political ads – Techdirt (original) (raw)

FCC Regulation Of AI In Political Ads Is Bad From Every Angle

from the not-the-way-to-handle-this dept

Efforts in Congress to ban the use of AI in political ads have largely stalled. So, naturally, the White House is attempting an end-around through the Federal Communications Commission.

While not an outright ban, the FCC’s proposal to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in political ads is an example of Washington bureaucrats not understanding technology at its finest. The proposal would stifle both speech and innovation. And aside from being a bad idea, the issue is outside the purview of the FCC.

The commission should abandon this misguided effort.

What the FCC is proposing would create an arbitrary distinction between political and issue ads using AI content and those using non-AI content.

That’s a double-header of bad policy.

First, it would discourage the use of a valuable technology for no good policy end. If a candidate or campaign wants to mislead the public via advertising, history clearly demonstrates they don’t need AI to do it.

Perhaps even worse, the proposed rule would itself mislead the public by creating the impression that AI-generated content is somehow inherently suspect.

AI is a tool. It can be used for good or ill, like any other tool.

Most modern voters have at least basic understanding and expectation of what artificial intelligence is. They also have a gut instinct about how to take anything in a political ad with a grain of salt.

But the FCC would define AI so broadly that it includes tools such as Photoshop that have been in use for decades.

This regulatory overreach would thus have the opposite effect from its alleged goal – instead of alerting viewers to “deep fakes,” it would label run-of-the-mill political ads as “AI-generated,” deceptively casting doubt in viewers’ minds as to their veracity.

The FCC justifies this overreach by citing the spread of misinformation.

But when it comes to political and issue ads, the Federal Election Commission already has authority to regulate such content. The FEC has chosen not to take up new rulemaking on this topic for this upcoming election.

Beyond that, tools already exist to combat disinformation, and they don’t require ignoring the law or suppressing speech.

Rapid response and voter common sense are better defenses than the government deciding who has a right to say what.

Instead of building confidence in the electoral process, the FCC’s proposed AI disclosure requirement is more likely to create an environment of suspicion and skepticism that undermines the integrity of our elections and fosters distrust in political messaging at a time when the process is already rife with distrust.

Allowing the FCC to stick its nose where it doesn’t belong could also set a dangerous precedent for federal agencies to justify further intrusions into the realm of free expression.

With this proposal, the FCC demonstrates it has no understanding of political ads, common political ad tools, artificial intelligence software, or First Amendment case law regarding disclaimers and political speech.

Maybe that’s why Congress has repeatedly declined to pass legislation authorizing the FCC to require disclosures in political ads.

The FCC doesn’t have the authority or expertise to deal with this issue. And even if it did, it would be a bad idea.

It’s a classic case of a solution in search of a problem. There’s no evidence AI is having any effect on political advertising, or that voters can’t discern for themselves what is and isn’t legitimate.

We all want fair and secure elections. But the FCC’s proposals would stifle the development of beneficial AI technologies, hinder U.S. leadership in this emerging field, and curtail individuals’ free speech rights, without making our elections one iota more fair or more secure.

We can figure out a way to preserve the integrity of our elections without discouraging the growth of new technologies. Instead of starving AI of oxygen, the federal government should foster a regulatory environment that breathes life into the technology’s potential.

And the FCC should leave the regulation of elections to the Federal Election Commission.

James Czerniawski is a senior policy analyst in technology and innovation at Americans for Prosperity.

Filed Under: ai, deepfakes, fcc, fec, political ads

Seattle Times, Brands Complain Over Senate Campaign Ad That Is Clearly Protected Speech

from the c'mon-guys dept

There is something about when corporate brands get used in political advertisements that seems to make everybody forget about the very concept of fair use or international equivalents. One previous example would be when a bunch of foodstuff brands claimed trademark infringement over an anti-littering campaign in Canada, arguing that the use of their own packaging in photographs was somehow a trademark violation. It wasn’t, but that particular city campaign caved anyway.

But this all gets way more frustrating when an organization that depends on the First Amendment to exist decides to ignore its primacy over a political ad. And that is exactly what happened between the Seattle Times newspaper and Tiffany Smiley, who is running for the Senate in Washington. The Times, along with Starbucks and the Seattle Seahawks, complained about an ad described below. The Times went so far as to send a cease and desist notice to Smiley’s campaign.

In the challenged 30-second campaign ad, Smiley begins by pointing to a shuttered Seattle Starbucks and saying, “These doors are closed because it’s too dangerous to ask employees to work here anymore.” Then, while she says that opponent Murray has “spearheaded reckless policies,” the Seattle Times logo and headline appear, saying, “Seattle’s Awful August Shows the City Continues to Backslide on Crime.”

Similarly, when Smiley complains that the city is suffering from “so much crime that you can’t even get a cup of coffee from the hometown shop on Capitol Hill, even if you can still afford it,” another Times headline appears that underscores her point. This one reads, “Starbucks to Close 5 Seattle Stores Over Safety Concerns.”

This is 100% a textbook case of fair use. And the Seattle Times should know that. Does know that. Certainly whatever lawyer crafted the C&D knows that. The branding was used as part of political speech and they were accurately represented in the advertisement. Smiley is also not competing with any of those brands. The Times complaint was that it had actually endorsed Smiley’s opponent and suggested the use in the advertisement implied an endorsement from the Times. But it doesn’t. At all.

And regardless, this all still amounts to protected speech.

Joel Ard is a Washington state-based lawyer who has experience with intellectual property and fair use law. After viewing the ads, he told The Center Square Thursday in a phone interview, “It’s so blatantly fair use that if someone wanted to make this claim in federal court, they’d likely be sanctioned for it.”

Uh huh. And the real headache-inducing part of this whole story is that the complaint is coming from a newspaper that absolutely relies on the First Amendment and fair use to do what it does. Would the Times like this flipped around? Should the Smiley campaign be able to control when its candidate appears in the paper? Should it be able to keep the paper’s website from showing Smiley’s political ads and commenting on them?

Of course not! But Smiley’s speech is every bit as protected as the Seattle Times’. And while I normally roll my eyes when politicians claim media bias in most circumstances, when Smiley says this…

“While unfair and bias reporting and commentary is likely protected by the First Amendment…that speech protection does not apply to providing corporate resources to a campaign,” explained the complaint letter to the FEC by Charlie Spies and Katie Reynolds, co-counsel for the Smiley for Washington campaign. “What is illegal is for [the Seattle Times] to provide its resources to Patty Murray, and her campaign committee People for Patty Murray, while at the same time denying such resources to her opponent.”

…it’s kind of hard to argue she doesn’t have a point. Her opponent, Murray, also uses Seattle Times branding in her ads without complaint.

Yeesh, folks, you’re a newspaper. Be better than this.

Filed Under: fair use, political ads, political speech, tiffany smiley, trademark
Companies: seattle times

from the it's-just-not,-stop-it dept

What a terrible world it would be if Republicans and Democrats alike start pushing for 1st Amendment-violating demands on websites that they be compelled to carry speech they don’t want to. Over the last few years, we’ve seen mainly Republicans pushing for these kinds of “must carry” / “can’t moderate” rules in response to what they (without any actual evidence) believe is anti-conservative bias in moderation. The end result were some blatantly unconstitutional laws that have been mostly… ruled unconstitutional.

For a while, it looked like Democrats were focused on the other end of the unconstitutional 1st Amendment spectrum, proposing ridiculous bills that would require websites to remove content deemed “misinformation.”

Of course, the reality is that both parties are pretty hypocritical on this. And both seem to live by the rule that most people use to govern their thoughts on content moderation: “websites should keep up the content I like, but websites must take down the content I dislike — and anything else is obviously a problem.”

Republicans, of course, have done this flip flop plenty. While pretending to want to require social media to host content, they’ve also pushed bills requiring certain content be removed at the same time.

And now, Democrats seem to be suffering from the same kind of hypocrisy. Despite spending the past few years demanding websites become more aggressive in taking down content, as soon as its content the Democrats like, they’re sounding like their counterparts from across the aisle whining about “censorship.”

On July 15th, a group of Democratic campaign organizations attempted to purchase a joint ad on abortion and gun control on the Disney-backed Hulu platform along with other digital buys on Facebook, YouTube, and Roku and more traditional placements on broadcast and cable channels. The ad ran on every other platform, but Hulu rejected it. Hulu hasn’t told the groups if it will run the ad, a Democratic party official told The Verge.

In a joint statement on Hulu’s rejection on Monday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Democratic Governors Association said, “Hulu’s censorship of the truth is outrageous, offensive, and another step down a dangerous path for our country.”

Oh, come on. It’s not censorship. It’s just Hulu deciding that it didn’t want certain political hot button issues on its platform right now. Censorship is the state telling websites what content they must take down — something many members of the three committees who put out this statement have done quite a lot of over the past few years.

You can argue for why the decision was a mistake, but to call it “censorship” is just wrong, and plays into the nonsense being spread by Republicans that private companies must be required to host whatever nonsense they want to post.

That’s not how it works. Hulu doesn’t want your ads. Go post them somewhere else and move on.

Filed Under: censorship, content mdoeration, democratic congressional campaign committee, democratic governors association, democratic senatorial campaign committee, democrats, grandstanding, political ads
Companies: hulu

Washington State Also Spits On Section 230 By Going After Google For Political Ads

from the guys-it's-still-the-law dept

In the post the other day about Utah trying to ignore Section 230 so it could regulate internet platforms, I explained why it was important that Section 230 pre-empted these sorts of state efforts:

Just think about the impossibility of trying to simultaneously satisfy, in today’s political climate, what a Red State government might demand from an Internet platform and what a Blue State might. That readily foreseeable political catch-22 is exactly why Congress wrote Section 230 in such a way that no state government gets to demand appeasement when it comes to platform moderation practices.

We don’t have to strain our imaginations very hard, because with this lawsuit, by King County, Washington prosecutors against Google, we can see a Blue State do the same thing Utah is trying to do and come after a platform for how it handles user-generated content.

Superficially there are of course some differences between the two state efforts. Utah’s bill ostensibly targets social media posts whereas Washington’s law goes after political ads. What’s wrong with Washington’s law may also be a little more subtle than the abjectly unconstitutional attempt by Utah to trump internet services’ expressive and associative rights. But these are not meaningful distinctions. In both cases it still basically all boils down to the same thing: a state trying to force a platform to handle user-generated content (which online ads generally are) the way the state wants by imposing requirements on platforms that will inevitably shape how they do.

In the Washington case prosecutors are unhappy that Google is apparently not following well enough the prescriptive rules Washington State established to help the public follow the money behind political ads. One need not quibble with the merit of what Washington State is trying to do, which, at least on first glance, seems perfectly reasonable: make campaign finance more transparent to the public. Nor is it necessary to take issue with the specific rules the state came up with to try to vindicate this goal. The rules may or may not be good ones, but whether they are good or not is irrelevant. That there are rules is the problem, and one that that Section 230 was purposefully designed to avoid.

As discussed in that other post, Congress went with an all-carrot, no-stick approach in regulating internet content, giving platforms the most leeway possible to do the best they could to help achieve what Congress wanted overall: the most beneficial and least harmful content online. But this approach falls apart once sticks get introduced, which is why Congress included pre-emption in Section 230 so that states couldn’t try to. Yet that’s what Washington is trying to do with its disclosure rules surrounding political ads: introduce sticks by imposing regulatory requirements that burdens how platforms can facilitate user-generated content, in spite of Congress’s efforts to alleviate them of these burdens.

The burden is hardly incidental or slight. Remember that if Washington could enforce its own rules, then so could any other state or any of locality, even when those rules were far more demanding, or ultimately compromise this or any other worthy policy goal?either inadvertently or even deliberately. Furthermore, even if every state had good rules, the differences between them would likely make compliance unfeasible for even the best-intentioned platform. Indeed, even by the state’s own admission, Google actually had policies aimed at helping the public learn who had sponsored the ads appearing on its services.

Per Google?s advertising policies, advertisers are required to complete advertiser identity verification. Advertisers seeking to place election advertisements through Google?s advertising networks are required to complete election advertisement verification. Google notifies all verified advertisers, including, but not limited to sponsors of election advertisements, that Google will make public certain information about advertisements placed through Google?s advertising networks. Google notifies verified sponsors of election advertisements that information concerning their advertisements will be made public through Google?s Political Advertising Transparency Report.

Google?s policy states:

With the information you provide during the verification process, Google will verify your identity and eligibility to run election ads. For election ads, Google will [g]enerate, when possible, an in-ad disclosure that identifies who paid for your election ad. This means your name, or the name of the organization you represent, will be displayed in the ad shown to users. [And it will p]ublish a publicly available Political Advertising transparency report and a political ads library with data on funding sources for election ads, the amounts being spent, and more.

Google notifies advertisers that in addition to the company?s online Political Advertising Transparency Report, affected election advertisements “are published as a public data set on Google Cloud BigQuery[,]” and that users “can export a subset of the ads or access them programmatically.” Google notifies advertisers that the downloadable election ad “dataset contains information on how much money is spent by verified advertisers on political advertising across Google Ad Services. In addition, insights on demographic targeting used in political advertisement campaigns by these advertisers are also provided. Finally, links to the actual political advertisement in the Google Transparency Report are provided.” Google states that public access to “Data for an election expires 7 years after the election.” [p. 14-15]

Yet Washington is still mad at Google anyway because it didn’t handle user-generated content exactly the way it demanded. And that’s a problem, because if it can sanction Google for not handling user-generated content exactly the way it wants, then (1) so could any other state or any of the infinite number of local jurisdictions Google inherently reaches, (2) to enforce an unlimited number of rules, and (3) governing any sort of user-generated content that may happen to catch a local regulator’s attention. Utah may today be fixated on social media content and Washington State political ads, but once they’ve thrown off the pre-emptive shackles of Section 230 they or any other state, county, city or smaller jurisdiction could go after platforms hosting any of the myriad other sort of expression people use internet services to facilitate.

Which would sabotage the internet Congress was trying to foster with Section 230. Again, Congress deliberately gave platforms a free hand to decide how best to moderate user content so that they could afford to do their best at keeping the most good content up and taking the most bad content down. But with all these jurisdictions threatening to sanction platforms, trying to do either of these things can no longer be platforms’ priority. Instead they will be forced to devote all their resources to the impossible task of trying to avoid a potentially infinite amount of liability. While perhaps at times this regulatory pressure might result in nudging platforms to make good choices for certain types of moderation decisions, it would be more out of coincidence than design. Trying to stay out of trouble is not the same thing as trying to do the best for the public?and often can turn out to be in direct conflict.

Which we can see from Washington’s law itself. In 2018 prosecutors attempted to enforce an earlier version of this law against Google, which led it to declare that it would refuse all political ads aimed at Washington voters.

Three days later, on June 7, 2018, Google announced that the company?s advertising networks would no longer accept political advertisements targeting state or local elections in Washington State. Google?s announced policy was not required by any Washington law and it was not requested by the State. [p. 7]

Prosecutors may have been surprised by Google’s decision, but no one should have been. Such a decision is an entirely foreseeable consequence, because if a law makes it legally unsafe for platforms to facilitate expression, then they won’t.

Even the complaint itself, albeit perhaps inadvertently, makes clear what a loss for discourse and democracy it is when expression is suppressed.

As an example of Washington political advertisements Google accepted or provided after June 4, 2018, Google accepted or provided political advertisements purchased by Strategies 300, Inc. on behalf of the group Moms for Seattle that ran in July 2019, intended to influence city council elections in Seattle. Google also accepted or provided political advertisements purchased by Strategies 300, Inc. on behalf of the Seattle fire fighters that ran in October 2019, intended to influence elections in Seattle. [p. 9]

While prosecutors may frame it as scurrilous that Google accepted ads “intended to influence elections,” influencing political opinion is at the very heart of why we have a First Amendment to protect speech in the first place. Democracy depends on discourse, and it is hardly surprising that people would want to communicate in ways designed to persuade on political matters.

Nor is the fact that they may pay for the opportunity to express it salient. Every internet service needs some way of keeping the lights on and servers running. That it may sometimes charge people to use their systems to convey their messages doesn’t alter the fact that it is still a service facilitating user generated content, which Section 230 exists to protect and needs to protect.

Of course, even in the face of unjust sanction sometimes platforms may try to stick it out anyway, and it appears from the Washington complaint that Google may have started accepting ads again at some point after it had initially stopped. It also agreed to pay $217,000 to settle a 2018 enforcement effort?although, notably, without admitting to any wrongdoing, which is a crucial fact prosecutors omit in its current pleading.

On December 18, 2018, the King County Superior Court entered a stipulated judgment resolving Google?s alleged violations of RCW 42.17A.345 from 2013 through the date of the State?s June 4, 2018, Complaint filing. Under the terms of the stipulated judgment, Google agreed to pay the State 200,000.00asacivilpenaltyandanadditional200,000.00 as a civil penalty and an additional 200,000.00asacivilpenaltyandanadditional17,000.00 for the State?s reasonable attorneys? fees, court costs, and costs of investigation. A true and correct copy of the State?s Stipulation and Judgment against Google entered by the King County Superior Court on December 18, 2018, is attached hereto as Exhibit B. [p. 8. See p. 2 of Exhibit B for Google expressly disclaiming any admission of liability.]

Such a settlement is hardly a confession. Google could have opted to settle rather than fight for any number of reasons. Even platforms as well-resourced as Google will still need to choose their battles. Because it’s not just a question of being able to afford to hire all the lawyers you may need; you also need to be able to effectively manage them all, and every skirmish on every front that may now be vulnerable if Section 230 no longer effectively preempts those attacks. Being able to afford a fight means being able to afford it in far more ways than just financially, and thus it is hardly unusual for those threatened with legal process to simply try to purchase relief from onslaught instead of fighting for the just result.

Without Section 230, or its preemption provision, however, that’s what we’ll see a lot more of: unjust results. We’ll also see less effective moderation as platforms redirect their resources from doing better moderation to avoiding liability instead. And we’ll see what Google foreshadowed, of platforms withdrawing their services from the public entirely as it becomes financially prohibitive to pay off all the local government entities that might like to come after them. It will not get us a better internet, more innovative online services, or solve any of the problems any of these state regulatory efforts hope to fix. It will only make everything much, much worse.

Filed Under: king county, political ads, pre-emption, section 230, washington
Companies: google

Inauguration Has Happened, Google And Facebook Should End The Ban On Political Advertisements

from the it's-not-all-presidential-campaigns-and-nonsense dept

In light of the events at the Capitol, social media and other online companies have been reevaluating who they let speak on their platforms. The ban of President Trump from Twitter, Facebook, and various other platforms has sparked fierce debate over moderation and free speech. But Google?s recently reinstituted ban on political advertisements until at least inauguration day and the continued ban from Facebook are silencing voices that need to be heard the most ? those speaking about state and local political issues.

Before last November?s election, both Google and Facebook restricted the ability of political advertisers to submit and run new ads. This policy was implemented to prevent situations like those in 2016, when Russian agents were able to purchase $100,000 in Facebook ads related to that year?s presidential election. Although these ads did nothing to affect the outcome of the election, they gave rise to the spurious narrative that Russia ?hacked? the election.

But Facebook?s ban has continued far past election day under the stated purpose of preventing ads claiming the election results were rigged or that the election had been stolen. Google eventually returned to allowing ads and Facebook made an exception for the Georgia runoff. However, the companies? most recent bans leave many smaller speakers without two of their most important platforms, despite the policies? failure to prevent the spread of doubt over the 2020 election results.

Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz, while certainly benefiting from social media, can reach an audience without these platforms. But many other speakers who want to speak to local audiences about important political issues have come to rely on them.

Before the advent of targeted online advertisements, communicating and organizing locally required going door-to-door or hanging flyers in your neighborhood. If you could find enough support, perhaps you could even set up a meeting in a public space. The old system was not only inefficient, but often costly in terms of time and money.

This is what makes advertising on Facebook and Google so valuable to those wanting to engage on important issues. Want to inform your neighbors about a city board meeting over a key issue for your community? Want to build a coalition of people to support or oppose an issue at your state capitol? Facebook and Google can do so more successfully, and at a fraction of the cost.

This is often the most important kind of political engagement – forming relationships with your fellow citizens to make your voices heard on issues that carry major personal impacts and are far too often under-reported and less understood.

And make no mistake, the last year has featured no shortage of critical state and local issues.

State legislatures are already in session dealing with important and contentious topics like education, budget cuts, and of course, the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. Local governments are still dealing with shutdowns and business closures as the pandemic continues into 2021. And as organizing in person gets increasingly difficult, if not impossible, digital tools are becoming even more important.

Key state and local issues are also too often drowned out by politics at the national level. Given the turbulent times we are living through, who can blame people for being glued to the events unfolding in Washington? That?s why Facebook and Google ads are important tools to draw attention to state and local issues.

Inauguration is over and the stated purpose of banning these ads has passed. But more importantly our federalist system of government means that politics don?t only happen at the national level. Rather, the political issues that most greatly affect our lives are those closest to home. Facebook and Google should recognize this fact and end its political ad ban which puts national politics ahead of state and local issues.

The internet is at its best when it informs and connects local communities on the issues that impact them. Blanket political ad bans lessen the opportunity for this kind of much-needed engagement while also failing to improve the national discourse.

Eric Peterson lives in New Orleans where he is the Director of the Pelican Center for Technology and Innovation

Filed Under: messaging, political ads, politics, social media
Companies: facebook, google, twitter

Anti-Trump Ad Demonstrates Both The Streisand Effect & Masnick's Impossibility Theorem

from the a-case-study dept

Well, this one hits the sweet spot of topics I keep trying to demonstrate: both a Streisand Effect and Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem. As you may have heard, a group of Republican political consultants and strategists, who very much dislike Donald Trump, put together an effort called The Lincoln Project, which is a PAC to campaign against Trump and Trumpian politics. They recently released an anti-Trump campaign ad about his terrible handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, called Mourning in America, which is a reference to Ronald Reagan’s famous Morning in America campaign ad for the 1984 Presidential election. The new ad is, well, pretty powerful:

And while it’s unlikely to convince Trump fans deep into their delusions, it certainly got under the President’s skin. He went on one of his famous late night Twitter temper tantrums about the ad, and later lashed out at the Lincoln Project when talking to reporters. He was super, super mad.

And what did that do? Well, first it got the ad a ton of views. Earlier this week, one of the Lincoln Project’s founders, Rick Wilson, noted that the ad had already received 15 million views across various platforms in the day or so since the ad had been released. Also, it resulted in the Lincoln Project getting a giant boost in funding:

The Lincoln Project, which is run by Republican operatives who oppose President Donald Trump, raised $1 million after the president ripped the group on Twitter this week ? marking it the super PAC?s biggest day of fundraising yet.

Reed Galen, a member of the Lincoln Project?s advisory committee, told CNBC that the total came after the president?s Tuesday morning Twitter tirade in reaction to an ad titled ?Mourning in America,? which unloads on Trump?s response to the coronavirus pandemic. It recently aired on Fox News, which Trump often watches and praises. Galen said it was the Lincoln Project?s best single-day fundraising haul

Not only that, but it has opened up more opportunity for the Lincoln Project team to get their word out. With so much interest in the ad, it opened up opportunities for the project members to get their message in various mainstream media sources. Reed Galen wrote a piece for NBC:

What we accomplished this week was not something to be celebrated. No commercial should have the power to derail the leader of the free world.

And another Lincoln Project founder, George Conway (who, of course, is the husband of Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway), wrote something similar for the Washington Post:

It may strike you as deranged that a sitting president facing a pandemic has busied himself attacking journalists, political opponents, television news hosts and late-night comedians ? even deriding a former president who merely boasted that ?the ?Ratings? of my News Conferences etc.? were driving ?the Lamestream Media . . . CRAZY,? and floated bogus miracle cures, including suggesting that scientists consider injecting humans with household disinfectants such as Clorox.

If so, you?re not alone. Tens of thousands of mental-health professionals, testing the bounds of professional ethics, have warned for years about Trump?s unfitness for office.

Some people listened; many, including myself, did not, until it was too late.

That’s the kind of media exposure you can’t buy, but which you get when you have a President who appears wholly unfamiliar with the Streisand Effect.

And that then takes us to the Impossibility Theorem, regarding the impossibility of doing content moderation at scale well. After Trump’s ongoing tirade, Facebook slapped a “Partly False” warning label on the video when posted on Facebook. While the whole situation is ridiculous, it’s at least mildly amusing, considering how frequently clueless Trumpkins insist that Facebook censors “conservative” (by which they mean Trumpian) viewpoints. Also, somewhat ironic in all of this: the only reason that Facebook now places such fact check labels on things is because anti-Trump people yelled at how Facebook needed to do more fact checking of political content on its site. So, now you get this.

Part of the issue is that Politifact judged one line in the ad as “false.” That line was that Trump “bailed out Wall St. but not Main St.” Politifact says that since the CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program has given potentially forgivable loans to some small businesses, and because the bill was done by Congress, not the President, that line is “false.” And yet, because angry (usually anti-Trump) people demanded that Facebook do more useless fact checking, the end result is that the video now gets a “false” label.

Of course, this shows both the impossibility of doing content moderation well and the silliness of betting big on fact checking with a full “true or false” claim. One could argue that that line has misleading elements, but is true in most cases. Tons of small businesses are shuttering. Many businesses have been unable to get PPP loans, and under the current terms of the loans, they’re useless for many (especially if they have no work for people to do, since the loans have to be mostly used on payroll over the next couple months). But does that make the entire ad “false”? Of course not.

And Rick Wilson is super mad about this. He’s right to be mad about Politifact’s designation, though it’s really a condemnation of the religious focus on “true or false” in fact checking, rather than in focusing on what is misleading or not:

But the ad doesn?t actually claim that small businesses received zero help. Rather, it makes the point that Main Street America is still seriously struggling as the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic continues.

But Wilson is also mad at Facebook:

Speaking exclusively to Mediaite, Wilson called the decision ?the typical fuckery we?ve come to expect from both the Trump camp and their tame Facebook allies.?

?Facebook is perfectly content to allow content from QAnon lunatics, anti-vaxxers, alt-righters, and every form of Trump/Russian ? but I repeat myself ? disinformation,? he pointed out. ?This is a sign of just how powerfully ?Mourning In America? shook Donald Trump and his allies. Their attempt to censor our ad isn?t a setback for us; it?s a declaration of an information war we will win.?

Separately, the Lincoln Project also sent out an email to supporters, again blaming Facebook:

… it’s no secret that Facebook has stood by and done little to nothing as lie after lie ? from the Liar-In-Chief himself ? runs wild on their platform.

(Oh, and let’s also not forget the conspiracy theories, foreign disinformation campaigns and negligence that got Mark Zuckerberg questioned by the United States Congress.)

But, this? This is an entirely different and dangerous kind of collusion.

And what is Facebook’s excuse for playing favorites with its recently-transferred former employees in the Trump campaign?

They say a “fact-checker” labeled our claim that “Donald Trump helped bailout Wall Street, not Main Street” was untrue.

….Really?

The email goes on to justify the “main street” line with a bunch of links, and then again argues that Facebook is “censoring the truth” to help Trump:

Is that “Partly False?” Of course not.

We told the truth about Donald Trump…

He lost his damn mind over it on Twitter…

Attacked us in front of Air Force One…

Then sent his spin machine to discredit us…

And now his allies at Facebook are doing his damage control by censoring the truth he doesn’t like.

I get the frustration — and I find it at least a bit ironic that the whole “fact checking” system was a response to anti-Trump folks mad at Facebook for allowing pro-Trump nonsense to spread — but this is just another example of the Impossibility Theorem. There is no “good” solution here. We live in a time where everyone’s trying to discredit everyone they disagree with, and many of these things depend on your perspective or your interpretation of a broad statement, like whether or not Trump is helping “main street.”

We can agree that it’s silly that Facebook has put this label on the video, but also recognize that it’s not “Trump’s allies at Facebook” working to “censor the truth he doesn’t like.” That’s just absurd (especially given the reason the fact checking set up was put together in the first place).

But, hey, outrage and claims of censorship feed into the narrative (and feed into the Streisand Effect), so perhaps it all is just designed to work together.

Filed Under: donald trump, fact checking, fundraising, george conway, impossibility theorem, masnick's impossibility theorem, political ads, reed galen, rick wilson, streisand effect, super pac, temper tantrum
Companies: facebook, lincoln project, politifact

Democrats Being Blocked From Advertising On Trump's Failed COVID-19 Response Due To Content Moderation Rules

from the oh-fun dept

Here we go again: content moderation at scale is impossible to do well — and, as we’ve discussed, things are especially tricky when it comes to content moderation and political advertising. Now, when you mix into that content moderation to try to stop disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and you run up against… politicians facing blocks in trying to advertise about Trump’s leadership failures in response to the pandemic:

Prominent Democratic PACs in recent days have funneled millions of dollars into television ads accusing Trump of mishandling the coronavirus crisis. But staffers of several Democratic nonprofits and digital ad firms realized this week that they would not be able to use Google’s dominant ad tools to spread true information about President Trump’s handling of the outbreak on YouTube and other Google platforms. The company only allows PSA-style ads from government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and trusted health bodies like the World Health Organization. Multiple Democratic and progressive strategists were rebuked when they tried to place Google ads criticizing the Trump administration’s response to coronavirus, officials within the firms told Protocol.

That anti-conservative bias sure is a pain, eh?

This wasn’t just a one-off. Apparently other politicians have also been told they can’t use Google’s ad platform for those ads either:

One Democratic strategist said his digital firm had already gone live in recent days with several ad campaigns related to coronavirus on Facebook, which allows most political ads about the disease. “As we were getting ready to start broadening [the ad campaign] into Google, we reached out to Google to clarify what their rules were going to be,” said one Democratic strategist who requested anonymity in order to maintain his relationship with Google. A Google ad representative told them they would not be able to place the ads.

But, of course, since federal government agencies are allowed to advertise on the platform, and this administration appears to view the entire apparatus of the federal government as solely part and parcel of the Trump re-election campaign, that basically means that Trump gets free reign over Google ads:

The Trump campaign and Republicans across the country also are not allowed to run advertisements right now. But the democratic strategists argue that the CDC and White House’s messaging, which are permitted by Google, fall under Trump’s purview.

“For Google to basically say that the Trump administration is the only entity that is allowed to talk about the most important issue in politics really puts their thumb on the scale of the incumbent president and against anyone who is really looking to challenge him,” said Eli Kaplan, a founding partner of Rising Tide Interactive, a digital marketing firm for Democratic political organizations and progressive nonprofits.

This isn’t to criticize Google, but to again highlight the straight up impossibility of the situation. More specifically, it’s not hard to follow the very logical and reasonable thought process that leads to these rules being put in place. It wanted to limit people exploiting COVID-related panic for commercial reasons, and thus chose to limit COVID-related ads to government entities only. But, the issue comes down to distinguishing political ads from commercial ads, and it’s easy (if you’re not having to make that distinction) to just say that you’ll allow the political ads, but not “commercial” ads, but suddenly that opens up a ton of other questions that all of the platforms have been dealing with regarding moderation of political ads: what is a political ad exactly? In some cases, it’s more obvious, but in many cases, it’s a big gray area.

This isn’t about bias and it isn’t about malice. It’s about the simple fact that if you do content moderation, almost every “policy” you put in place will come back to bite you when you realize that, in practice, something will happen that seems insane even when you have a perfectly logical policy in place.

Filed Under: ads, content moderation, content moderation at scale, covid-19, democrats, political ads
Companies: google

President Trump Is So Upset About This Ad Showing His Failed Handling Of COVID-19 That He's Demanding It Be Taken Down

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Has no one explained to Donald Trump how the Streisand Effect works yet? His campaign has apparently been sending laughably ridiculous threat letters to various TV stations that have been airing an advertisement put together by a group called Priorities USA, criticizing the President’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The ad highlights Trump’s repeated statements playing down the virus and insisting that he had things under control, even as the numbers of infected started to rise exponentially. It’s a pretty effective ad. You can see it here.

Priorities also posted the ad to Twitter, and according to a Fox News article, the campaign has also asked Twitter to “flag a nearly identical ad… but the social media giant refused.”

The letter is amazing in three separate, but equally dumb ways. First, it focuses solely on just one of the lines that the ad quotes Trump saying: “this is their new hoax.” He did say that — as the letter from his campaign readily admits. Their complaint is that the statement is out of context, and that what Trump was calling a hoax was actually the politicization of the virus response efforts. As the letter notes, here’s the statement in full context, that Trump made on February 28th:

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They?re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs, you say, ?How?s President Trump doing??, ?Oh, nothing, nothing.? They have no clue, they don?t have any clue. They can?t even count their votes in Iowa, they can?t even count. No, they can?t. They can?t count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, ?Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.? That didn?t work out too well. They couldn?t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they?ve been doing it since he got in. It?s all turning, they lost. It?s all turning, think of it, think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know we did something that?s been pretty amazing. We have 15 people in this massive country and because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that.

So, here’s the problem. He absolutely said that “this is their new hoax” which he is quoted as saying. The fact that he’s referring to the politicization rather than the virus itself is not nearly enough for the ad to violate any possible law. Even in context, it’s a problematic statement, as what he’s complaining about is the fact that many people were raising alarm bells and he was trying to play down that the whole issue was a problem. As such, it’s still pretty damning.

But the fact that the letter literally spends three pages whining about just the “hoax” line, while not mentioning any of the rest of the ad is them totally conceding all of the other moronic stuff the President has said. Indeed, one of the lines — the “15 people” line — is also in the ad, and the Trump campaign apparently has no problem with you knowing that he completely downplayed how many people were going to be impacted by COVID-19.

The second dumb thing about the letter, of course, is that the campaign just called a shit ton of attention to it. The ad got some attention, but now it’s getting way way way more attention. And even if you took out the hoax line, it’s a pretty damning account of a President who refuses to take responsibility or to recognize the seriousness of what has happened under his watch.

The third dumb thing about it is that this is the Trump campaign. They’re famous for posting and highlighting selectively edited videos of people they dislike. Hell, at around the same time they were apparently sending this letter, the campaign’s Twitter feed posted a heavily edited video of Joe Biden, presenting his recent TV appearances much more out of context than anything in the Priorities ad. Hilariously, the letter cites a bunch of fact checking sites — including The Washington Post, a company that the campaign itself is currently suing, and which Trump himself regularly accuses of publishing fake news about him. And, yet, if we were to look through the fact check sites quoted in the letter, we’d find that they regularly claim that Trump himself is spewing false information — and that’s never ever stopped Trump, so why should it stop his opponents?

And that’s not even getting into why the threat is legally nonsensical — claiming that failing to take down this add “could put your station’s license in jeopardy.” This is just silly. Airing political ads that contain false information has been controversial, but is mostly legally protected. Attempts to put in place legal requirements for “truth” in political advertising have been regularly struck down. Notably, the letter from the Trump campaign ignores that, and focuses entirely on cases regarding truth in commercial advertising. But not political advertising.

Also, threatening a TV station that you will have its license to broadcast removed for airing a political opponent’s ad is just, in general, a really bad look. It seems likely that most TV stations will dump this letter in the garbage bin where it belongs, but in the meantime, the Trump Campaign has just Streisanded this ad into a ton more views.

Filed Under: covid-19, donald trump, political ads, streisand effect, trump campaign
Companies: priorities usa

Rep. Cicilline Wants To Remove Section 230 Protections For Platforms That Host 'Demonstrably False' Political Ads

from the the-1st-amendment-callling dept

What is it with politicians (and other commentators) who keep confusing the 1st Amendment with Section 230? The latest is Rep. David Cicilline, who wants to remove Section 230 protections from internet platforms that host “demonstrably false” political ads:

Rep. David Cicilline is drafting legislation to take away a broad tech liability protection for online platforms that knowingly publish ?demonstrably false? political ads, he says at a National Association of Broadcasters? event.

This has been an issue a bunch of folks have been raising of late. Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi have both expressed anger that Facebook has chosen not to fact check political videos. However, as we’ve noted repeatedly, there are all sorts of problems with a proposal like this.

First, and perhaps biggest, is the 1st Amendment. Contrary to what many people seem to believe, many false statements are still protected under the 1st Amendment — and while internet platforms have their own rights to take down or leave up what they want, having the government step in and create an effective mandate to take down “false” information will almost certainly violate the 1st Amendment, as it’s not a content-neutral regulation. As the Supreme Court noted in United States v. Alvarez, plenty of “demonstrably false” information is still Constitutionally protected:

In light of the substantial and expansive threats to free expression posed by content-based restrictions, this Court has rejected as ?startling and dangerous? a ?free-floating test for First Amendment coverage . . . [based on] an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits.?… Instead, content-based restrictions on speech have been permitted, as a general matter, only when confined to the few ??historic and traditional categories [of expression] long familiar to the bar,?? …These categories have a historical foundation in the Court?s free speech tradition. The vast realm of free speech and thought always protected in our tradition can still thrive, and even be furthered, by adherence to those categories and rules.

Absent from those few categories where the law allows content-based regulation of speech is any general exception to the First Amendment for false statements. This comports with the common understanding that some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation, expression the First Amendment seeks to guarantee.

Later in that ruling, Justice Kennedy notes:

Were the Court to hold that the interest in truthful discourse alone is sufficient to sustain a ban on speech, absent any evidence that the speech was used to gain a material advantage, it would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this Court?s cases or in our constitutional tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power casts a chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain a foundation of our freedom.

And thus, once again, it appears that a politician is confusing the power of the 1st Amendment, and assuming that it is coming from Section 230. This is incorrect.

The second issue with such a law is that while “demonstrably false” seems like an easy classification, it’s not at all easy in practice. As we’ve discussed many, many times in the past, content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, and it only seems easy until you actually have to do it. Case in point: just last week there was an uproar and controversy over an edited video that the Mike Bloomberg campaign posted to social media. The video shows Bloomberg on the debate stage last week, asking if any of the other candidates on stage had started a business — and then places clips of each of the other candidates looking around awkwardly, with an overlay of cricket sounds. The video is obviously meant to imply that this extended silence after Bloomberg asked the question is what actually happened on stage — though it is not. The clips were obviously taken from other moments in the debate.

Is that “demonstrably false”? Well, that depends on your perspective. It’s absolutely misleading. But, it could also be seen as a joke or satire or making a point. Indeed, in the link above, Twitter told reporters that the video would violate its policies as “manipulated media,” but Facebook says it would not, since its policies do “not extend to content that is parody or satire, or video that has been edited solely to omit or change the order of words.” And, while you may agree or disagree with either platforms’ decision on this, how would Cicilline’s proposal handle such an issue? If put in place, it’s likely that all platforms would then seek to remove this video, out of fear of it opening up the potential for massive liability.

The courts are extremely loathe to get involved in political speech — which, quite frequently, involves misrepresentation, false, or misleading statements by candidates about each other. Trying to put an extra burden on social media platforms by potentially removing Section 230 protections for not magically being able to determine “truth” is not only unconstitutional, but likely putting internet platforms in an impossible position.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, david cicilline, demonstrably false, intermediary liability, liability, political ads, political speech, section 230

NY Times At It Again: Has To Run Massive Correction For All The Errors In Aaron Sorkin's Facts Optional Rant About Why Facebook Should Fact Check

from the wanna-try-that-again dept

The NY Times’ Opinion Section continues its run of truly awful decisions lately. As we learned during the Bret Stephens “bedbug” fiasco, the NY Times deliberately chooses not to fact check its opinion and op-ed writers, allegedly based on some weird belief that since these are opinions, they don’t need any fact checking (or, alternatively, that some sort of fact checking might stifle the creative voices the NYT Opinion pages thinks are worth publishing).

Given that, it takes a certain amount of failed irony detection to then run an angry rant of an “open letter to Mark Zuckerberg” from screenwriter Aaron Sorkin complaining about Facebook’s recent decision not to fact check political ads. Sorkin is an amazing writer, but it seems particularly odd to have him write such a piece, since he has a history of writing movies about real life people in which he completely misrepresents reality. Indeed, he did exactly that about Mark Zuckerberg. So it seems a bit rich to have him be the delivery person for a message about truth in media. And that’s doubly so because many, many people believe that Sorkin’s portrayal of Zuckerberg in The Social Network is accurate, when it is very, very much not.

But an even larger point: when you’re writing an open letter to demand more fact checking, wouldn’t you make sure to carefully fact check your own piece first? Apparently neither Sorkin, nor the NY Times Opinion pages thought that was worthwhile. And, as more and more people called out blatant factual errors in the piece, the NY Times had to gradually rewrite and issue a longer and longer correction on their piece.

Correction: Oct 31, 2019 An earlier version of this article misstated the year in which “The Social Network was released. It was 2010, not 2011. The nature of the major lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker was misstated. It was an invasion of privacy lawsuit, not a defamation suit. In addition, information about Americans’ use of Facebook as a new source was misstated. In 2018, over 40 percent of Americans said they got news from Facebook; it is not the case that half of all Americans say that Facebook is their main source of news.

I’ll note that the significance and importance of each of these corrections is in inverse order of how they are presented (and, indeed, the larger, more important corrections came later as well). It’s not that big a deal that Sorkin forgot the year of his own damn movie, but it does seem at least a bit ironic in a piece advocating for the need for more fact checking that such an easily confirmed fact is misstated. The nature of Hogan’s suit against Gawker might not matter that much to Sorkin, but it’s actually a pretty big deal in terms of what happened and why it happened.

But the last one is a real doozy. A huge part of Sorkin’s argument was that Facebook has to be held to a different standard because so many people use it as their “primary” source of news. Except that’s not what the data shows at all. It shows a smaller percentage said they had found some news on Facebook. Not that it was a primary source. Separately, finding news on Facebook is completely meaningless regarding the question of fact checking political ads. Most of the news that people find via Facebook is legit. Some of it is not. But how much is that bit that is not accurate actually influencing people? That’s an important question — and one that isn’t clearly answered yet. It would be interesting to find out, but Sorkin just seems to leap beyond all of that, misstate how many people get how much of their news from Facebook and assume the worst.

In some ways, that’s just Sorkin being Sorkin. But it boggles the mind that anyone — either Sorkin himself or the NY Times — would think that they should rush forward with a snappily written attack on Facebook’s failure to fact check… and not do even the most basic fact checking on the story itself. Even if Sorkin had a point in the “open letter,” it is completely drowned by the irony of the errors.

But there is a larger point here: there are reasons why the NY Times chooses not to fact check its opinion pieces. You or I may disagree with them — and we can speak out about why we think it makes the paper of record look like a cheap nonsense tabloid. But it has that choice. Facebook also has that choice — and we can criticize them too. But the idea that fact checking magically fixes all things is completely overblown. And the idea that politicians will suddenly stop lying in ads, or that this will magically make voters smarter is all completely unsupported.

Sorkin’s piece insists that “tens of millions of kids” are being misled by fake ads on Facebook — but there’s no evidence to support that. Indeed, most evidence regarding those susceptible to scam info on Facebook are the boomer generation. You know, like Aaron Sorkin. And, for what it’s worth, actual data suggests that misleading stories didn’t really take off from Facebook, but rather from television, which just happens to be the medium in which Aaron Sorkin is most famous. Funny that Sorkin doesn’t mention any of that, isn’t it?

Filed Under: aaron sorkin, content moderation, fact checking, mark zuckerberg, ny times opinion, political ads, social media
Companies: facebook, ny times