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Comment by Frondo | Hacker News Reader

One of the better questions she asked was, "should a political party be allowed to run targeted ads at members of the opposing party, giving false information about the election date?"

Zuck's response was, "well, I think it's BAD if you LIE. Telling lies is bad." but wouldn't say that Facebook would moderate that kind of content.

I personally don't see a legitimate free speech claim saying that political parties should be allowed to target opponents with plain, simple falsehoods like that (which already happen through the mail system, mind), but I'm open to hear.

I ask because speech is already restricted when it comes to advertising; companies are compelled to put up disclaimers, the FTC will come down on misleading ads, etc.

So, if society's surviving okay with those restrictions, is there a reason that political chicanery shouldn't be held to some standard also?

What is the free speech argument for not drawing a line at that?

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I believe Zuckerberg's answer to that question was that such an ad would be banned. It's an explicit exception in the policy that permits lying in political ads, an exception that bans lies in service of voter suppression.

To the broader question, about whether all lies in political ads should be banned, the free speech argument against is that while it's easy to invent easy and obvious cases of lying, enforcing that policy in reality is very difficult and puts Facebook in the position of censoring speech that one side may consider a truth and the other may consider a lie.

He did not provide a bright line answer and hemmed and hawed quite a bit. He tried to reframe as “harm” but of course provided no clear definition there. So there’s “some” undefined policy that might maybe apply. He and the PR team really flubbed the obvious questions showing I think how uncomfortable and unclear they are internally about their policy and where to draw the line.

Sure outright lying in a way that can put someone in danger (e.g. printing false instruction on medical drug) should not be allowed. The question is what should be the mechanism to do that. One way is to use courts, where everyone will get a fair hearing, rules will be the same for everybody, and won't change often. Another is to use Facebook moderators as judges, which does not seem to be a very promising path.

> "should a political party be allowed to run targeted ads at members of the opposing party, giving false information about the election date?"

Would that actually be legal? Are you allowed to try to suppress the vote like that?

It is 100% legal to send mailers or put up billboards (which are not as regulated as shared spectrum for TV/radio) with the wrong election date to people, and this happens a couple of times every election cycle. Sometimes its government agencies, sometimes its a campaign (first example that popped up when googling: https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/spin-cycle/zeld...). I don't think any of them has been investigated by the FEC.

It's funny that I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the comments to reach a discussion that I think really highlights the crux of the problem. We know that social media platforms will take down content that is illegal. The issue is that it's legal for political parties (or anybody) to post false or misleading statements for the purposes of political propaganda.

AOC's hypothetical ad shouldn't be policed by Facebook, it should be policed by the police, or at the very least be an example of criminal defamation that is handled in the court system. I Am Clearly Not A Lawyer but I am surprised by looking at the existing legislation on criminal defamation that it's not.

We also shouldn't ignore that we are talking about ads. You can post political messages on Twitter, but Twitter won't promote that message in exchange for money. Facebook should follow suit.

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