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Comment by cowsup | Hacker News Reader

> Meta will now allow political advertisers to say past elections were “rigged” or “stolen”, although it still prevents them from questioning whether ongoing or future elections are legitimate.

I think this is a pretty terrible attempt to cater to both sides. Implying that an ongoing election is illegitimate is "against the rules," but saying the current incumbents are illegitimately there is "allowed?" Why?

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Because Zuckerberg et al are addicted to ad revenue and some model shows that this drives usage. Fuck Facebook and every single one of its corrupt employees.

if you look at how much money is in play during elections, you can understand why he is allowing it.

It’s moral corruption regardless of where we are at in the election cycle.

Social media is in a no-win situation where quelling conspiracy theories gives the conspiracy mongers a seemingly-legitimate grievance ("I'm being censored!") that they can exploit for even more clout.

It's a distinction without a difference.

Aren't past elections the only ones that matter as far as this discussion goes? Who ever even says future or ongoing elections are rigged? Even Trump finds the ones he wins to be legitimate.

In this case we're talking about elections from years ago.

There's probably a plan to preemptively "warn" that the 2024 election is rigged, then if you know who loses he can say that he's not a sore loser but in fact he warned us all along that it was rigged. We may expect overwhelming psyops to this effect from Nov 9, 2024 to Jan 20, 2025.

What’s the phrase? Peaceful transition of power? I think the problem is mostly calling a present or future one rigged. It causes idiots to trespass in the capital and get shot by secret service. The likelihood of the events at the capital happening today for an election three years ago is real slim

Why is a private company calling the shots on speech in a free society to begin with?

what should they have to publish?

anything? bomb instructions? child abuse imagery?

only legal things? legal where?

Not sure what point you're trying to make. I'd love to hear if you know what point you're trying to make. Suppose I have you an answer to each of those questions. Now what?

The point is who decides what is acceptable or not, who decides it, and what "free speech" they are allowed to interfere with.

> Not sure what point you're trying to make. I'd love to hear if you know what point you're trying to make. Suppose I have you an answer to each of those questions. Now what?

not sure what is confusing?

your initial comment was:

> Why is a private company calling the shots on speech in a free society to begin with?

so...what should private companies permit to be published, then, if you don't want them doing that?

should they allow absolutely everything? nuclear secrets? gruesome murders?

or just everything "legal"? legal where? the US? which bit? so the lawyers at Facebook need to be enforcing Mississippi's laws on everyone? or just people in Mississippi?

do they have to publish abusive but legal stuff? what about when their advertisers leave in disgust? can they stop then? are advertisers allowed to leave or is that also "calling the shots"?

why do you feel the "free speech" of child murderers to publish their videos is more important than the "free speech" of the sysadmin operating the video hosting platform who doesn't want to spread that?

For the same reasons you can kick a guest out of your house when they start screaming slurs.

Their house, their rules.

I think this change is a bad call, but it’s absolutely their call to make.

> it’s absolutely their call to make.

Well -- maybe. There are limits on free speech, and while the current regime rests on the concept of corporations having Constitutional rights, there's certainly a robust debate as to whether or not that's a reasonable approach.

(I admit, the challenge here is finding a reasonable line to regulate.)

It's the least bad approach by far -- the alternative would be the government telling social media companies that they had to publish materials, including some that they had religious and moral objections to -- which is obviously unconstitutional. Could you imagine a world in which inflammatory but legal posts had to be carried? Advocating for late-term abortions on Christian Mingle or calling for a Holocaust on a Jewish social media site?

This isn’t free speech. These are ads.

They are allowing ads to spread false information.

Not just some rando on the web with conspiracy theories. They are taking money to publish disinformation.

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