who collect under their own names and spend under their own names.
DeleteTrump wouldn't spend for dirty tricks using his SuperPAC. He'd let another legally-unaffiliated SuperPac do it for him
DeleteThere are over 1170 currently registered SuperPACs. Good luck trying to prove "coordination" amongst them.
Deletewrong link, above.
DeleteMaybe I don't need to: if these shadowy "non"-affiliates become shameful enough that the candidate has to vocally disavow them, then that is maybe sufficient to rob them of the faux legitimacy they currently enjoy.
DeleteSo if Trump denounces the Klan, then the Klan is robbed of faux legitimacy by Klan members. Got it.
DeleteTry bringing your abstractions down to Earth once in a while, Jez.
DeleteHow'd that work in Charlottesville?
DeleteI think if the Klan circulates messages of support for Trump, readers understand what that means.
DeleteIf the Trump24 campaign headquaters sends white-supremacist messages to Klansmen and the Klan-adjacent (safe in the knowledge that they can do so without offending normal republicans), those readers will think that those messages are extra legit because they're coming from a mainstream source.
This is the type of legitimacy my suggestion might help with dismantling.
You seem to be arguing in favour of advertisers' privacy. Why is that a thing? I'm in favour of individuals enjoying privacy, but I don't see any reason to extend that to paid-for messaging.
You miss the point. The Trump24 would never send that white supremacist message. They'd sub the messaging out to a 3rd party that you would then have to identify and "de-legitimize". And if you think that they (Trump24) ARE doing that kind of messaging, I recommend you check yourself into a psych hospital and seek treatment. Campaigns are risk avoidant. They wouldn't take the risk even if there were a "law" requiring self-reporting.
DeleteIn fact, the very opposite is true. We need a law preventing Facebook from becoming the political enforcers for unpopular regimes.
DeleteWanna read my non-public Facebook posts? Get a subpoena.
Delete...or at least log on to the FBI Contractor servers for the NSA's database at the Washington DC offices of Perkins Coei where the FBI has it "parallel constructions" fabricated.
DeleteWe really need to start charging people for the coffee at Jack's Magic Coffee Shop.
DeleteDon't get caught up on the details of my hypotheticals. Read up on cambridge analytica and peruse the kind of ads Leave campaigns were sending during the brexit referendum if you want concrete examples. There are others from other elections around the globe. SF calls for "more speech" -- I agree with him! But those misleading messages need to be in general circulation for that "more speech" to happen.
DeleteIf they need to be in more general circulation, perhaps you should turn off your shadow ban algorithms that suppress them.
DeleteDouble check the chronology... Facebook's banning and fact checking spree was a sticking plaster attempt (doomed imo) to correct for the Cambridge analytics style shenanigans which happened back when FB was letting memes go viral and be damned.
DeleteYes, g-d forbid democrats or liberals should lose an election... must change the rules so that THAT can't happen again...
DeleteWhy are you so keen to protect the system which allows campaigns to run ads that would put off moderate voters? Btw Obama ran a very effective social media campaign too, this is not one sided. I want good quality debate, you are defending the wild west.
DeleteBecause I'm not so naive as to believe that Democrats won't cheat. Leftists are rule breakers. That's why they're leftists. The rules/laws they insist upon always only apply to "the other guy". They never apply to them. Look at which politicians DoJ and big city prosecutors forgive. Democrats.
DeleteYou'll arrest all the RNC campaign violations and forgive all the DNC ones.
DeleteWhen was the last time you saw violent Antifa protestors imprisoned? It almost never happens.
DeleteHow many Jan 6 protestors are still in jail w/o bail? At least 40 are in jail and 50 are in "home detention.
DeleteYou people are obsessed with elections, and it's past time you got over yourselves.
DeleteConservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
Delete- Ambrose Bierce
Facebook's Zuckerberg is already "your guy"... mr Zuckerbucks gave millions to Democrats and happily Shadow-banned all things "Trump". Now you want to go after his advertisers? 'F you.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete@@
DeleteI want to try to actually fix the problem, which the shadowbanning does not achieve (and never could have). Zuckerberg is not on my side, he wants to rinse money out of his dataset. He was fine with Cambridge analytics (who had much murkier clients than Vote Leave).
DeleteI'm.sorry they your partisan paranoia prevents you from aspiring to a political discourse less dominated by lies.
"Cambridge Analytics" *eye roll*
DeleteWhen will supposedly intelligent people on the left get it throug their indoctrinated skulls that a substantial percentage of ordinary people are pissed off and fed up with the ruling elite and their enforcers in the scolding progressives who are desperately trying to enforce their hopium smoke vision of the world?
It isn't partisan paranoiaa if they really are out to get you... just ask the 40 Trump staffers that just got visited last week by some 3am knocking Jan 6 Committee DoJ "thug enforcers"
DeleteHow do you Brits spell P-o-l-i-t-i-c-a-l I-n-t-i-m-i-d-a-t-i-o-n"?
DeleteReceiving unsoliciticited Free Tour tickets to visit the Tower of London on Nov 5th?
Delete@sf: i'm not saying there aren't. But I was appalled by the standard of debate from both sides of the Brexit referendum, and I would like to establish a more responsible discourse. I think it's perverse for anyone to object to that.
Delete@FJ please explain why you object to campaigns (all of them) being conducted more openly?
DeleteYou mean like John Fetterman's Stroke diagnosis? Or just whether or not he reads "The Klansman" magazine ads?
DeleteOpen for who?
Deleteps - What's that thing on his neck that he keeps covered up?
DeleteMost "masters" ask the wrong ones.
DeleteIf you REALLY want to disincentivise extremist messaging, Jez, I suggest you catch them doing it, and then expose your evidence.
ReplyDelete...and spare me all the imagined dogwhistles.
Delete:P
DeleteSure, I want to expose all their messaging, but why should I have to discover it? Why should they be permited to hide it? Various Leave campaigns were pumping out messages to vulnerable audiences that would have appalled their mainstream targets. I just think campaigners to partake in discourse they aren't themselves ashamed of.
DeleteFunny, I don't see you filing a disclosure statement with each of your posts. What are you hiding?
DeleteBesides, they'd just run the "extremist" targeted message through a "burnable" shell/ affiliate. An "amicus" message.
Face it. Tragedies will happen where you don't need to assess "blame". Inshallah/ ojala it doesn't happen. Doing regulatory rectal kegel exercises won't help
DeleteWhy should they be permited to hide it?
DeletePerhaps you're limiting this statement instead of being broad and general.....but are you saying that there should be no online forum that is not open to government surveillance?
Right now we have government agencies who reject OIG oversight. And the DOJ no longer reliably responds to the gang of eight Congressional oversight. They couldn't tell anyone they were spying on and investigating a presidential candidate (Trump) because it was "too politically sensitive".
Delete...whereas the very point of the gang of eight is to depoliticize sensitive issues and stop them from becoming political witch hunts by advising the best way to deal with sensitive political issues ala Clintons e-mail server. That was an issue that the AG should have kicked up to gang of eight, not the FBI Director.
DeleteThose issues are way above a bureaucrat's pay grade.
DeleteThe Democratic Party of Alabama kept "White Supremacy" on their banner and as their motto until the late 60's. The "Dixiecrats" didn't go off and form their own political party. 99.9% of them remained Democrats until they died. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore Jr - all Dixiecrats or mentored into politics by the same. Nothing really changes until the Democrats nominate Barack Obama - to the chagrin of former Democrats turned RINOs like Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and... Donald Trump.
DeleteThe pattern is there, nobody's hiding it, and if that's your brand of politics, it ain't hard to find. Hard to convince people to vote for, but not hard to find.
Some campaigns *are* hiding it, is what I'm saying. I'd rather that shit be out in the open, as doing it in public limits it. If you want to campaign homophobia and white supremacy, go ahead but I think that tactic should carry the risk of alienating your potential moderate voters.
Delete@CI I'm talking about political campaign activity, I think oversight is reasonable. If we make it a rule to make public all materials, if you're found to have hidden any ads, you could get fined and maybe trigger a by-election?
DeleteBut don't antiterrorist agencies have pretty good access to online comms already? I don't consider anything private unless I've taken responsibility for the encryption myself.
Jez, no government rule or law. Organizations sending "secret" messages to certain populations? Expose it to the broader population. Expose the double game.
DeleteThe remedy for "bad" speech is "better" speech and more speech.
The remedy for "bad" speech is "better" speech and more speech.
Delete^ This.
"Expose the double game"
DeleteI hope you understand that this is what I've been calling for.
No, you're calling for self-reporting of something it's too easy to hide by forming a parallel seemingly unaffiliated and differently funded organization and making them take the fall to the "shameful" advertising.
DeleteIf the platform (facebook) makes the ads it shows public, there's nothing the campaign can do to stop that. All they can do is pretend they were not affiliated, but they have to publish their accounts, right? Or is that somehow protected under the first ammendment too?
DeleteYou'll then need to link the ad to the campaign. Good luck.
DeleteEspecially since the ad was paid for by the Joe Blow organization.
DeleteIf the messages were branded to the unknown third-party shell organisation, then they weren't enjoying unearned legitimacy in the first place, so that's already a significant win IMO.
Deletelol! Hurray, the Russian bots aren't enjoying unearned legitimacy!
DeleteYes, plus or minus the sarcasm. I think that's a result worth having. Maybe you're struggling to understand how people less cynical than you read the internet?
DeleteFrom paranoid ones like you? lol!
Delete"but why should I have to discover it? Why should they be permited to hide it? " Why should your phone conversations be private? Why should I have to discover what you're saying, why should you be permitted to hide it? What's the difference? They're not your phone lines and it is not a private service, what's the difference between British Telcom and Twitter? Just some things to ponder.
ReplyDeleteThat's precisely what I'm pondering. What is social media? Is it private, is it public, something in between? Does it depend on the platform? Is there a distinction between campaign ads and personal dms? Etc.
DeleteYou're demanding the right to intrude into every conversation ever held, public or private. For that I say, in non-hyper spaces, that's impossible to do (in real life). You can't be everywhere in public to overhear every public conversation that other people have. Many "very private" conversations are conducted in very public spaces when no one else is around. You want access to the NSA database to spy... just like the FBI has been doing in its' "parallel construction" operations.
DeleteI can help you out there, I'm not asking for that. We can distinguish between broadcasting and conversation, yes? Is there a sense in which adverts on social media are more similar to broadcasting than to conversation? I'm talking about those bits.
DeleteIf facebook is getting paid to show ads to some carefully sculpted subset of their user-base, why shouldn't facebook show the rest of us what those ads contain?
That's every ad Facebook, and every other social media ap shows. They're ALL targeted.
DeleteGood luck with that.
Deleteyep, publish them all, that's what I'm saying. It's not technically challenging in the slightest.
DeleteNo, most stupid ideas are not technically challenging at all when you're not the one paying for data storage of a library of congress worth of materials produced every day.
DeleteWhat are you blithering about? Facebook already stores the ads, in order that they may present them to the targetted users.
Deletelol! Really? They store every ad they've ever run? Then Subpoena their database you lazy _______!
DeleteMeanwhile, take your campaign against stochastic terrorism elsewhere.
Whatever happened to David Horowitz's / frontpagemag website's "Discover The Networks" map of financial and ideological connections of people and organizations on the left? Where you could seven-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon just about anybody to Saddam Hussein or whatever nutjob was currently out of favor...
DeleteYou bought a slurpee from 7-11 which distributes gasoline from Conoco made from Venezuelan oil which enriched Hugo Chavez to back Colombian rebels that grew coca plants made into cocaine purchased by union officials that raided worker pension funds for George Soros that in turn invested in the John Kerry campaign to package Heinz 57 steak sauce to make well done steaks palatable while simultaneously causing brain damage via glycotoxin poisoning from overcooked meat to freeze dry and mail to Donald Trump's mail order service that runs survivalist food scams on right wing websites that sell subscriptions to financial doom newsletters funded by, you guessed it, Dennis Quaid, who played a psychic in a movie about government assassin's that kill people in their dreams like Freddy Krueger.
It's all your fault you Slurpee guzzling bastards.
My love for Heinz 57 survived the Kerry campaign. I love that stuff!
DeleteHeinz 57 is not good on steak (steaks cooked properly - no more than medium rare - do not require sauce). Heinz 57 is damned good on batter fried shrimp however, and makes an awesome cocktail sauce with a pinch of ground horseradish ;)
DeleteA good steak should recline naked before the gourmand, requiring nothing more.
DeleteHeinz 57 is good for fries or inferior meats
Progressive Mindset:
ReplyDelete"If only we could control information dissemination, we could get everyone thinking correctly."
TC: Our nation, like all of humanity, has always had conspiracy kooks, nutballs, unhinged ideologues, provocateurs, anarchists and societal firebugs. What's changed, is now the Infotainment Media Complex eggs it on.
ReplyDelete@Silverfiddle - the Diversity Unification Conspiracy Theory To Annihilate People Everywhere. DUCT TAPE holds us all together.
DeleteGood one
DeleteSocial media has a lot to do with propagating conspiracy theories too. I'm suggesting that we put paid-for messaging out in the open so that it may receive timely criticism... is that the same as control? How so?
DeleteDefine "paid for" in a legally enforceable manner. Paid for by whom? A campaign? A person who supports or opposes a campaign? An influencer who has been promised a gift from someone who opposes a campaign?
Deletebtw - campaigns already are required to supply "disclosure notices".
DeletePaid-for == the platform received a fee to run the ad.
DeleteI don't understand where our disagreement lies, so here's a terse restatement of the point I'm labouring: targetted advertising has enabled campaigns to run ads which would have been counter-productive to run on legacy media because they can be targetted to the niche audience who is likely to be receptive while remaining hidden from the mainstream audience who would be repulsed.
Do you disagree with me that the moderating influence of the broad audience is desirable? If so, why is it desirable to conduct campaigns in the shadows? SF's stock answer (more speech, better speech) entails that speech be in general circulation so that it can be widely scrutinised and discussed, doesn't it? Do you disagree with him too??
Or do you agree that it would be great if we could wrangle it, but you find my "publish all ads" approach impractical?
thank you for your cooperation.
I find it impractical. There are hundreds of billions of ads generated daily by every media source on the planet in every nation on Earth except N. Korea.
DeleteImplementation would require every ad in every country to carry a disclaimer that it was "paid for" and by "whom". The advertisers typically do not tell the websites who to target. The web sites and algorithms do the targeting based upon 3rd party (Acxiom) info about the advertisee's interests/ propensities. The advertisers also do not want to pay for ads that don't go to "receptive" advertisee's.
All of this data would have to be tracked and placed into a single known searchable space.
I disagree that advertisers will pay to send their ads to a "broad audience" (defeats the purpose of targeted advertising).
The "shadow campaign" saves advertiser money.
I agree with SF that the "opportunity" for more speech = better speech. I disagree that more SPAM advertising creates better speech. Eventually the trees of speech get lost in the forest. Eventually you need to turn up the signal to wipe out the noise.
Do you really want to pay advertisers to send you info that you're not interested in (more SPAM)?
SPAM=Seriously Poor Advertising Method
DeleteShadow banning is the preferred method of keeping the SPAM down to the Trump despicables. I wish I could decide what my personal SPAM parameters were that directed algorithmic functioning, for there are many things that are currently shadow banned that would be of greater interest to me than the results Google search engines provide. I would love a button that "flipped" Google result recommendations.
Delete...such is the "price" of a "free" internet. Don't like it? Get behind an AOL Pay Wall.
DeleteJack's Magic Coffee Shop has all the data you want, Jez. They just don't want to share it with YOU. They know who all of us "despicables" are. We're all in their files.
DeleteOurs is a "Society of Control". This is how we are controlled... given only the options that their algorithms "qualify" us to receive.
DeleteYou are asking to see data that the owners of Jack's Magic Coffee Shop haven't "qualified you" to see.
DeleteTo see that, you'd need a terminal at a Perkins Coie office with a connection into the NSA database.
Delete...and they've got enough "noise" on their lines as it is without you generating a stronger signal.
DeleteWelcome to world of the hypernormal.
DeleteQED
Deletebtw - I started watching HBO's "The Rehearsal" yesterday. How people both "think" and behave "differently" when they know they're being watched (in attempts to influence how others perceive them). You might get a kick out of entering Nathan Fielder "Hyperreal World".
DeleteHere's a taste.
DeleteIs the Internet a simulacra (you know its fake) or a simulation (you think it's real and behave as if its' real). If it's the latter, you should try to realize that you've stepped into a panopticon. This is a hyper-real space where even my screen name and visual avatar is a deception, but even my screen "privacy protecting" deceptions can be pulled back to reveal the reality through the code. And this is done regularly by the owner's of Jack Magic Coffee Shop.
DeleteThey aren't "spoofed".
Delete...and so this veil of "privacy" (to make you believe that you are not being watched) is a deception.
DeleteIt's meant to influence you "psychologically" to behave as if we are "simulating" a social engagement and to behave as we might in "private".... as in a "real/ physical " social-network and not merely a virtual/ hyper-real one.
Delete...where they are mere uncomprehending flies upon the wall.
DeleteIt's not as impractical as you fear.
Delete1. i'm not saying, broadcast every rendering of every ad. Most ads appear more than once, no need to make more than one copy available.
2. it's not broadcasting, it's making them available. If a journalist or rival campaigner or ordinary citizen wants to peruse the political ads in some upcoming election, why couldn't he browse through them, without needing to be spammed by them.
It would be so cheap to provide this that it hardly matters who pays for it, the advertiser of the platform.
Cambridge Analytica's whole jam was that they told facebook whom to expose to which ad. I'm not sure we need to publicise that data (it would breach privacy, wouldn't it?) but surely the platform already tracks this stuff to death so that it can bill its clients, and clients can track the effectiveness of their messaging?
I disagree that the ultra-targetted political messaging has anything to do with saving money. It's very, very expensive getting tracking the data to get the subpopulations right. I don't see anything good about having campaigns built on telling different subpopulations whatever it is they want to hear, those separate messages often contradicting one another. Let's hear every damn thing our political candidates have to say, please, so that we may judge them. Isn't that the point of democracy?
So you get access to the data. What then?
DeleteWe all get access to the data, including the campaign's own moderate base. My theory is that openness would have a moderating influence on rhetoric.
DeleteSo now you know who to Doxx. Got it.
Delete...and who to direct your counter-programming to. "Good Information Inc. aims to fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based information. As part of its mission, it plans to invest in local news companies. The group [is] led by Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist who previously ran a progressive non-profit called ACRONYM.”
Delete...and SPAM them with it.
DeleteNothing beats an algorithmically determined re-education and counter-programming campaign.
DeleteAll it takes is a little code.
DeleteNo, like I said "I'm not sure we need to publicise that [identity of targets] data (it would breach privacy, wouldn't it?)"
DeleteSo how would you know that "white supremacists" etc. were being "targeted"? Because there was a so-called "dog whistle" in an ad that ran to 200 people? Or would you then "unmask" certain recipients?
DeleteIt's not a very convincing case, given the low (target) numbers.
DeleteOr is the "fear" of you calling an ad a "dog whistle" supposed to make the campaign's third party subs through six cut-outs "moderate themselves"?
DeleteI'm sure that threat will scare the bejesus out of my Mumbai troll farm social media ad piece-workers.
DeleteNope, it's the "fear" of YOU (a potential voter) noticing the dog whistle/factual innacuracy or whathaveyou and thence witholding your vote. We don't need the identity of the targets to identify that.
DeleteBTW if you want to dox supremacists, why not hire (son of) Cambridge analytica yourself? What's stopping you?
My theory is that the democrats want to boycott the world into submission.
ReplyDelete