7 ms·
Meta allows ads saying 2020 election was rigged on Facebook and Instagram
- grecy 3y agoIt feels like a dangerous time for society when it is so easy to spread lies to a massive percentage of the population that undermine the the very Democracy that society is based on.
- msandford 3y agoHere is an article detailing a substantial set of changes made to the election process just before 2020. These might have all been perfectly legal things to do but when you make enough changes all at once some people start to wonder. https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
- awb 3y agoI skimmed the article and it seems to outline how folks knew Trump wouldn't concede if he lost, so they were preparing to fight disinformation and preparing for potential legal battles. Could you elaborate on the changes you're taking away from the article that made people wonder about the integrity of the election?
- mantas 3y ago> Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time.
- throwaway626 3y ago[dead]
- alkonaut 3y agoPeople do have a right to wonder. And the process should both be transparent to observe, and possible to drag through courts if there are more questions. And with this election it sure was dragged through courts, for years. And there has been no evidence of any substantial irregularities. Changes or not, no one seems to find much to suggest the election wasn't decided fairly.
- yawboakye 3y agoabsence of evidence =/= evidence of absence
- alkonaut 3y agoThat's not a very convincing argument if you are trying to make a fantastical claim without evidence. "Yeah I don't have any evidence thing X happened, but that doesn't mean it didn't!" What should people do with that information?
- yawboakye 3y agoif you interpret absence of evidence as ‘i don’t have evidence’ then you’re right. but evidence doesn’t necessarily require possession to exist. worse it could even be perfectly hidden by your interrogator.
- amalcon 3y agoClosely scrutinizing something, and noting that the null hypothesis explains those observations, is not absence of evidence. It is evidence of absence. Observation creates evidence, whether the observations were expected or not.
- awb 3y agoWhile true, it's also nonsensical to ask people to believe in something without providing evidence of it. Carl Sagan has a good short story to this effect about a dragon in his garage: http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf > Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head.
- throwaway626 3y ago[dead]
- frogperson 3y agoTargeted advertising and the bubble it creates is so powerful and dangerous.
- splitstud 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- llamaInSouth 3y agoThis democracy is an illusion anyways
- helaoban 3y agoLol. The opposite is true. We live in time when lying to the population has never been more difficult. Before the internet, information control and media capture by the state was near total, and lying to the entire population was the default practice.
- pauldenton 3y agoThe Spanish American war seemed to have a lot of lies and a journalistic duopoly controlling access to information which had one bent or another
- whatshisface 3y agoSo there's a fifth circuit ruling out there explaining in detail how the Biden administration pressured a willing Meta to implement the administration's misinformation policy through moderation. Here they are allowing the other side's worst statements through. Hopefully this makes it clear that misinformation control in practice really benefits whoever the platform wants to hedge against being in power with no concern for our own interests. Here is the ruling if you would like to see what they have been doing: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pd...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mikeyouse 3y agoTechdirt has a good series outlining the clowinsh nature of the 5th circuit - https://www.techdirt.com/tag/5th-circuit/ https://www.techdirt.com/tag/5th-circuit/ - they often make just very problematic rulings not backed by law or precedent. In the ruling you linked, they make repeated references to "demands" that were supposedly problematic but when the full context is provided, they're completely benign. Just really bad faith efforts from the Court for political purposes. Techdirt / Mike Masnick's post about this ruling, the district court's insane prior one, and trying to square the circle of free speech and government coercion: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/11/5th-circuit-cleans-up-district-courts-silly-jawboning-ruling-about-the-biden-admin-trims-it-down-to-more-accurately-reflect-the-1st-amendment/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/11/5th-circuit-cleans-up-di...
- pauldenton 3y agoTechdirt/ Mike Masnick also repeatedly claims there is no disproportionate censorship and that Democrats and Republicans get censored an equal amount. He's very much been in a Silicon Valley bubble since 2016
- mikeyouse 3y agoI don't think he's ever claimed there is equal amounts of censorship - which would only be possible if both sides were equally promoting TOS-breaking posts - what he, and basically everyone who has ever studied 'censorship' of this type have found, is that Republicans do indeed have more posts removed, but largely due to them relentlessly promoting all sorts of wacky shit against the tech company TOS's. If Ds started posting revenge porn of Ivanka Trump in the same quantity as Rs posted the Hunter Biden pics - they'd all be removed as well, and rightfully so!
- cryptoz 3y agoWell that's tricky right, since the 2020 election was rigged all kinds of ways in favor of the Republicans. So if you're going to allow political ads at all - which clearly they shouldn't - why would you ban things that are truthful? Of course I'm aware that the 'rigged' line is typically aimed at the Democrats "rigging" the election since they won - but there is no evidence of that, while there is a plethora of evidence that Republicans rig the heck of out everything they can. Seems like it would be much better to just ban political advertising.
- doitLP 3y agoAmazing how the different parties have such diametrically opposite views… if it wasn’t so serious it would be comical. In the last 24 hours I’ve heard the following from a republican and a democrat: “obviously we know they tampered with the election. It’s proven” I’m aware of the “stop the steal” and dominion nonsense from the right. But what hard evidence exists that the Republican Party rigged the 2020 election?
- JohnFen 3y agoThere is no meaningful evidence that the election was rigged by any party. That's why nobody has brought any forward.
- whatshisface 3y agoUnequal per-person weighting in our systems of representation can be demonstrated with nothing but a copy of the Constitution.
- JohnFen 3y agoSure, and I agree that the election system in the US undemocratic to the point of being arguably corrupt. But by "rigged", what most people mean is "manipulated in a way that isn't legally allowed". There's no evidence that this happened to any meaningful degree.
- newsclues 3y agoI'm sorry I thought it was admitted that the election wasn't fair.
- somewhat_drunk 3y agoProve that it wasn't fair.
- whatshisface 3y agoIn the electoral college, some voters are able to vote with three times the weight of others due to differing populations within districts that have equal college votes. Here is one source I found on Google, but the calculation is easy and there are plenty of other articles that reach similar conclusions: https://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-the-electoral-college-74280 https://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-t... If you add in gerrymandering, it's the truth that most of our elections are "rigged" or "unfair" in a very real sense to anyone who believes in majoritarianism.
- awb 3y agoThat's an argument for the popular vote. In 2020 Trump lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote.
- mantas 3y agoMany jurisdictions use weighted voting. It’s not some US-only thing.
- bigstrat2003 3y agoThe electoral college isn't unfair, it is one of the few things ensuring fair treatment of smaller states. You might value the equal value of each vote (which is its own kind of fairness to be sure) more highly, but it is flat out disingenuous to claim that elections aren't fair due to the electoral college. The electoral college is making different fairness trade-offs than you would prefer, but that's not the same as being unfair.
- cowsup 3y ago> Meta will now allow political advertisers to say past elections were “rigged” or “stolen”, although it still prevents them from questioning whether ongoing or future elections are legitimate. I think this is a pretty terrible attempt to cater to both sides. Implying that an ongoing election is illegitimate is "against the rules," but saying the current incumbents are illegitimately there is "allowed?" Why?
- voisin 3y agoBecause Zuckerberg et al are addicted to ad revenue and some model shows that this drives usage. Fuck Facebook and every single one of its corrupt employees.
- Dig1t 3y agoWhy is a private company calling the shots on speech in a free society to begin with?
- bananapub 3y agowhat should they have to publish? anything? bomb instructions? child abuse imagery? only legal things? legal where?
- kdwikzncba 3y agoNot sure what point you're trying to make. I'd love to hear if you know what point you're trying to make. Suppose I have you an answer to each of those questions. Now what?
- hcurtiss 3y agoI get that everybody wants to ride this particular hobby horse, but in the wake of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, and the behavior of these platforms during the pandemic, I'm not sure I wouldn't rather live with lies I have to filter, than the "truths" they identify for me. I no longer trust the "experts'" definition of "misinformation," and I suspect I never will again.
- cdme 3y agoTurns out outsourcing public discourse to a wholly unscrupulous private entity was, perhaps, not the best decision.
- splitstud 3y ago[dead]
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoThere wasn't any law that forbids saying election was rigged. Outsourcing caused other type of problem of not allowing certain views, not not banning illegal stuff.
- organsnyder 3y agoParts of this aren't new, though—advertising in media outlets has always been a privately-operated domain.
- wholesomepotato 3y agoPublic discourse was and should always be in the private domain. Anything else is totalitarianism by definition.
- ceejayoz 3y agoTIL public school board hearings are totalitarian.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- voisin 3y agoThere’s a difference between private domain and privately regulated.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y agoCorporations censor speech and any content in their platforms that they deem undesirable or threatening to their profits. That’s totalitarianism by definition, and yet private. Public discourse squarely belongs to the public, and hosting it must be perceived and intended to be a kind of public service; otherwise we can just go back to the good old days of gathering and debating in public squares.
- spandextwins 3y ago[dead]
- yawboakye 3y ago[flagged]
- awb 3y agoFree and fair elections are a source of US national pride and identity. If a national election wasn't fair, then we have no more political freedom than a non-democratic country. So yes, you're allowed to say it, but without solid evidence, it does strike a deep nerve with people. To my knowledge, no one has been able to provide proof in court of any orchestrated election tampering.
- yawboakye 3y agobut have there ever been free and fair elections? even without an official court case against any election it’s preposterous to declare it free and fair. so why should the desire to label any one election as ‘free and fair’ supersede the right/freedom of any individual or group to call the fairness of any election into question? what does it change? their evidence could even be anecdotal: human error at their polling station.
- alkonaut 3y agoA typical method of ensuring free and fair elections is to have free press, international observers and so on. Whether you trust the OSCE observers or whatever is of course up to you but let's just define a free and fair election as one held in a stable democracy and recognized as free and fair by the international community and international observers. There is no other useful definition, so you can just as well use that one. If it doesn't meet your standards, then there aren't any free and fair elections. But you just made the term useless for no good reason then. > what does it change? their evidence could even be anecdotal: human error at their polling station. Here is the thing: there are irregularities in ALL elections. But that doesn't make them unfair. All that's required for a "free and fair" election is that the irregularities don't affect the result in any meaningful way. If people saw one person vote twice, they can accuse that person of voting twice. And the legal system will deal with that. But that is not a good reason to call the integrity of the whole election into question unless you have reason to believe there are systematic irregularities. Free and fair doesn't mean "without irregularities".
- mwbajor 3y agoWhy is it no problem to say that the 2000 election was bogus? It was, and its not a big leap in logic to say that our "leaders" only got bolder since then. edit: I dont care about my groupthink points/karma, I truly would like an answer. I dislike both political parties equally and have no skin in the game so please, someone take a stab at an answer to my question.
- alphabettsy 3y agoMy opinion. The 2000 election was essentially decided by the courts based on mostly agreed upon facts. The outcome depended on interpretation of the law. In the most recent election the facts themselves are not agreed upon and there are many many unsubstantiated allegations.
- mwbajor 3y agoYea, got that. The folks who had a vested interest in the system basically picked the president and they found a reason to do so (the chads and close results). Have our leaders ever shown restraint in any of the power we have given them? How does this HN community constantly and correctly bemoan our increasing security state but looks past the rapid gerrymandering, vote harvesting and other funny business because of the wrong letter after a persons name? At this rate, our politicians are most likely going to fix or attempt to fix an election at some point. It might have happened, it might have not.
- dudul 3y agoAs a proponent of sortition i would (half) jockingly argue that all elections are fixed bu design. They oppose pre selected candidates and their outcome rarely matters.
- pauldenton 3y agoIt seems like it would be better to resolve those disputes in the court instead of dismissing them all on procedural grounds like the doctrine of laches
- javajosh 3y agoWhat is the go to URL that people like that summarizes the debate around censhorship vs speech rights? Like so many other things, it seems to me that both sides have a very strong case, but that ultimately, in all matters, practicality wins. In this case, speech freedom is ideologically correct, and Meta is being short-term practical (money!) but long-term impractical (undermining democracy will undermine key infrastructure upon which Meta depends). E.g. censorship is generally very bad, even extremely bad, but this particular set of claims is a contagion to which large swaths of the public are vulnerable to, and which present a clear and present danger to US democracy. Furthermore, this isn't a case where there is any nuance: every claim of fraud has been undermined. To anyone paying attention to these claims and their response knows the score; so to see the population get swayed because of their own ignorance and prejudice is a sacrifice too great for the altar of "free speech". Especially when you factor in how much less free speech will become if they win.
- bb88 3y agoYou mean Truth Social where Trump called his enemies "vermin"? Or do you mean something like the NYTimes, which Trump calls "Fake News"? I have no idea whether Trump would be an Authoritarian or not if he wins president again, but propaganda around Jews was why Germany had no issues with death camps being run in their name. Unfortunately all media is profit driven, with the notable exception of PBS and NPR. At some point you're going to trust someone. My neighbor across the street trusts Fox News, e.g.
- dataflow 3y agoWhy are "rigged" and "stolen" lumped together? I thought one means the rules are unfair (legal), and the other means the rules were broken (illegal). These are... very different, no?
- lokar 3y agoI think their claim is the election rules were changed illegally at the last moment.
- dataflow 3y agoI didn't glean that from the article. Which rules were allegedly illegally changed at the last moment?
- pfannkuchen 3y agoI didn’t read this article, but I believe the switch to mail in ballots (at least) was made by the executive branch in many places where legally speaking it is supposed to be made by the legislative branch. I believe the process change was justified under the COVID related emergency orders. Kind of hard to tell whether it was above board or not. I haven’t looked too much into it though, if someone can add more detail I would be interested too!
- sanswork 3y agoYou didn't read the article and you say you haven't looked into it much but twice in this post you've made assertions about legally questionable/illegal actions. Your posts here are a perfect example of why we need to fight disinfo so strongly because people will parrot random things they hear all over the place and by second level it becomes truth to many.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoI use soft language because this is a sensitive topic that has become hyper politicized and I am not a partisan (both of the current parties are extremely gross). I said that I haven't read this article. I do assert that a) state electoral process is generally decided by the legislature b) leading up to the 2020 election the mail-in ballot option was greatly expanded in many states c) in at least several states, the ballot option expansion was enacted by the executive branch, not the legislative branch, as part of the emergency response. Which of the above isn't true? Getting into details, I am not sure exactly how many states were involved in (c), or whether the (c) possibly could have affected the outcome. Figuring these out would require significant analysis. I would have to go state by state and read the electoral process laws, and then find the state by state records of electoral process change, and then cross reference those, etc. I haven't seen this analysis done anywhere, but I would be grateful if anyone could link such an analysis since I am still curious. It seems like people generally don't get into the details, they just start yelling.
- bakugo 3y agoYou know a "conspiracy" is just fact when even Facebook can't deny it anymore.
- billfor 3y agoThe difference between conspiracy and the truth is about 6 months
- manuelabeledo 3y agoAre misleading political ads this profitable? Or is it just that big tech don't want to spend another dollar on moderation?
- llamaInSouth 3y agoprofitable for who?
- sanswork 3y agoYes. Political spending during major elections makes up a huge part of advertising revenues so financially it makes sense to err on the side of permissive. Even general government advertising projects are extremely profitable for online advertisers since in almost all cases the only metric tracked is how much was spent by the project/department not how effective it was so you can get away with showing it to lower valued traffic(high bot chance for example) and still make the same amount.
- wmf 3y agoI don't think it's about the money. It's probably about being hauled in front of Congress and being threatened with (essentially) nationalization again and again.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago> ... being threatened with (essentially) nationalization again and again I can't think of any major company in the US that has been forcibly nationalized in the past 30 years, excluding failed banks.
- wmf 3y agoTexas and Florida have passed laws putting the states in control of content moderation.
- tppiotrowski 3y agoI sense a learned helplessness when it comes to these topics. To say that Meta should police these posts hints at the fact that there is no hope for rhetoric or persuasion and that people are not rational. Have we completely given up on making a good counter argument instead of disallowing things to be said in the first place? Suppressing speech has downsides (loss of trust, centralization). Allowing speech also has downsides (misinformation, instigation, hate). How do we decide which is the way forward?
- JohnFen 3y ago> the fact that there is no hope for rhetoric or persuasion and that people are not rational. Right now in the US, the political state has degraded to the point where I this this is a truer statement than anyone wants.
- metajack 3y agoThe money tends to be on one side of these things, and money amplifies the message substantially. You can argue that the election was fair all you want, but who is going to pay to run all the ads to impress that message on everyone? It's already the case that clickbait headlines and lies are naturally more engaging, so amplifying them with money seems to drown out any rational counter dialogue.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bigstrat2003 3y ago> Have we completely given up on making a good counter argument instead of disallowing things to be said in the first place? In short: yes. I haven't given up, nor has everyone. But my experience has been that a shockingly large number of people (possibly even a majority) in the US simply assume bad faith from those with whom they disagree. They aren't even trying to discuss, because they believe that their ideological opponents are unable or unwilling to have a civil discussion. So they are trying to use tools like control of the public square (Facebook in this case) to suppress ideas they believe are dangerous. I personally believe that this view is quite mistaken. I've had plenty of discussions with people I disagree with, and while we may not have changed each others' minds we at least could walk away with respect for each other at the end of it. But I certainly seem to be in the minority, and that troubles me deeply. Sidestepping discussion in favor of other, more heavy handed, approaches is imo far more dangerous to a democratic society than the ideas that people are trying to suppress in the first place.
- dogman144 3y agoThis is why it’s so distasteful when ex-Meta trust and safety hires attempt to lead the disinformation space via various think tanks or publishing risk taxonomy. They worked at, profited, conveniently left with vested RSUs, and then turn around and try to sell the solutions to a problem they supported. Like taking lung cancer advice from cigarette company scientists. Such a morally bankrupt company, and only in a bad way bc they wrap up their work in such flimsy ideals.
- 1970-01-01 3y agoI don't see this going well for any of the sites if things do get ugly again in 2024. Hard federal prison time would be on the table if these ads are tied back into another coup d'état.
- pauldenton 3y agohttps://www.cnn.com/2018/10/04/politics/kavanaugh-protests-us-capitol/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/04/politics/kavanaugh-protests-u... Let's just treat everyone who storms the capital and disrupts the function of government the same.
- ddj231 3y agoIt seems like an endless cycle. It was said that Trump’s win was rigged via Russian collusion. Then that Biden’s win was rigged via voter fraud. So seemingly every election will be considered “rigged”
- alphabettsy 3y agoSure, but one is very much not like the other. One allegation was that Russia assisted by providing information, basically corruption or collusion, the other allegation is that democracy is dead because votes were literally thrown out.
- bb88 3y agoDo you not believe in an honest media to sort this stuff out? If not, then we're all fucked.
- slowhadoken 3y agoI don’t know a lot of people who are confident about presidential elections.
- goldforever 3y ago[dead]
- standardUser 3y agoWould they allow a Coca Cola run an ad that claims Pepsi donates to the KKK? How about an ad that claims "our competitors" donate to the KKK? If you claim an election is "rigged" or "stolen", those scenarios require a culprit. Who rigged the election? Who stole it? A very serious smear is being made that has no basis in reality, and I don't think that kind of defamation is generally allowed just because the parties being defamed are ill-defined.
- firecall 3y agohttps://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087047638/the-truth-in-political-advertising-youre-allowed-to-lie https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087047638/the-truth-in-polit... > While the Federal Trade Commission regulates truth in commercial advertising, the FCC does not do the same for political ads. > Some have called for a "neutral government regulator" to oversee political speech, but there's no broad, serious movement in Congress for something like that. > In fact, various courts have repeatedly upheld the First Amendment right of candidates to essentially say what they want on federally regulated broadcast channels. Local broadcast television stations (think ABC, NBC, CBS) can't reject ads, even if they're blatantly false.
- bb88 3y agoThat assumes the FTC is actually neutral government bureaucrats. We assume the same with the Justice Department, but this may no longer be the case if Cheetos gets back into office.
- bartwr 3y agoBeing cynical, conspiracy, or half joking (or maybe all of the above? :) ): this means that the big tech bets on the orange guy coming back. Let's entertain this idea: They have much better behavioral and sentiment analysis tools than anyone else (this is why they are so much better at ad targeting! Their ads work and everyone in marketing says are worth this extra cost). And if they knew he will (obviously not certain, just with a high enough probability), wouldn't they try to play a bit safer for him to avoid an immediate retaliation?
- pauldenton 3y agoHey maybe they're just treating Donald Trump like Hilary Clinton or Stacey Abrams. Claiming elections are rigged when you lose didn't start in 2020 or even 2000
- weeblewobble 3y agoIt’s an interesting line of thought, but I don’t think it really works as stated. Even if Meta thinks trump has a 10% chance of winning, it makes sense to cozy up to him in ambiguous and deniable ways.
- stefantalpalaru 3y ago[dead]
- lucasyvas 3y agoX, YouTube, and Meta all have the same policy? Jesus fucking Christ. If any of you work at any of these places you are part of the problem.
- incomingpain 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict_voting_following_the_2020_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict... Republicans in state legislatures submitted 425 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states—with 33 of these bills enacted across 19 states so far, by October 2021. It would seem to me a rather unified reaction to the election. Like as if they may have seen things in their state or other states which indicate they don't believe the election was fair. Personally, I saw many things which left my perception that this was absolutely not a fair election. Perception is what matters here, not actual results because that's impossible to gauge. When in Detroit you throw out all republican challengers/observers, lock the doors, and board up the windows. I have no manner of saying they cheated, but the perception is that cheating occurred. But more importantly, Biden straight up said the Democrats have "most extensive VOTER FRAUD organization” in history." You can watch the original, it's not modified, it's not any sort of deepfake going on. After he said this, you cannot just brush it off as a verbal gaff or misspeak in that he meant VOTER PROTECTION. Nope, no way. It was upon the entire democratic party to fix the perception. If indeed they don't have an extensive voter fraud organization... it's their responsibility to prove it. They had to prove a negative... or realistically the gaff is that he shouldn't have admitted to it publicly.