back to article Facebook's democracy salvage effort tilts scale in Mississippi primary

In its effort to prevent election meddling in America, Facebook has ended up meddling in an election in America. On Thursday, the social ad giant changed its rules for distributing political and issue ads through its platform, to increase transparency and accountability, the company said. For two Republicans challenging …

  1. Blake Davis

    What election?

    These guys are running for competitions to be nominated for their private clubs. They ain't public elections.

    1. tom dial Silver badge

      Re: What election?

      Rubbish. They are public elections in every meaningful sense: they are operated by Mississippi government agencies under Mississippi state law; and they are an integral component in the process by which US senators and representatives from Mississippi are elected to office. Probably only the winner of the primary can appear on the ballot (I am not a Mississippi citizen and state laws vary on this).

      Being a mossback in some respects, I oppose the notion of primary elections as they are run in the US (especially in California, where they can exclude major party candidates from the ballot entirely, and have done). However, they are what they are, and this claim that they are not is false.

      1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

        Re: What election?

        They are public elections in every meaningful sense

        That does not mean that they are not competitions to be elected in their private club. Just their private club is tightly integrated into the state and (ab)uses state resources. Everyone salute the hammer and sickle on the star spangled banner of USsr.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: What election?

          They are public elections in every meaningful sense

          And, in a state dominated by one party, the Primary Election is the ONLY election that matters.

          If companies *must* change political ad policies in the middle of a heated election season, it is incumbent upon them to make exceptions in cases such as these. Especially when they've happily taken the candidates' money until now, which surely proves their identity.

        2. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: What election?

          "Just their private club is tightly integrated into the state and (ab)uses state resources."

          It's another example of the systemic corruption in the US system, where the incumbent parties are woven into the government structure - to the point that they're basically different aspects of the same thing (the money party).

          As for "do this when there's not an election" - fat chance of that, there's always an election on somewhere and it's not Facebook's problem that this guy's ID doesn't match his campaigning name (plus the point that FB warned ahead of time that they were implementing this policy, so the campaign had time to sort it out in advance of the drop-dead date and didn't bother)

    2. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      FAIL

      Facebook's "real ID" is a sham

      I only have a Facebook account for immediate family, and only log into it once every couple of months. In the last 2 years alone, Facebook has suspended my account four times claiming I'm not real. Every time I get it reactivated by submitting a scan of my driver's license. They reinstate my account, and then some number of months later (typically 5-6) they resuspend it until I submit the (same) scan of the (same) driver's license. They have been doing this for years. Pretty clear programming skills & algorithm development isn't the strong suit of anyone at Facebook.

      1. Blank Reg

        Re: Facebook's "real ID" is a sham

        I have an old facebook account I set up with a bogus name, it doesn't even sound real. I set it up soon after facebook went live and it's never been challenged, but then I never post anything and that account has no friends. I only use it for things like "log in with facebook" for web sites I don't care about.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "If you were going to change something, you should make sure it's after an election."

    But...there's always elections going on SOMEWHERE in the world!

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      That "somewhere" is usually part of the US. In the *other* example cited in the article, the challenger's campaign began the week after the previous election.

    2. LosD

      He didn't mean THOSE elections, only the elections that he's part of matters, of course.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Heck, there are always elections going on someplace in the United States. States control most election rules and timing, and there are fifty of them. I live in New York, and really wish they could do something like consolidate all the primaries down to one day, with one ballot, in one location, with one general election event to follow. And ditch special elections.

  3. tom dial Silver badge

    I wonder if, by establishing these restrictions, Facebook has become a publisher, something they almost certainly do not want to be, and have, if I remember right, stated that they are not. I wonder, too, if that opens the door, if only a small crack, to liability for false and defamatory statements - libel - that their users post.

    I sense opportunity for the lawyer class here, where contingent fees are common.

    1. veti Silver badge

      I've never understood how Facebook is anything but a publisher.

      Publishing is the process of taking "content" generated by whoever, and distributing it to as many as possible of those people who are sufficiently interested in it. That's precisely what Facebook does, it's the ONLY thing it does.

      1. P. Lee

        >I've never understood how Facebook is anything but a publisher.

        I think the commenter meant "editor" rather than "publisher."

        If they curate content beyond what is required by law, safe-harbour should not apply and they should be liable for the content under their curator-ship.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Publishers choose what content to distribute (they reject a lot) and guide its creation and editing, generally speaking. Intermediaries simply distribute content as-is, and essentially aren't responsible for illegal or infringing content.

        Facebook and Google claim to be intermediaries while behaving increasingly like publishers. If they're suppressing legitimate content based on opaque internal policies, I'd say they've crossed the line.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      From their public statements it is quite clear that Facebook considers itself a publisher when it wants to be - and simultaneously isn't a publisher when that would be inconvenient to the bottom line.

  4. all ears

    Live by Facebook, die by Facebook. It's not some public service, it's a private (and unscrupulous) company that can (and will) screw with you any old way they want to.

    1. frank ly

      I'm wondering if it's a natural/'de facto' monopoly due to its dominant position in social media. Would that have any bearing on how it has to behave towards its customers (advertisers).

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        It might be natural that everyone wants to be on the same social network as everyone else. However, Google would probably dispute any assertion that Facebook enjoys a natural monopoly in internet advertising.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I just hope the wrong politician doesn't get elected. It would be bad if Jack Johnson got elected over John Jackson.

    1. The Nazz

      re AC

      A significant number of feminists would say it's a bad result either way.

      I said hello to a woman in the street this morning, not knowing she's a feminist. My trial starts next Thursday.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You do know feminists aren't like that? I have no problem with anyone wanting equality. Labels do not help anyone.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          There are labels for people who want equality. Egalitarians, for example.

          Feminists may say they want equal rights, but they're rather notorious for demanding extra rights.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No worse than ...

    ... the interfering interconnections between Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, Tony Blair and "Philip Cross"

    The Philip Cross Affair.

    1. Chris G

      Re: No worse than ...

      A lot of Wikipaedia has been abused by agenda driven people for a long time, it's no surprise that political/corporate groups are usurping it to their own ends.

      You only have to look at Wiki's never ending desire for contributions and lack of clarity to see it is ripe for abuse.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: No worse than ...

        You're reading it wrongly.

        Given the NPOV rules, it is surely obvious that any attempt to tackle a political topic will result in an edit war and a pointless hair-splitting article that no sane person would ever want to read (or, for that matter, be involved in writing).

        Therefore, on a political topic, you ignore the main article and skim the associated "Talk" page to glean the main points of contention. Having familiarised yourself with the idiots at either extreme, you choose a comfortable position somewhere in between.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Zuckerberg

    ...and the other Silicon Valley moguls in charge of those major multinational conglomerates, have made their self-serving activist political agendas public knowledge in petitions they have signed in the past, their other public statements, and their public actions - e. g., sponsoring and designing the meetings of world globalists at Davos, etc. As oligopolists at best, and monopolists at worse, in the web's search-, video- and social-media-spaces, they are not, by any stretch of imagination, neutral arbiters of politically sensitive content in their respective spaces. That, together with the U.S. MSM TV universe, that is also owned in its entirety by merely six other globalist multinational media-entertainment conglomerates - who also own and control more than half of Hollywood - give them almost complete control over what the vast majority of Americans see and hear regarding the "news" and the "views" on such. It has gone to such extremes that the options for resolution are few and all are brutal to one faction or another, but letting it roll on is worse.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Zuckerberg

      I think it a little unlikely that these sociopathic billionaire media moguls could work together on much, let alone some sort of common cause to co-operatively control the population. Some of them may have similar goals but I doubt they are capable of working together.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Zuckerberg

        I wasn't suggesting a "conspiracy", the opposite. A common agenda is all they need - e. g., open borders, mass amnesty, unlimited H-1b visas, free trade with all regardless of anything, etc. and they are already on record for those. When that common agenda aligns against Trump and others who want to put national interests above those of other nations (as all other nations do) and the interests of the multinationals', they they can and are indeed bent on controlling what Americans (and others in the world) think.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    " hundreds of Facebook ads targeting specific demographics within the district"

    Yes, that's the shameful state of politics today - sell it like a product - not explain it as something that can have deep impacts on people's life.

    1. veti Silver badge

      Re: " hundreds of Facebook ads targeting specific demographics within the district"

      Worse than that, it's about telling each group a different story. Good luck trying to track fulfilment of promises, when no one person can even know what they were.

      1. GrapeBunch

        Re: " hundreds of Facebook ads targeting specific demographics within the district"

        For that you'd need to set up a new Facebook group: "Tracking the broken promises of Politician F. McSlime". Rest assured, I'm crying copiously into my beer.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: " hundreds of Facebook ads targeting specific demographics within the district"

          "Tracking the broken promises of Politician F. McSlime".

          Which would probably have more followers than all the McSlime astroturfing groups combined.

  9. Mike 16

    Freedom of the Press

    is for people who can afford to own one. If you buy your printing from someone else, like FaceBook, expect to be out-bid, or simply find them "too busy" or "out of ink" if you run against their relatives.

  10. Stoneshop

    Moving the goalposts

    Much as I hate FB, their backhanded changing of their T&Cs whenever they feel like it, and their microprofiling of everyone and their dog, they're doing something right here. But not as right as it, IMNSHO, should be: the correct[0] thing to do when such a decision is taken is to apply the new policy to the political campaigns starting after that date. That would still hit the campaigns being fully lined up to use social media as their (main) advertising channel, but not having started yet. A cut-off date a month ahead may even be better, allowing campaign teams to adjust their strategy.

    [0] I wrote 'ethical' at first, but that's a concept totally foreign to both FB and US politics.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Moving the goalposts

      "Much as I hate FB, their backhanded changing of their T&Cs whenever they feel like it,"

      Yes, they've had two years to work up to complying with GDPR and appear at first glance to have failed miserably (accept the new terms or close your account), yet they expect users to accept their changes at short notice every time. I guess they don't like the idea that people should have at least equal rights in a contract with a corporation.

  11. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    A thought

    If they were just spamming facebook users, they presumably aren't interested in anybody else.

    Oh of course, silly me. They're targeting the {cough} thickest {cough} group.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Academics

    How strange that he doesn't whine quite so loudly when Republicans use similar approaches in "Voted ID" schemes which are aimed at disenfranchising poor and minority voters.

  13. IGnatius T Foobar ✅

    Facebook has political biases.

    It would be madness for anyone to think that Facebook does not have its own political biases. They do, and it's obvious. Perhaps Facebook should be regulated as a common carrier.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like