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Comment by yason | Hacker News Reader

political advertising can be tuned to your personal hot button issues

And is this not what happens traditionally as well? Politicians give different speeches to different audiences. Candidates before election talk very differently to various groups of demographies. Candidates who meet individual voters on market squares and public places obviously try to find out which of the voter's wires are hot and try to deliberately connect on those levels that are meaningful to the potential voter.

The structure and interpretation of politicians predates internet and digital surveillance. "If you have to say it, it's not true" applies very well to politicians and especially to political advertisement no matter if it's targetted or general.

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>Candidates who meet individual voters on market squares and public places obviously try to find out which of the voter's wires are hot and try to deliberately connect on those levels that are meaningful to the potential voter.

That's becuase, in terms of consent, you're consenting to such actions by going out to the public square. You're not knowingly consenting to your life's history being sold and traded on a black market that's then used to target you for such speeches when browsing on the internet.

For your analogy to be comparative to what's going on, you should, instead, think of it in terms of a politician showing up to solely your house because you're the sole democrat in a republican city in, say, Texas. (This demonstration based on the fact that this is an American board.) This could be easily inferred from your social media, browsing history, metadata collected by the government, etc.

This is not a very convincing argument because the public will say that they will trust their own judgement and that they are simply not susceptible to lies by politicians especially if they don't match with what is said in mainstream media.

EDIT: Not saying the argument is incorrect, just that it will not convince the public.

>This is not a very convincing argument

I wasn't making an argument, I was redressing the logical fallacy of the parent comment.

>the public will say that they will trust their own judgement

The public trusted it's own judgement before, during, and after the civil rights movement and that didn't really work-out too well in the public's favour, did it?

>...and that they are simply not susceptible to lies by politicians...

(Since this is an American board.) Do they believe that they weren't susceptible to the lies about the Iran-Contra Affair, Watergate, McCarthyism, surveillence by the government, MK Ultra, etc., either?

>...especially if they don't match with what is said in mainstream media.

See: the Leave Bus in the Brexit Referendum.

Clearly, billions of pounds are not going to the NHS, now, correct? Just because you see it and it's spread across social media, it doesn't mean it is implicitly true. All of your points were met for this example; yet, it was resultantly found to be a total fabrication. How would they account for that? Instead, will your argument now amended to be "some of it doesn't match it with social media"...?

You're not knowingly consenting to your life's history being sold and traded on a black market that's then used to target you for such speeches when browsing on the internet

I don't think the mechanism matters fundamentally here. I do think it is wise to consider all political speech fraudulent by default, whether it happens on public spaces or on the internet. They're all selling anyway, and if someone approaches you to sell something you know they have more to gain than you do.

Then, we have this internet which is somewhat good at targetting content based on your online activities. This internet is used by virtually everyone to do targetted advertising and promoting of products, ideas, and younameit. I find it weird this would not be OK when it comes to politicians and political parties. They're out selling as much as the next guy, and the way to do targetted advertising is online.

It is another discussion whether online tracking is good or bad, how much of that happens with or without a consent, implicitly or explicitly, but because online tracking is prevalent it would be foolish to assume that nothing you do online will be tracked. Any advertisement, political or otherwise, must be assumed to be targetted at you before interpreting its meaning.

I don't find a single thing that would make a targetted political advertisement inherently worse than any other targetted non-political advertisement or any non-targetted political advertisement.

>And is this not what happens traditionally as well? Politicians give different speeches to different audiences.

People seldom understand how changes in quantity/ease/volume translate to quantitative changes...

Politicians giving "different speeches to different audiences" (something that happens since time immemorial) and the technologically amplified ability for all the social and traditional online media one consumes to give them 24/7 targeted echo-bubble ads, news, and recommendations based on what audience group they belong to, is like the difference between eating a whole cake and filling a little stuffed, and gorging for a month on sweets upon sweets and dying from a heart attack...

The difference is traditionally it's a) visible, b) legal, and c) only targets in the most broad-brush terms the major groups in society - broadly in line with the manifesto. breaching regulations in an advert, speech or leaflet has resulted in consequences up to and including prosecuting or throwing out the whole result. I believe the Swiss voided a referendum result only the other week because the electorate didn't have enough or accurate information.

There's good reason many nations have laws severely restricting political advertising including spending limits and extra restrictions near voting time, or banning custom pricing and other forms of discrimination. Saying whatever bullshit it takes to get the vote/sale must continue to come with serious consequences or we're right back where we were in the 17th and 18th centuries.

And yes, the regulatory systems do seem to be failing to cope with the new way of things.

> I believe the Swiss voided a referendum result only the other week because the electorate didn't have enough or accurate information.

Wait, what? If the electorate had a vote, who are “the Swiss” who overturned it?

The checks and balances they put in place to prevent irregularities - in this case their supreme court.

"the supreme court has now voided the result on the grounds that voters were not given full information, and the vote must be re-run."

If only British referendums were similarly protected...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47879777

I don't know the details of that particular case, or of the Swiss in general, but the idea sounds really disturbing. I could just as easily translate "the supreme court has now voided the result on the grounds that voters were not given full information, and the vote must be re-run." into:

"The elites decided that the expressed will of the people can be ignored, because they were not exposed to enough propaganda beforehand to convince them to select the choice that the elite wanted. We'll just keep holding new referendums and pumping out propaganda until they make the correct choice, i.e. the choice that the elite want."

Well it was a pre-existing law, so it's not like the govt turned round and effectively said "sorry, wrong answer - try again". Anyway in this case it was the government found to have put out misleading information.

Not perfect, but not a bad sanction against achieving a result via disinformation or outrageous advertising claims.

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