"Mark Zuckerberg Brags: We Didn't Allow Pro-Life Groups to Advertise Before Ireland's Abortion Vote"

[ThinkingSapien]

Why focus on the pro-life ads from Americans, not just the ads in general?

I think the emphasis should go on “American.” At the time that those companies were denied ad space there was a conversation on this in the news forums. I don’t think that pro-choice groups were trying to purchase ad space for citizens in Ireland.

Facebook bans foreign ads in Ireland's abortion vote

There has been more emphasis on preventing entities in one country from influencing elections in another.

Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and Google may possibly be reigned in based on laws concerning public utilities.

Unless one is talking about their ISP businesses as of yet they don’t quite pass the threshold of “everyday necessity.” (part of the legal definition for utility) Also Google, Twitter, and Facebook don’t charge users for most basic services. I’m not quite sure how Amazon made the list of potential utility providers.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

censorship would appear to disproportionately affect certain groups.

One potential problem is that a rule even if uniformly applied can have disproportionate effects. For example, Twitter tends not to allow tweets about abortion to be promoted (whether pro-life or pro-choice). But pro-life groups tend to use the word more. Pro-choice groups use other terms such as “women’s health.”

How do you expect to economically let humans deal with that scale? And government regulation won’t help unless you require scaling back, but that itself will be beyond fraught with issues.

That’s part of why some moderation decisions are automated. But even that has issues. As of yet automation isn’t good at recognizing context.

The use of certain words within a post raise the chances of the post being flagged automatically. But those same words could be present if someone is making a statement against someone (such as when making a threat) or when a person is speaking of a personal negative experience (such as when talking about a threat that one has endured). At such a large scale there will be mistakes. I dont think people are very tolerant of that.

 

[Londoner]

However strongly I felt about an issue, I don’t think I’d be able to persuade myself that it was right for campaigning groups to influence the domestic policies of a foreign country. Then factor in additionally that the population of the USA is more than 68 times larger than that of Ireland.

 

[ZMystiCat]

Facebook moderators are generally on the left or strongly on the left and the censorship would appear to disproportionately affect certain groups

This is really a statistical claim, and I haven’t seen much evidence for it. Sure, if you only read right-wing sites, that seems obvious, but that also means you aren’t getting all the left-wing complaints right-wing sites ignore. And this isn’t even getting into all the complaints that are neutral.

I think the emphasis should go on “American.”

Yeah, I mentioned that in my last post. It may not be the words he used, but I think his background information kind of hints at it.

As of yet automation isn’t good at recognizing context.

I was kind of going in that direction, but post length limits didn’t allow me. I was leaving the comment on human moderation out there in case anyone wanted to go down that route.

At such a large scale there will be mistakes. I dont think people are very tolerant of that.

To be fair, most people also don’t deal with these technical issues on a day-to-day basis. They aren’t aware of how complex the problems are or the current limitations of the field. If anything, I think some are under the impression that Google and Facebook are software engineering utopias where all technical problems magically vanish.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

To be fair, most people also don’t deal with these technical issues on a day-to-day basis.

They don’t, and it seams that some people see computer systems as a lot more anthropomorphize than they actually are. In all fairness language used for intentions and mental operations are often used to metaphorically discuss digital processes (ex: “the computer is thinking”).

I was kind of going in that direction, but post length limits didn’t allow me

I’ve typed a lot myself in posts only to delete it to get within the character limit.

Back to the original article though, were there any USA based pro-choice groups also trying to advertise? At first glance of the title I can see how this would be quickly interpreted as a one-sided effort from Facebook. But if pro-choice groups from the USA were not trying to advertise in Ireland then for this case a clean evaluation of apparent bias or preference in the pro-choice/pro-life debate can’t really be done here.

 

[ZMystiCat]

Back to the original article though, were there any USA based pro-choice groups also trying to advertise?

I don’t think there’s evidence of it.

I did do some digging and found that Facebook unwittingly revealed this info last year. That article claims that many of the external ads were from pro-life groups, though that’s an, as far as I can tell, unsubstantiated claim by The Guardian, so you can take that claim with a grain of salt.

With that said, Facebook did comment in May of last year that they weren’t accepting ads from those outside Ireland. That would at least explain why Zuckerberg told the story as he did. (Interestingly, Google went a step further and banned all advertising.)

So yeah, it actually doesn’t look like there’s much of anything newsworthy here.

 

[Wozza]

I wonder what the reaction would be if Zuckberg took out full page ads in Irish newspapers promoting pro choice views.

Something along the lines of: ‘What’s an American doing interfering with the democratic process in another country? It shouldn’t be allowed’.

Something with which I’d agree.

 

[1cthlctrth]

The big tech companies lean left, as demonstrated by Google donating $0 to pro-life Donald Trump, as revealed by Ted Cruz’ interrogation of Google exec Maggie Stanphill.
Cruz turned to public records. “The public records show that in 2016, Google employees gave to the Hillary Clinton campaign 1.315 million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Care to venture how much they gave to the Trump campaign?” he asked. She would not. “The nice thing is it’s a round number: Zero dollars and zero cents. Not a penny, according to the public reports,” Cruz explained.

Ted Cruz Presses: Google Witness Can't Name a Single Senior Exec Who Voted For Trump – PJ Media

And, of course, Twitter denied Lila Rose’s Live Action the opportunity to advertise pro-life.
Facebook, Twitter, and Google searches, tragically, are where a large portion of Americans get their news.

 

[ZMystiCat]

The big tech companies lean left

Just drawing attention to Facebook’s comment on the matter last year. The tl;dr is that they weren’t allowing any non-Irish groups to runs ads on the matter. Other reports have shown that Google blocked all advertising.

Also, as I pointed out earlier, many of the complaints people point to to claim liberal bias in how they operate are also found among liberals going the other way. Right wing sites (and politicians like Ted Cruz) just probably ignore those cases. In general, there’s no evidence that they operate with a clear bias.