Social media controls the world

[Tin_Wisdom]

Corporations are people, my friend.

[triggercut]

Corporations are people, my friend.

Whatever you say, Pierre.

[Calelari]

Corporations are people, my friend.

I’ll believe it when a corporation gets packaged as Soylent.

[sillhouette]

But I hear FleeceBook hates conservatives…

Kevin Roose (kevinroose)

[Timex]

As an eagles fan, i find it fitting that the Dallas cowboys are in such company.

[Ginger_Yellow]

Twitter financials are out and the stock market is not happy. Revenue miss and some bizarre excusifying.

In Q3 we discovered, and took steps to remediate, bugs that primarily
affected our legacy Mobile Application Promotion (MAP) product, impacting
our ability to target ads and share data with measurement and ad partners.
We also discovered that certain personalization and data settings were not
operating as expected. We believe that, in aggregate, these issues reduced
year-over-year revenue growth by 3 or more points in Q3.

I smell a Facebook-style advertiser lawsuit brewing. Also, if a bug in a system can cut your overall revenues by 3%, it’s not a legacy system.

We also experienced greater-than-expected seasonality in our advertising
business that began in July and continued into August.

I’m no statistician, but it seems to me that if month-to-month variability is greater than expected, then it’s not seasonality. Surely seasonality is the expected variability. As indeed they go on to admit:

We believe our core value propositions of launching something new and connecting with what’s happening on Twitter continue to resonate very strongly with advertisers, and that slower business over the summer was due to a relatively lighter slate of big events and launches in July and August compared to 2018.

So, not seasonality then.

[Wallapuctus]

Delete your Facebook account.

[Telefrog]

Here’s my admittedly flawed stance: I kind of sympathize with Facebook on this particular issue. Politicians lie. They lie in office and they lie while running for office. At the very least, even the most honest politician will cherrypick truths to shore up their positions. Should Facebook moderate and be responsible for what politicians say? I honestly don’t think so, as long as the politician isn’t violating any laws or making direct threats.

How do I square that with the damage these lies do to us all on social media? I don’t. That’s where I acknowledge it’s flawed. I don’t have an answer.

[KevinC]

They don’t have to moderate, they can just not take money for political ads.

[Telefrog]

I guess, but do newspapers and tv stations take money for their ads?

More, lets say Facebook announces tomorrow that all official political ads are free from now on. Does that address the calls for Facebook to “take down lies?”

[Mysterial]

I don’t think knowing lies in ads should be allowed on any platform, Facebook or otherwise. We have libel/slander laws for a reason.

[antlers]

We have libel/slander laws for a reason.

I think that is more or less Facebook’s argument If something is libelous, there are other remedies where Facebook doesn’t have to be the arbiter.

[Telefrog]

We have libel/slander laws for a reason.

Sure. I wrote “as long as the politician isn’t violating any laws or making direct threats” for a reason too.

Also, I don’t believe slander and libel are the issues people are talking about. The “lies” in here are the political bullshit falsehoods that get spewed out and can spread virally without being slanderous or libellous.

[Mysterial]

Well, I think the bar for lies in political ads being legally actionable is way too high. I realize that’s about issue 1000 in our political system that needs laws that will never be passed to get fixed.

[JoshL]

Also, again, part of the problem is that if someone makes a TV ad with verifiable lies in it, or sends out a mailer, reporters are going to know. Fact-checking can be employed. Counter-ads can be made.

But with Facebook, you can target the ads specifically to people who will believe it, and will never see anything that contradicts it. It is much harder for the opposing campaigns or journalists to find out about it

This is pretty much exactly what the Cambridge Analytica scandal is about.

Facebook is being used a a tool to dismantle democracy, and Zuckerberg’s response is basically, “it’s not my problem, I just make money from it”.

[ShivaX]

But with Facebook, you can target the ads specifically to people who will believe it, and will never see anything that contradicts it. It is much harder for the opposing campaigns or journalists to find out about it

Exactly.

[Menzo]

Let’s not forget that the money Facebook makes on the ad itself pales in comparison to the engagement that the ad produces. That’s what they really need - theY could stop taking money from political ads tomorrow and it’d have zero effect on their bottom line.

[Clay]

Adriel Hampton 🦇 (adrielhampton)

[Menzo]

The logical conclusion of Facebook’s policy was easy to see, so it really must be that the execs there are just dumb.

Facebook is going to get filled with false troll ads like this from all sides, escalating in intensity, and eventually they’re going to convince someone with a gun to kill someone else. I mean it’s so obvious, but even more so given Facebook’s own experience with WhatsApp in some countries, where it became the same cesspool of false information that led to so many murders that they had to change the way people can use the app.

[KevinC]

I want to buy an ad saying that Mitch McConnell has called for Republicans to support Democrats in impeaching the treasonous Donald Trump. The rightwing nutjobs that I know of that get their “news” from Facebook have no filter, it’ll be injecting it straight into their veins.