Profile ads are banned, yes, because they involve teh candidates. Policy ads are banned because they again involve politics.
We can start anywhere! Let's say 'nothing from any entity that receives money from a political party'. Or 'anything mentioning election candidates'. Or 'anything with certain keywords in it'.
What you're not stopping to ask yourself is 'who are the kinds of people that need to advertise about politics'? Yep, exactly the kinds of dickheads you don't want polluting our information streams with their bullshit. Out with all of them!
> Yep, exactly the kinds of dickheads you don't want polluting our information streams with their bullshit. Out with all of them!
I'm sure you'll be shocked and outraged when a story lands in a few months because someone you like is protesting this policy.
While 'we' (I'm not American) might have plenty of stupid laws, we also have some very good ones. We've gotten there by taking necessarily-flawed first steps. I have no doubt Twitter will overlook something. But I'm glad they're doing it anyway, and we will get somewhere better in steps. It's better than navel gazing about "What's a law anyway?"
Also, granted, GP didn't explicitly state that he's against the law, but this kind of smug, condescending slippery slope argument keeps getting brought up all over HN, hence my over the top reaction. So many thread seem to devolve into this kind of pointless "Yeah but define <> first" at the hands of Rationalists™ and are worse for it. They get nowhere and it makes for infuriating reading.
A great example of this is Ferrari's evolution to avoid the F1 cigarette ban. They started with the word Marlboro on the side of their car, then they moved to a barcode that resembled a pack of cigarettes, and now they are partnered with a front company called Mission Winnow (google it, it's really interesting) that is widely believed to be subliminal advertising for Marlboro.
There will always be those who break laws, doesn’t mean that we should stop making laws.
Laws don't have anything to do with this thread?
Your argument is that breaking a law is expensive and only those with money can break it so why bother with laws. Beyond ridiculous.
The example you’re using is also not convincing. Statistically insignificant amount of people know or care enough to watch F1 races.
We have 1 user on the internet vs $1 Billion in advertising budget. I'm going to trust that Philip Morris is better at quantifying the effect here.
> Your argument is that breaking a law is expensive and only those with money can break it so why bother with laws. Beyond ridiculous.
This still has nothing to do with laws. It's an important distinction to make between laws and corporate policy because one carries very high punishments whilst the other is mostly without recourse.
My argument is in no way proscriptive. Only descriptive.
> It's an important distinction to make between laws and corporate policy because one carries very high punishments whilst the other is mostly without recourse.
I agree with this.
This is mostly incorrect. There are _some_ countries where tobacco advertising laws are the reason for Formula 1's tobacco advertising ban, but the rule being circumvented is FIA's tobacco ban. Interestingly, in countries where tobacco advertising is illegal, Ferrari often changes their livery to not include Mission Winnow.
If facebook follow this, that would be a massive step in the right direction.
https://business.twitter.com/en/help/ads-policies/restricted...
edit: This is a better link, as it defines the more general term of "political content", which covers both campaigns and issue advocacy:
https://business.twitter.com/en/help/ads-policies/restricted...
What will be really interesting is whether Twitter tries to work with governments or whether they unilaterally come to their own rules. There be dragons on both fronts.
It's like porn: hard to define precisely, but you know it when you see it.