Sometimes The Cost Of Revenue Is Too High: Twitter Bans Political Ads As Facebook Deals With Ongoing Shitshow

Sometimes The Cost Of Revenue Is Too High: Twitter Bans Political Ads As Facebook Deals With Ongoing Shitshow

5 years ago
Anonymous $xdcOWPpsb_

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191030/17351543296/sometimes-cost-revenue-is-too-high-twitter-bans-political-ads-as-facebook-deals-with-ongoing-shitshow.shtml

There's been a lot of talk in the last few weeks about political ads online, kicked off by Facebook "clarifying" that its fact checking rules for regular advertisements don't apply to political ads, after President Trump's campaign ran some ads that were laughably inaccurate. That kicked off a series of political stunts, including Elizabeth Warren taking out her own misleading ads to call out Facebook (though, as we noted, that whole stunt seemed particularly silly since she had previously complained that Facebook shouldn't be blocking political ads -- when they were her own). The debate rages on with everyone insisting that their viewpoint is correct, and with few acknowledging that there is no good answer.

If you fact check political ads, you will undoubtedly be accused of bias against those whose ads get blocked. And a big part of the problem is not about whether or not something is "factual" but about nitpicking around the semantics of what is and what is not a fact, or in how it's presented. This is why most fact checking operations constantly get called out, since so much is a judgment call. And, because of that, there is a reasonable position that Facebook has staked out that when it comes to politics, it doesn't want to be in the business of judging the veracity of one side or another. Of course, that response is wholly unsatisfying and is easy to spin as "letting politicians lie."

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