Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

> However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to censorship in the future

Looks like what they're calling 'false claims' is extremely narrow and based on simple objective facts:

> For example, Google would remove ads that falsely claimed that a candidate had died or that gave the wrong date for an election.

> However, it would not ban claims that you cannot trust a rival party, for instance, which would be viewed as being a matter of opinion.

IMO, I think the better approach to handle truthiness issues is to give the other party/candidate/candidates a chance to post a rebuttal.

View on HN

> I think the better approach to handle truthiness issues is to give the other party/candidate/candidates a chance to post a rebuttal.

I disagree. That's effectively how modern journalism works where the news is "objective" by letting each side say its piece.

The end result is that the media is easy exploitable. The fundamental problem is that manufacturing lies takes less effort than explaining the truth. The latter is hampered by requiring research, evidence, and consistency. The former has no such restrictions.

That means Party A can spend five minutes saying "Party B eats kittens!" Now Party A has to spend a week providing evidence that no, they do not in fact eat kittens. Meanwhile, Party A has already put out five more press releases about how Party B drinks the blood of infants, was responsible for Firefly being canceled, and wants to raise your taxes to buy bombs to drop on wildlife preserves.

The consequence is that whoever has the least respect for the truth has the greatest ability to control the narrative. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

What happens is that, if you lie, the other party now has a platform to advertise on your dime.

Party A: "Party B eats kittens"

Party B: "We're going to lower taxes and fix climate change."

See how it works? Party A pays money into the system, Party B just gets to ignore the silly claim and gets free advertising.

What about parties C through Z?

That's such an important point. The two party system caused by plurality voting is so strong it even influences how we imagine policy debates. We imagine there would only ever be two points of view on any policy matter because no one wants to split the vote for the good guys.

Depends on the issue / election, because it's only hotly contested elections that have many candidates. (Assuming you're in the US, most elected offices only have a handful of people running, and other ballot questions are yes/no.)

In general, if you have many candidates / parties, there are some ways to handle the situation.

For example, you can limit it to the top parties in polls for that office, or only parties that get a certain percentage or higher in polls. (IE, top 5 candidates, or only candidates who, from polling, have 20% or higher.)

Or, if you have no limits, it just means that you're basically eliminating targeted political advertising. Whenever you advertise to a voter, everyone else gets to advertise, and whenever everyone advertises, so do you.

BTW, if you ever get to see a voter's guide in CA, take a look. I used to rely on them almost exclusively for voting, because they had statements (and rebuttals) from all the candidates.

>I disagree. That's effectively how modern journalism works where the news is "objective" by letting each side say its piece.

Even that level of objectivity is rarely met these days. One advantage of this is that it's easy to mandate and enforce.

Honestly, this would probably kill off most false advertising, though. Who would run an advert saying that a candidate had died when on the same advert you could see a response on the same advert from the candidate that he's alive and well?

Even subtle lies would be easily countered by giving right of reply.

>The fundamental problem is that manufacturing lies takes less effort than explaining the truth.

This isn't a new problem and never was. The Spanish didn't destroy the USS Maine. There were no WMDs in Iraq.

See also: "A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes."

It always gets justified with some ideal examples then within a year or two the original rationale is forgotten and it’s being used broadly under pressure from various special interest groups inside and outside the organization.

This sort of thing needs to be black/white which is impossible leaving it full of grey areas where abuse and false positives without due process is a worse trade off than the original intention.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com