On the one hand, Ben Thompson writes,
Facebook should increase requirements for authenticity from all advertisers, at least those that spend significant amounts of money or place a large number of ads. I do believe it is important to make it easy for small companies to come online as advertisers, so perhaps documentation could be required for a $1,000+ ad buy, or a cumulative $5,0000, or after 10 ads (these are just guesses; Facebook should have a much clearer idea what levels will increase the hassle for bad actors yet make the platform accessible to small businesses). This will make it more difficult for bad actors in elections of all kinds, or those pushing scummy advertising generally.
On the other hand, John Tamny writes,
Facebook is a free service. Robinson’s decision to sign up for what is free in no way entitles her to knowledge about and control of the advertisements sold by the free service. If she feels as though “shadowy foreign interests” buying ads on the social network somehow altered her policy views, then she should quit Facebook altogether. No one charged her to set up a Facebook page, no one forced her to, so if she’s bothered by an income stream that enables the site’s free-of-charge feature, she’s obviously free to close her account.
Those who want to regulate Facebook are not afraid of how they use it themselves. They are afraid of how others use it. This is a classic case of Fear Of Other’s Liberty. FOOL is the root of nearly all regulation.
Tamny is telling FOOLs to use exit rather than voice. When you have a valuable entertainment franchise that relies on its reputation, exit can have devastating effects–just ask the NFL. If Facebook implements new policies, I hope it is because those policies help to ward off exit, and that they are not necessary to ward off regulation.
This is a very important debate, and there are no easy answers.
This is at the intersection of automated experiences and the limits of our capacity to consider and react. We all have a finite mind space. Exit requires a piece of this space. Facebook and Google have no such restrictions. They have very slowly boiled the frog here, adding free services, building community dependency and only later, slowly interjecting intrusions. A small minority considers the consequences of participation, while the majority is increasingly dependent on the Facebook/Google ecosystems.
For most of us, our sense of ethics and responsibility was formed in a pre-digital age. What happens when our capacity to take responsibilty is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of complex value propositions? Can we continue to depend on our 20th century sense of ethical responsibility to manage a tidal wave of technically driven choices?
I would say we have no choice. Otherwise we are depending on regulators to make choices for us; are giving the state greater leeway to decide for us what is true or false. I do t trust regulators that much, either in terms of competence or impartiality.
Nor do I think this is as unprecedented as people claim in light of technological changes. Newspapers and magazines of Old could lie with impunity and most people had no recourse to verify.
I agree with the second one. But if Facebook want to take the advice of the first one, that would be fine.
If people are so easily swayed someone is going to do it somewhere somehow. And always have been.
The solution to “bad” free speech Is always more, not less, free speech. Of course, as a private company, FB has no obligation to afford a platform to anyone they might prefer not to. Eventually, the “wild west” of FB may lead to better curation of content by free agents who serve as editors. Users will find the editors they prefer – friends, relatives, good Samaritans or vendors.
Are you unconcerned by the unlimited capacity for injecting anonymous automated speech into the public sphere? Can we really just deal with it with traditional personal filters and discretion?
Yes.
As with basically all proposed restrictions on free speech, the cure is worse than the sickness.
Your sensibilities were formed in a different era, when any speech was limited by the number of voices, or the price of paper. We don’t really know how bad the sickness will be.
As the cost of observation and manipulation approaches zero at scale, we are likely to see effects we haven’t ever seen before.
In the end, I would tend to agree that the government can’t be the way this gets dealt with. But much damage will be done. Ultimately, the core business propositions of Facebook and Google, at least as we know them now, will be destroyed as a consequence.
What proportion of the paid speech regarding political issues is problematically sourced for you? 0.001%? 0.0001%?
I’m struggling to figure out why anyone considers this an issue worth even talking about outside some obscure advertising blog.
That’s not completely true. I mean, I get why some people want to find something to blame for people thinking things they don’t believe they should think, but can’t they at least come up with something more plausible than click-bait advertising which represents a rounding error on the total political advertising budgets?
I’m so tired of the Russians manipulating me. I’d rather someone in Washington DC control my thoughts instead.
“No one charged her to set up a Facebook page, no one forced her to…”
This sentiment is getting a bit obsolescent. I understand that some employers are now requiring being on Facebook as a condition or pre-condition of employment. That seems likely only to spread, since one characteristic of bandwagons is often that everybody feels in a giant hurry to jump aboard for fear of missing out (as with driverless cars, which are probably being forced ahead far too hastily for anyone’s safety, by politicians eager to signal, at any cost, their own supposed life-saving virtue.)
Anything which has become a pre-condition to (some) employment, or a pre-condition to being able to communicate with a good many other folks, cannot properly be treated any longer as some purely voluntary whim. This element of compulsion will engender strident calls for censorship and regulation, and strident disagreements over the parameters of censorship and regulation.
The resulting battle of all against all will certainly end badly, but that may be the price of unbridled technological “progress”. Sic transit gloria mundi.