> Google did not pro-actively vet the truth of Israeli government claims
It is really scary that people are pushing for Google and Meta to be the arbiter of truth. I don't think people realize what they are asking for. Western civilizations have a tradition of liberal free speech, and allowing the courts to sort out the specifics of what speech causes harm to what parties (libel, etc).
There are already laws on the books for false advertising. In the US, the FTC is one who prosecutes those laws, not Google or Meta!
full disclosure: I work on Ads at Google. You really don't want to privatize the prosecution, judgement, jury, and execution of speech laws to mega corps (and I am usually pro-privatization on most topics).
You're correct, the solution then is to just block ads all together.
The reality is that ads are the primary vehicle for malicious content, whether it be malware, scams, or deception, on the web.
Google, as well as Meta, has demonstrated they do not take adequate measure to block said malicious content. This can lead to tangible real effects, such as getting scammed and losing your life savings.
Therefore, every web user should use a strict ad blocker per FBI recommendations. This is no longer a business question or a free-speech question, it is a computer system security question.
Are you saying google does not apply editorial oversight on ads they run? To the best of my knowledge google does restrict who can advertise with them, and their decisions are final and not subject to judicial oversight.
In that context, what google chooses to allow and what they ban is newsworthy. In this specific case, even moreso, since the ads violate google’s own rules.
Don't fall into the trap of "everything not mandatory is prohibited".
Google doesn't really want scam ads. It doesn't make a lot of sense to penalize them for removing some of them just because their process isn't perfect; removing them doesn't have to be banned.
But if you make not removing them mandatory, you're replacing the justice system with a private corporation, which is pretty crazy. If the police accuse you of a crime, they have to prove it to a judge and jury. You can appeal to a higher court. Google doesn't have that. And if you add liability for not removing something, they're going to err on the side of removing things they ought not to, with no recourse for the victims. Competitor wants you out of the search results? Report it to Google and you're out, because they get a billion complaints and removing them by default is safer than getting prosecuted for missing a real one.
The correct solution is to let Google remove things that are bad without punishing them for not being perfect -- maybe even err on the side of imposing (civil) liability for removing things they shouldn't instead of not removing things they should -- and rely on the criminal justice system for going after the criminals.
Ad networks apply editorial oversight with respect to their own published policies* I am not aware of any ad network policies that approach the subject of "what is true" or "what is propaganda". They also apply restrictions to what they are legally liable for which is fairly narrow today (I.e. child porn or harmful substances to minors, etc)
Forcing ad networks to be the main arbiters of what is true vs. propaganda is a huge step towards an Orwellian society.
* some policies related to the concept of truth are one dealing with scams or fraudsters. Even then, it's only the scope of "does this advertiser actually provide the service they claim to be" or not, which is way more objective than anything related to war, religion, or the middle east.
> I am not aware of any ad network policies that approach the subject of "what is true" or "what is propaganda".
From the article:
> The ad mimicked a UN website but actually linked to an Israeli government page
You don't need to judge wether the information linked is true to judge whether the ad misrepresents what users will find behind the link. If Pepsi made ads using a fake Coca Cola website to redirect to pepsi products, they would run afoul of google's policy regardless of your opinion on Pepsi.
Whether you think this enforcement choice is legitimate or not, as you said, it's clearly an editorial choice from google, and there's no reason it should escape public scrutiny and, if needed, regulation.
The article does not document isolated cases of individual free speech, but a coordinated campaign of government run propaganda.
The government (and/or society?) have already deputized private organizations to enforce various types of controls either implicitly or explicitly. Banks (AML) and Payment Processors (recent Steam content removal news) come to mind. Irrespective of whether it's a good or bad things, it already exists.
Just because something already exists doesn't mean that we want more of it.
The Banks don't determine if you are a terrorist or what not. They comply with the order when a judge gives them a lawful order to freeze accounts. I think it's okay to deputize corporations for the execution of the law in the digital world. You really, really don't want the federal government or mega corps to determine what is the "truth" vs. "propaganda". It's way too much power in society to be centralized. The decision on these nuanced issues needs to have due process and be de-centralized.
It's not just lawful court orders, over the years many explicit and implicit "suggestions" about "risk" have been issued to banks to discourage activity deemed undesirable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
That is not how AML-CFT work. Banks calculate your level of risk. When in doubt, they will cut you off or block individual transactions, unless the benefits outweigh the risks.
I had a bank transfer confiscated by Office of Foreign Assets Control. I think it was because the money (my rent) was going to someone with a foreign sounding name. I filled out all the paperwork to dispute it and was told they (a government agency) had no record of it. This was maybe eight years ago. I gave up on it because one month of rent wasn't worth the enormous hassle of fighting the government (to me, at that time). I changed how I made payments and moved on.
I've been criticized before for not fighting back. I had other struggles at the time. Leave me alone about that. I made the right call for myself.
I think we owe it the next muggee to fight the mugger, at least as far as filing the paper work if not literally.
>The Banks don't determine if you are a terrorist or what not. They comply with the order when a judge gives them a lawful order to freeze accounts.
How do you think this works in reality when the people getting sanctioned are trying to bypass the sanctions by creating shell companies and false identities? You either have a totally ineffective sanctions regime because it can be trivially be bypassed by setting up new shell companies, or a vaguely effective one because banks are deputized to figure out whether their customers are sanctioned or not. Luckily we have the latter.
I'm familiar with how sanctions work wrt advertisers / publishers. It would be totally fine if a court or similar institution said "here is a list of propaganda orgs, please limit what ads they can buy in our jurisdiction" and the ad networks were authorized to find all of their shell companies associated with those named entities. But that is not what the article is advocating for.
I'm objecting to the notion that mega corp ad networks are the best organization to determine what is truth vs. propaganda in our society.
That is not how KYC works. Every account gets screened against hundreds of lists, not just of 'criminals', but of people deemed 'sensitive'. Once you get on such a list, good luck finding any bank.
> Irrespective of whether it's a good or bad things, it already exists.
Which is how we know that it's a trash fire that should be stamped out rather than causing it to spread.
Your idea is that the U.S. government lawfully prosecutes foreign governments, including hostile ones?
The thing is that Google already is doing exactly that. Login to adsense and behold the following message: Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.
This has been in place for as long the war has been going on.
Are you OK with spreading genocide-denial propaganda?
You mean US history books * ? It's not my place to decide. It's a free society.
* from my PoV, US history books taught in classrooms deny or downplay the genocide of native American people, so of which were my ancestors. But I don't want society to try and use mega corps to push my PoV.
Google and Meta penalized and curbed Covid vaccine misinformation. No reason they cannot do the same with state-sponsored Zionazi propaganda.
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Just repeal section 230 and we can make the court systems the arbiter of truth. Meta/Google don't care about what ads they run because they have no incentive to stop misinformation in fact they make money off of it.
If someone is putting up illegal ads, shouldn't you file suit against the advertiser?
Advertising is a commercial activity, so it should be reasonable to follow the money and find the advertiser. If necessary, add more requirements for advertisers to be identified/indetifiable so that suits can be served.
Except for online, fault falls under the business providing the venue/platform. You get shot at a concert/bar/sport game, the venue is at fault. Everyone has a duty of care except for online and because they aren't liable, they don't care. Why is there a special carve out for online companies?
Happy to support the repeal of any laws that put liability on a physical venue for the actions of a third party.
We do put additional editorial standards on news publications. This puts legal responsibility for the published content on the publisher.
It doesn't seem like that big a step to apply a similar standard to advertising platforms. Advertisers have failed to selfregulate the ads they choose to publish and it is infeasible to use the court system to judicate every false ad (that would be millions of court cases). Ergo you do the obvious which is to make the advertiser name a human editor who holds legal responsibility for published ads (on behalf of the company).
Now you can sue the advertising company (eg. Google) for millions of false advertisements at once.
Can you give examples of laws that put editorial standards on publishers? I am not familiar with any (I mostly know US stuff). A quick search only returned: - Disclosure of Advertorial Content: U.S. law requires that if paid content is presented as editorial matter in a periodical, it must be clearly marked as an "advertisement". - Prohibiting Harmful Content: Laws prohibit publishing content that is obscene, libelous, or scandalous. - Copyright and Intellectual Property: Laws govern the exclusive rights of authors to their literary and artistic works, including the right to print, publish, and distribute them. - Privacy Laws: Publishers must comply with laws protecting personal data and privacy. - Online Platforms and Section 230: While not directly about publisher standards, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act generally protects interactive computer services from liability for user-generated content, distinguishing them from publishers in this context.
I can't sue a publisher for running an ad that was libel. I sue the advertiser who created the libel.
Here is an English translation of the Norwegian law around this topic: https://lovdata.no/dokument/NLE/lov/2020-05-29-59 (Chapter 4 is of particular interest for this discussion)
I assumed the US had something similar, but seems I was wrong.
Actually we don’t put any responsibilities on news publications beforehand. They can be sued after the fact for libel/slander.
Yes, but you can sue the organization itself.
However, our laws mean that Google, Meta, etc. are not legally responsible for the content of the ads they run. The creator of the ad is.
And it is shockingly easy to construct a legal entity that is unaccountable.
You could create a law that says regional/national advertising requires a company or person be in that jurisdiction and that they must hold $$$ in bond as a guard against false claims.
This would prevent foreign ads targeting domestic users, and/or give you an organization to sue domestically. In this case, it's likely that the Israeli govt would work through a US based org, and that in court that case would likely fail for free speech rights. Though a case/org in another nation might not hold up under that nation's laws.
Or you could just hold the platforms liable for the advertising they host, and leave it up to the platforms to decide how best to weigh the trade-offs between that liability and their, to date, woefully underwhelming moderation.
Because I'd prefer to preserve the freedom of speech to it's fullest extent as opposed to corporate or govt censorship.
Who has standing to sue? We already see the current President using lawsuits to allow media companies to bribe him.
The injured party... in the above case, the UNRWA would sue the org paying for the ads in the target location, for example the US org paying for the ads themselves in the US.
I should have said liability, it would have been more precise, but I'd argue that liability is a form of responsibility so I don't think your correction is warranted.
At this point, whoever opposes big tech regulation is in favor of these kinds of abuses happening. Here in Brazil there is a big discussion around this regulation but for other reasons, like the social media algorithms pushing child abuse content to potential pedophiles.
The criticism against these regulations are all valid and need to be discussed, because we also don't want to create these mechanisms at the government level only so the next authoritarian president can use them for their own personal agenda. But all this discussion should be in the direction of how these companies are going to be regulated, not how they aren't.
Can you imagine this logic being applied to any other topic?
>At this point, whoever opposes [CSAM scanning/encryption backdoors] is in favor of [child abuse/criminal activity] ...
This is a stawman designed to misdirect the discussion. How about we keep discussing regulation in the context of ad abuse?
A valid criticism would be an implied false dichotomy in my original comment (either regulation or rampant corporate abuse). My idea is for us to discuss this. Is regulation not the right way? What's the alternative? Not, "oh if that doesn't work for all possible universe of applicable solutions, it doesn't deserve merit"
>This is a stawman designed to misdirect the discussion. How about we keep discussing regulation in the context of ad abuse?
I can't see how my comment is a "strawman" in any meaningful sense.
>A valid criticism would be an implied false dichotomy in my original comment
That's exactly my point. Adopting a "you're either with us or against us" attitude is totally toxic, and shouldn't be accepted just because it's for a cause you happen to agree with.
>My idea is for us to discuss this. Is regulation not the right way? What's the alternative? Not, "oh if that doesn't work for all possible universe of applicable solutions, it doesn't deserve merit"
If you wanted an intelligent discussion on what regulation should consist of, what's the point of starting off which such an absolutist remark? What does it add compared to something like "what's the right form of regulation to address this?"
So, what's the the right form of regulation to address this? Are you against regulation? Or are you here just to discuss aesthetics?
>So, what's the the right form of regulation to address this?
I don't know, but the ones I've seen so far do not interest me.
>Are you against regulation?
I'm against bad regulation, yes.
>Or are you here just to discuss aesthetics?
If you think objections to "you're either with us or against us" and "we have to do something" attitudes are merely objections over "aesthetics", then yes.
> I'm against bad regulation, yes.
That's... Good I guess? I mean, who would be in favor of bad regulation?
Anywho, I've laid out what I think in this comment[1], see if it interests you.
You are comparing the regulation of business practices to the breach of human rights. Do you also think your water company should be allowed to poison the water coming from your tap?
>You are comparing the regulation of business practices to the breach of human rights.
So "you're either with us or on the side of the bad guys" is a valid form of argument, but only when the bad guys are evil corporations? More to the point, much of the "regulations" proposed does end up infringing on human rights. For instance regulations forcing social media companies to remove "disinformation" or "content causing hatred/discomfort" necessarily limits others' freedom of speech.
The discussion, however, is about this topic, which is meaningfully different due to the sheer scale of the abuses occurring. Entire populations are being subjected to propagandistic brainwashing. That scale is not happening in your example.
> like the social media algorithms pushing child abuse content to potential pedophiles
There's something weird about this complaint, isn't there? I mean, it's horrifying if social media algorithms are pushing child abuse content to anyone, but so far as I can see it isn't worse if the people they're showing it to are paedophiles. Maybe it's even a bit less bad since they're less likely to be distressed by it.
I think there's something deformed about a lot of the moral discourse around this stuff -- as if what matters is making sure that Those Awful People don't get anything they want rather than making sure bad things don't happen. (Far and away the most important bad thing associated with child abuse is the actual child abuse but somehow that's not where everyone's attention goes.)
What kind of regulation do you have in mind?
The government controls the algorithm? Then the government pushes propaganda.
The algorithm is public? Then what kind of public algorithm? "Sort by recency", "sort by popularity", etc. will be gamed by propaganda-pushers. "Sort by closest friends" is better, but I suspect even it will be gamed by adversaries who initially push genuine interesting content and encourage you to befriend them, then shift to propaganda.
Sorry to be cynical, but I doubt you can prevent people from being attracted to and influenced by propaganda; if necessary, well-funded organizations will hire paid actors to meet people in person. You must narrow the goal, e.g. can hinder foreign propaganda by down-weighting accounts from foreign IP addresses, detecting and down-weighting foreign accounts which use residential VPNs, and perhaps detecting and down-weighting domestic people who are especially influenced by foreign propaganda to the extent they're probably being funded (but you don't know, so then you get controversy and ambiguity...)
Reverse chronological + subscription (ie. the user must actively make a choice to follow some channel or creator to get them in their feed). This is how most platforms started, and while there were still issues (eg. rewarding frequent posting) they seemed a lot less problematic than what we have today.
The main issue isn't the misinformation or disinformation; it is how quickly you can amplify reach and reach millions. Reverse chronological + follows based on active user choice would largely address that issue.
People think that's what they want but they really don't. For most regular social media users if they haven't checked their feed recently they would rather see major life events (birth, death, marriage, graduation) prioritized first instead of a picture of someone's lunch.
I'm no political scientist, but I believe in checks and balances. It translates roughly to costly burocracy, but if the next president or Congress will face significant pushback either from each other or the judiciary, and if the democratic institutions are strong, then we can trust that a reasonably well structured law will prevent by itself abuse.
The law is abused in the US because they have the tradition of keeping the constitution to a bare minimum and govern by precedence and common sense, which as we can see isn't very productive.
So yeah I guess I'm advocating for burocracy for now, at least until someone comes with a better idea. I'd take burocracy many times before corporation abuse.
EDIT: now I see I haven't addressed the main question. I believe that society needs a mechanism to hold big tech platforms accountable for abuse. The speed which big techs can push certain kinds of information through their services is such that the due process, when it works, is only effective after damage is done and by then different accounts and different outlets are already pushing the same kind of disinformation ads. Therefore preemptive removal of this content is necessary. The problem now becomes how to make it so that the universe of content eligible for preemptive removal can't be abused by the current administration. How can we make it so that the Israeli misinformation machine can't overshadow other institutions, but at the same time guaranteeing that the next political party in power can't abuse this system to suppress valid propaganda from the opposition?
Your comment makes no sense. Laws and regulations aren't intended to be "productive" so that's a total non sequitur. The US Constitution has some flaws but it's still the closest anyone has come to perfection in the governance of human society.
> Laws and regulations aren't intended to be "productive" so that's a total non sequitur.
Saying that the current way isn't productive isn't the same as saying that laws and regulations are designed to be productive. Actually I've acknowledged that first thing when I said that laws are burocratic. But you have to agree that some form of productivity is expected, otherwise why even bother if nothing is gonna get done at the govt level?
> The US Constitution has some flaws but it's still the closest anyone has come to perfection in the governance of human society.
How can you even falsify this claim? And should I take your word for it? From my point of view that makes little sense when corporations can buy elections like Elon did for Trump, and when Trump can just do as he pleases like it's happening now with university sensorship and the sacking of government officials that doesn't subscribe to the president's ideological agenda.
No, I don't have to agree. There is no such expectation. Your premise is fundamentally incorrect.
That's just trolling...
> we also don't want to create these mechanisms at the government level only so the next authoritarian president can use them for their own personal agenda
There's nothing stopping this hypothetical authoritarian president from creating this after they come to power.
It’s much easier to abuse existing oppression machine than to build it from scratch
It requires less political capital to repurpose an existing system than to introduce a new system for a specific purpose. See for instance the number of times Chat Control has failed to become law.
Which is why the democratic system relies on checks and balances. If the democratic institutions are strong an authoritarian governor will at worse face incredible pushback from the judiciary, if Congress and executive powers are taken over. If one of the three powers remain independent, there is hope to recover the democratic stability without a violent revolution.
It is a disservice to yourself and family to not block ads. You shouldn't let these companies have a conduit into your life.
I don't think it's amorale to use the service for which you are blocking the ads for either. If they don't like it, they can try a new business model. They don't protect you, why should you protect them.
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Stealing is illegal, blocking ads isn't. The FBI recommends you use an ad blocker.
If anything, ads steal from YOU. They take your time and attempt to get you to part with your money.
You're not obligated to support a business model based on theft, if you want to consider it that. You're not obligated to support any business model.
If it's allowed, then go for it. They can always switch to another business model.
Okay, continue to let your mind get polluted out of some bizarre sense of moral duty to a faceless corporation
Stealing a physical thing = the previous owner can't use it.
Copying a thing or accessing a platform = the previous owner can still use or sell it.
Even if you consider it unethical access, the comparison to stealing really misses the mark.
ok, call it theft of services. You used the service but blocked how the creator makes money on the service. Is it really different from someone who runs out of a barber or restaurant?
Yes, the restaurant is not tracking me across the city, and it does not contain malware (although I guess you could get food poisoning).
It would be amorale if these services were not exploiting everyone they can, including the creators.
The better analogy would be, is it okay to walk out on a barber who is spying on your phone, coughing in your face, and won't stop trying to convince you to buy his buddies shampoo or vote for their political party.
yes, the barber doesn't wield enormous power over society duh
the restaurant spends resources (both physical and human) cooking and serving you the meal, likewise for the barber. a better example would be showing up late for a cinema showing so that you deliberately avoid watching the adverts and trailers... which i would guess most people would agree is morally fine?
The more direct cinema example would be sneaking into the theater and there were empty seats (so you did not deny anyone else access to the movie). Is that morally fine? You watched the movie, the creator doesn't get paid.
> the comparison to stealing really misses the mark
I know this always triggers a hard-coded response based on regex, but the comparison doesn't rely on the specifics of stealing, so it's not a valid criticism. The logic is: people offer things in exchange for a price. You can take the things in exchange for the price, or you can leave the things. You shouldn't take the things without paying the price.
I make a GET request and I get a response back. It’s the server’s choice/logic how to respond. What I do with the string response is my own business.
Why? I truly believe I have no moral obligation to any of these entities and I see them as amoral organizations _at best_ who can't possibly reciprocate
Can you tell me the moral difference between that and saying that you don't believe you have a moral obligation to Porsche dealerships?
Porsche dealerships aren't trying to brainwash me. I see advertising companies as an adversary and I don't owe enemies anything
But it's not the advertising company you're denying revenue from. It's the website you're visiting, who've chosen to pay for the content you're happy to take via advertising.
Again, i do not feel bad for the allies of my enemies
You do! In fact, I have a boxter and a 911, and I'm about to take out a mortgage for a Carerra GT. Why aren't you doing your part!? Are you gasp poor, or worse, lazy??? Am I going to have to report you to DepHomeSec?
Sorry, I can't figure out what point you're trying to make. Can you speak plainly?
The Orbán government here in Hungary is one of the biggest ad spenders in the EU. You literally can't open a YouTube video without seeing propaganda with just plain lies, increasingly with AI-generated video. I find it really hypocritical that these allegedly progressive companies are willing to sell millions of dollars of brainwashing to the most hateful toxic regime in the EU.
> allegedly progressive companies…
If the last ~9 months has demonstrated anything, it's that this was never the case.
Hence "allegedly", but I think it's pretty telling that the people who work at Google and Meta are okay with this.
I'd imagine those big salary cheques buy a lot of acceptance of what these companies are actually doing.
Should everybody who works at Google and Meta be progressive?
You don't have to be progressive to be not "okay with this".
Ads have long been weapons. It's time the west woke up to the threat of propaganda. And no, addressing this is not incompatible with "free speech." Propaganda is not free speech. The person paying for the propaganda has a voice they can use, that is their free speech.
Whenever did it become somehow a "right" to be able to pay for large scale propaganda? Oddly enough this right is not afforded to those without the funds to pay for it.
It seems everyone is missing the forest for the trees by focusing on political motives, because the system is working exactly as designed. An ad platform is an auction-based machine for changing human behavior at scale, and a state actor is just the ultimate power user. They have a clear objective, an unlimited budget, and are willing to pay a premium for high-value keywords. To the ad exchange, a bid from the Israeli government to show an anti-UN ad is indistinguishable from a bid from Nike to show a shoe ad; it's just a high CPM impression from a client with a good credit line. The entire infrastructure is optimized to find the highest bidder for a given set of eyeballs, not to make a moral judgment on the message. You don't need to control the newspaper anymore, you just need to outbid everyone else for the ad space next to the article.
It’s propaganda-as-a-service.
It's profitable to let two sides of a topic run ads.
After the pressure from the outcome of election influencing, there seemed to be new rules come in place.
For other topics? Not so sure. Maybe it's something to look at before it has an election type response.
There's parallels to this I suspect in other industries affecting the world.
That's (initially a small-ish) part of the reason why I've gone from "no ad blockers" to "block absolutely everything". That said, that is only part of the problem. Take tiktok for instance, which is a clean cut, self-installed direct link to the ccp. And not just tiktok: why do you think products such as this [1] exist? And they are dirt cheap too. If you think these aren't selling like mad, boy are you in for a shock. While griefters do exist, the dictators of the world absolutely love these opportunities.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Android-Phone-Farm-Se...
Reddit is one of the most potent places where opinion-shaping has been happening. I've been getting ads for Reddit everywhere recently (even thought I've been a reddit user for about 20 years).
r/worldnews is pretty tightly controlled, it's a default subreddit meaning 50+ million people see the posts submitted in this subreddit, and most critically, the ensuing conversation in comments which goes only in one direction. Frankly I'm impressed this all was pulled off so seamlessly.
That sub is pretty much controlled by Zionist. If you criticize Israel in any way shape or form, you'll get a permanent ban.
"controlled by zionists" Interestingly, every place Qatar doesn't pour billions into spreading propaganda sewage suddenly becomes "controlled by Zionists."
Try writing a comment alleging that Israel is an apartheid state and see how long it stays up.
This post from today on r/worldnews was hilarious -- all the top comments where deleted (and their authors probably permanently banned) because they didn't hold the party line:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1nc65sx/israel_i...
And a lot of lead-generating subreddits are gatekept by admins/mods, sometimes for money. Also, there are russians offering services to promote (spam upvotes and fake comments) your product, and for some of our competitors it's very obvious when that happens, somehow reddit doesn't notice. Same about twitter, somehow super tight checks for normal users while some spam is somehow unfiltered. Social media is a destructive force.
Don't forget about the entirety of regular social media -- Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, etc, etc, etc. Planting follow bait and switching to propaganda memes is a pervasive tactic. At this point propaganda mongers only need processing investment not direct ad investment.
Everyone here including the author and me have been raised on propaganda and the mantra of the true alcoholic - this time its going to be different
Regulating the corporations or their shadow, the government is both fine I guess and with that out of the way: lets discuss this!
Ads are propaganda. Propaganda is Ads. Ads = propaganda. Propaganda is a tool to persuade people. Are ads an attempt to persuade people?
So is it news that people are using ads/propaganda to persuade people? No. Will Google, Facebook, Amazon or Apple do anything that will harm their revenue as propaganda platform? No.
Do Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple use propaganda? Yes.
This is like reading an article about how weapons from weapon companies are being weaponized.
Yes, water is wet and all that. The harm done by Google and others by running ads for casino sites is probably much greater than the harm done by running Israeli propaganda. However, that battle has already been lost, in a way, and Google won't stop running casino ads because they make so much money on them. But perhaps they can be persuaded to stop running propaganda from genocidal states such as China, Russia, Israel, North Korea, etc.?
This makes me wonder why people put up with targeted content whatsoever. I actually have a friend who works in game development, and he has a real chip on his should regarding the current attitude that the discoverable customer base has. For instance, he sees a lot of people who think developers are pushing things down people's throats, are making games bad or annoying on purpose just so that users get frustrated, etc. It's pretty disheartening to him since from his perspective everyone is just doing the best they can, sometimes with quite poor results given the constraints of the market. But ultimately, they really just want to make games that people love and are really try to do so.
My personal theory is that people broadly are becoming very thick skinned with regard to content being pushed on them, but at the same time it has not occurred to people to simply disengage. (ie, they're getting frustrated by the pushers, but aren't leaving forums, social media, youtube, etc. so that no one can push anything on them) I think in some of the darker corners of the web, you currently see this associated with the term "slop." I assume we're all familiar with metaphor. Most of our waking lives (assuming we're on normal platforms) someone is out trying to twist your arm to get your attention, to get you outraged or jealous; anything for attention.
I really think it's breeding an incredible amount of unthinking cynicism, and at least some of the negativity you find online is just related to all the different wars for attention. As noted, it's quite surprising just how many people won't step away from this crazy attention marketplace. It's easy to do in principle: Put down your phone, your computer, and read a book or take a walk. In practice, it's more like overeating; people were never built with impulse control against novelty and social outrage, and lacking the fundamentals most people fail this test.
Good point. Has me thinking: In any field, over time, there's R&D for it to become more effective. How this progression might apply to marketing:
1. Printed ads, newspapers, billboards, magazines -- You can explain your product and show a picture of what it looks like to demonstrate the value to customers
2. Television ads, black and white -- We can demonstrate the value to customers so well!
3. Wait a minute, if we put music in the TV ads, the songs get stuck in peoples' heads, this is good for our brand
4. Color TV Ads -- We have all the previous benefits but can get more attention with color!
5. We can target regional TV ads in different parts of the country!
6. Oh, we can target any ad based on demographics on social media? This will be effective
7. Ok, now we want to keep targeting ads, but we're gonna A/B test multiple versions of the ads in real time to maximize effectiveness
8. Ok, I need to maximize effectiveness of this ad, let me generate an AI mockup of the product I'm selling to create an illusion of the lifestyle my brand represents
My point is, marketing has been optimized over time and will continue to optimize for profit in the future, and the result has been a divergence in the actual goal of marketing: We've gone from "Demonstrate the value of our product" to "Create an illusion of our lifestyle".
>We've gone from "Demonstrate the value of our product" to "Create an illusion of our lifestyle"
Scott Galloway occasionally mentions that he thinks most consumer spending is irrational and marketing spends purpose is to make people buy irrationally. Anecdotal observation supports his observation, most strikingly in fashion, where people buy the branded item that costs 100x (or more) than the equally useful unbranded item. Many other examples exist, of course, in almost every market. I tend to agree with Galloway that the goals haven't changed, only the marketing tools (and their effectiveness). Any increase in irrational behavior can be linked to tool efficacy and not to the motivation of the firm, which has remained constant.
I read once that the goal of (most) advertising is to make the person you are envy the person you could be if you bought whatever they're selling. In other words, they're trying to steal your satisfaction, and then offering to sell it back to you.
Don't remember who said it, or I'd give credit where due...
I'm not familiar with him, thanks for sharing, will check out his work
> 1. Printed ads, newspapers, billboards, magazines -- You can explain your product and show a picture of what it looks like to demonstrate the value to customers
I implore you to look at the advertisements and propaganda from ~100+ years ago. This was not the case, manipulation happened in the same ways it does today. Hell, go back ~250+ years and you'll see the same thing. Propaganda played a huge part in the founding of the US, for example.
Similarly, look up early Nazi and Third Reich propaganda. There are internet memes today that look like they were copied directly from some pamphlets printed in the 1930s.
Makes sense, yeah I definitely handwaved "old media"!
I fully agree. Just to add some nuance, walking away means pulling back, but it doesn't have to entail completely abandoning all social media. Obviously, the advertising here on Hacker News is very mild, just Y Combinator launches. But even Facebook and Reddit and Twitter can convey useful information. You do need to curate your feeds, but more importantly, know when to step away when the muck and the outrage seep in.
Optimistically, the cynicism you describe could develop into a sophisticated ability to discern fraud.
> For instance, he sees a lot of people who think developers are pushing things down people's throats, are making games bad or annoying on purpose just so that users get frustrated, etc.
There are studios that churn out crap games to capture the casual games market, which is not the gaming industry that an avid gamer would be familiar with.
Watch a kid with a tablet navigate the mobile/casual game market, you will feel sick. They flick between two dozen games in an hour, 90% of each game is locked behind microtransactions, and they get about a minute or two before the unskippable ad shows up.
The ad is for another lootbox/microtransaction fueled game, or actual gambling sometimes, and it's only another couple of minutes before an ad shows up in that game too. Rinse and repeat.
Kids are having their reward circuits absolutely fried, and it is not game enthusiasts making these games, it's just regular old capitalist companies who are trying to squeeze an opportunity.
It is every bit the exploitive, uncreative industry your friend thinks it is, but I do believe it is not the same as the games industry. It's like the difference between a board game and a slot machine.
> My personal theory is that people broadly are becoming very thick skinned with regard to content being pushed on them
You mean thin-skinned?
Thick skinned would mean it rolls off you/you ignore it.
This article brings up important questions about digital influence in wartime, but it's hard to ignore how one-sided the framing is when it comes to Israel.
There's barely a mention of the October 7 massacre, where over 1,200 Israelis were murdered and hundreds taken hostage some of them are children. That’s the context behind Israel’s messaging. Leaving that out gives a very distorted picture of why these campaigns exist in the first place.
The article criticizes Israel for running ads that target UNRWA, but completely skips the fact that more than a dozen UNRWA staff were accused of actively participating in the massacre and holding hostages, That allegation was serious enough for countries like the US, Germany, the UK, and Australia to suspend their funding. That’s not “disinformation,” that’s a real international response.
There’s also zero mention of Hamas’s own propaganda operations. No discussion of how they use Telegram, TikTok, or social platforms to push graphic and often fake content to manipulate global opinion. If we're talking about the weaponization of information, how is that not relevant?
Instead, the article spends thousands of words dissecting Israel’s side while ignoring everything else. It presents only one narrative and wraps it in a moral argument that conveniently excludes key facts and context.
A fair critique would examine how all sides are using digital tools in modern conflicts, not just the one the author disagrees with politically. Otherwise, it’s not an analysis. It’s just a well-written piece of propaganda in itself.
UNRWA is compromised as hell, ofc it must go, so it's a pretty good use case for ethical ads usage. Definitely not a reason to enforce an additional censorship.
Is Israel your source?
I just read the Guardian report noting that UNRWA fired nine staff members to “preserve the integrity” of their mission. They weren’t punished for refusing to participate in any wrongdoing—instead, they were let go because investigations suggested they might have been involved in the October 7 attack
Comments that suggest this was some kind of cover-up or rewriting of history only hurt their credibility. Implying that an entire group is spinning the past—even two years on—comes off as divisive. Let’s stick to the facts, not broad-brush accusations.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/05/nine-u...
Is Hamas and Iran yours?
It's very sad, and very telling that our biggest corporations have become suckups to the reactionary side of the right wing and continue to carry the water for the most degenerate and attention-seeking members of said right wing.
None of these nutcases offer true help to society (note: neither do the extreme leftists, just so we're clear that I'm not team red or team blue), and it does no good that our corporations are actively picking a side.
The extreme flip-flopping of the major tech companies provides a few small possibilities that don't paint a good picture no matter how you look at it:
- They never believed in progressive causes, and were just siding with what they believed was the social majority. (and so when they perceive the social majority has changed, they immediately follow and would follow _any_ social majority.)
- They don't agree with the current anti-progressive social movement (ie, they still hold their old beliefs) but none of them have any backbone whatsoever, and are getting in line with virtually no resistance or fight.
- All the tech company CEOs just happened to be radicalized at the exact same time.
I'm sure that #1 is the most reasonable answer, although perhaps there's a dash of #3 in there. In any case, you'd have to question whether a party-in-power (from a social movement perspective) wouldn't just encourage this trend when _they_ were the ones winning.
Option four: It is all part of a deliberate strategy.
The principles of propaganda are well established. Edward Bernays clearly described how to plant ideas and influence public opinion a hundred years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)). The only thing that has changed is the speed and intensity of communication.
I think a lot of it has to do with the loss of labor power among the tech workforce. For example Google employees used to cause a ruckus when execs sold to militaries, now everyone stays quiet because they're afraid to lose their jobs and execs are emboldened to make an example of anyone that causes trouble.
Its obviously the first.
They always had different standards in different countries and in different circumstances.
FB has been showing lots of dog-whistle racism, occasionally even outright overt racism for many years. The one occasion on which reported a blatantly racist comment they said it was not against "community standards".
They want money, and they want engagement, and they want governments to remove competition.
Corporations are picking the side that's in power. If team blue is in power they would pick blue. Corporations are (usually) not moral or inherently politically motivated other than to the extent of optimizing short term shareholder value.
You are being reflexively downvoted, but I am not certain as to why. The assessment strikes me as accurate. Few corps I worked for were willing to go on a limb 'for a cause'. The exceptions were smaller companies where owner had a much bigger say and could effectively align goals with their beliefs.
There’s always one side that is lying, gaslighting, and deceiving. I’m surprised more people still can’t see what’s going on
I always assume it's both sides (no matter the topic) to some degree.
Yes, but not to the same degree. The disagreement is on which side is worse.
They take turns.
Ah remember when Obama sent soldiers into US cities to soft launch a civil war, good times
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Maybe a month ago, I started getting bombareded with every element of the right wing media ecosphere on Facebook. "Trump for President", Ben Shapiro, JD Vance, and piles of dogwhistle-named Facebook pages who are reaching for every way to feel relevant.
Just recently, all of them, in-concert, started trying to focus on the lady who stole that Baseball at that game. All they are talking about for the last week. Promoted content, sent directly to people's facebook profiles.
Whether or not I feel nationalist terrorists are running the US government, either way I feel the government shouldn't be working this closely with social media. It's extremely dystopian, and it cheapens everything around it.
The first amendment prevents prohibiting it by law. If one party decided not to use social media to get their message out, the other party would get a huge advantage. Even if the parties agreed to leave that battlefield (a nice fantasy), they couldn't enforce it on their own candidates. So it would require a revolution or divine intervention to stop.
Displaying ads might be constitutionally protected speech. But, other parts of the process, like running a giant surveillance network, doesn’t seem to be particularly protected. If anything, running a giant surveillance network would be a violation of the fourth amendment if it were done by the government and the fourth amendment were interpreted as broadly as the first couple.
This is true, it's an unfortunate race to the bottom of the attention economy. The only real solution is educating people about the trash tactics that are used to manipulate them.
Knowing how, why, when, and about what you are being manipulated unfortunately does little to prevent it. Knowing that encourages people to do the same to others in self defense.
I'd love to be wrong. If you can find evidence that learning the techniques provides some immunity from them, I'd be happy to see it.
I'm well aware of how I'm being manipulated with regard to the murder in Charlotte, yet it still presses my buttons. The same is true when a beautiful women asks me for anything. Self awareness has little effect on primal motives.
> The only real solution
Do there western countries have the same problem as the U.S.? Are they doing a better job at what you suggest?
The amendments aren't god's laws passed to George Washington on Mt. Rushmore. We can change them if we feel it's appropriate.
Commenter isn't making the case that the action is illegal, he's saying it's dystopian that the Government is making such blatant use of targeted media. And I agree.
To change the first amendment such that it no longer applied to the speech of political parties would amount to a revolution. Even if it were somehow accomplished without violence, it would deeply change the form of government.
Revolutions are the norm in the American setup.
The first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another is sometimes called the "Revolution of 1800". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidentia...
Every constitutional amendment changes our government. The people who wrote the mechanism in expected this. I doubt they expected us to just... stop amending.
To say that every election and amendment is a revolution may be true in some sense, but it isn't near the colloquial definition. Neither, strictly speaking, would removal of political speech protections by the approval of 38 out of 50 states be an actual revolution, but that's a lot closer. And I doubt it's possible.
I certainly doubt it's going to happen - too many vested interests in power opposing. But it seems less impactful than, say, "women can now vote" in the spectrum of constitutional changes.
I think it's a reasonable thing that the political parties shouldn't be able to use targeted online advertising that makes use of distressing amounts of demographic information to spread propaganda. Granted, I'm biased, I think we should ban targeted advertising altogether but still.
The last thing that ever needs to happen in the current US political climate is a Constitutional convention.
The worst people on the planet would love for an opportunity to carve up what few remaining rights people have left in favor of enshrining their power for centuries to come.
But they are the best set of laws invented by humans so far for self governance. No kings, no popes, no dictators. As flawed as the current system is, the laws are good even if the people executing them are trash.
You can change lots of things much higher up in the system without taking away our God given rights enshrined in the founding documents to fix these kinds of issues.
Hell of an assertion to make when the laws have given rise to an administration that, by virtue of loading the courts, have effectively mimicked the exact sort of power plays one expects from a dictator, up to and including allusions from the leader about not having the next election.
The constitution is not a list of rights the people have, it's a list of rights the Government Doesn't have. You want to add government to fix government? Or take rights away to support your own chosen party? That's a fools errand.
It's easy to spot a problem, but very hard to get the right solution.
Your entire assertion seems to boil down to "government bad" with no further analysis or theory. "Add government to fix government" is effectively how representative democracy works, at least in theory. The amendments we are currently discussing in fact fit the description of "adding government to fix government" quite literally; they were ratified additions to the Constitution.
And like, yeah spotting problems is easier than giving right solutions, but what you're discussing here feels a lot more like just giving up on it entirely, which seems a horrific practice when the entity in question literally runs your society?
The amendments to the U.S. Constitution generally limited the power of the government as time went on.
Less government is *almost* always better. I'm no anarchist but I do believe that we need to massively trim the fat from time to time. And I also believe that America has the best foundation to build upon. I have yet to see better founding documents.
if god gave us those rights, they wouldn't need to be in a document. they would be intrinsic to our nature.
i know this is cynical and people on Hacker News Dot Com hate when i say this, but it will never change the fact that the constitution was authored and approved by men who owned human beings (including at least one man who took the teeth from human beings he owned to put into his own mouth). i don't care how high-minded the ideals may seem. the foundation is as rotten as Washington's teeth.
Because that is not the nature of man. Even angels fall when they forget who they are.
So good men are needed to push back the overwhelming desire to rule as gods over our fellow men.
it's so perfectly, sickeningly ironic that the historical figures we refer to as "good men" who "push back the overwhelming desire to rule as gods over our fellow men" literally claimed the right to own other human beings.
The big plan of the Revolution was not, in fact, any sort of revolution. It was merely consolidating power the landowning class already had, and not sending a cut back to Britain.
And like, that's fine. America, for better or worse, exists, and we'll never know if history would've been better or worse without us. But please let's let go of this fantastical origin story. We're a country, same as any other, just a bit younger, and already with frankly just as many atrocities under our belt as other countries. We are not unique, apart from we treat our citizenry uniquely poorly relative to other developed nations. If you want me to be proud of this country, I'm amenable to that, but it has to earn that.
We actually can't pass new amendments, it would require the red states to cooperate and there's more of them because they vote by land instead of by person
Same reason we're stuck with gerrymandering and the electoral college and the Senate and the misapportioned House and a generally dumb implementation of elections
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It sounds like you're saying that you believe money is more important than morals.
You're not alone, and that is a problem.
I believe an individual is responsible for their own opinions.
I also believe that people should spread their own opinions however they can.
Personally, I think my outlook is much more moral than someone who wants to silence others.
Objective truth is very rare, but differences of opinion are everywhere.
So let's get this straight. You admitted you make money off ad revenue which is 100% a business of using a platform for one thing (the thing people want) to instead allow random people with money to force information on other people to get them to think and do things (when said target people would, almost by definition, prefer not to think or do those things), selling people's attention and interrupting their lives on the regular, subtly coercing them using whatever deceptive tactics work best (the kinds of psychological and neurological vulnerabilities that exploit unconscious mammalian behavior), and seem to think that nothing in the social contract constrains you from vetting what garbage lies people put in the ecosystem, as long as you are making money.
Hard disagree on that being "moral". You let people put ideas into other people's heads because they pay you. And we're not talking "good" ideas like education and facts, but usually vapid consumerism crap at best and viral lies and propaganda at worst.
Let me get this straight you think for the betterment of humans we must control the information and opinions they should have because fundamentally they're nothing but stupid animals who can't process information?
Propaganda isn’t the same as mere opinions, however. It is often deliberate lies and misrepresentations designed to deceive, lies that those who disseminate them don’t actually believe themselves.
yeah, propaganda isn't inherently lies or misrepresentations. It is biased, but are you advocating the removal of all biased advertising?
What a deeply cynical and selfish point of view.
Why? Cynical is believing people must be protected from opinions.
I'm far more optimistic than most.
Oooooof. Yeah, we should definitely let governments pipe their propaganda directly into every surface in our lives constantly. Surely that's something that's healthy and good for all of us. Governments have no incentive to lie and have no power to buy out all the bandwidth.
"Well, at least I made money on the government shutting down discussion" is deeply messed up.
I love this moronic take because it's governments that will enforce what information is deemed as propaganda. 10/10 cognitive disconnect.
No, you are being thick. The governments are issuing the propaganda. Read the post again.
If you can't think around this corner I can't help you,
Who will prohibit it? Magical Gnomes?
If you say the UN let me remind you that the UN is comprised of Governments, the majority of which are considered autocracies.
So in short, you want dictatorships worldwide to be empowered to define and control speech.
Sounds... Great...
Also If you'd like we could go into the ineffectiveness of the UN in general, but I'm not going to spend the time typing all of that out.
edit: fixed a missing word
If you are going to build strawmen to cut down over and over, there's clearly no intellectually fertile soil here. You seem to be enjoying operating both sides of some imagined conversation quite well, and I'll leave it to you.
So you can’t think around that corner I guess.
I guess you do believe magical gnomes would enforce your ban on government propaganda in ads.
Sigh.
Try again.
The thread is about how an "At last I got mine" attitude towards making money from government propaganda ad revenue is a shit attitude.
You are the one who is out here building windmills to tilt at about bans on government propaganda. That's not something I ever suggested. Nor is it even germane to the thread. Again, you are engaging in some elementary school level straw manning.
One does not need to ban government propaganda, or propaganda generally, to avoid being proud to be paid to spread it. Consider: you could be not proud you sold that ad space. You could not sell that ad space to those people. You could not sell ad space generally. I'm sure one could come up with other ideas as well.
I hope you see now how infantile your diversions are, how juvenile the comments around thinking around corners. You wandered completely off topic and seem quite upset I didn't follow you there, then invented a version of me that did to fight.
so, you have no answer.
I'm proud that anyone who wants to can spread whatever info they want.
I love that I facilitate that.
Every election year my income almost doubles, why? Because people want their opinions heard. I'm glad I can help with that.
You can call the topic whatever you want. I am for the free exchange of ideas, you're against it.
:D