[mindblock]

Why the hell would you want a private company to censor political advertisement? Are they required by law to do that? Why is censorship bad if enacted by the government but it is ok when a private corporation does it?

Imagine that Facebook is required by law to check every fact in every advert that is on their platform. Is that even possible? Would they have the resources to hire unbiased, critical-thinking people who are capable of doing htat? How expensive is that? Would they just rely on the cheaper option - algorithms.

A friend of mine got banned from Facebook for a month for sharing a meme, posted by somebody else, that had a swastika in it. The meme was of the sort "Nazis were horrible idiots". He appealed the ban, on the grounds that the original post was not taken down (he just shared it) and that this had nothing to do with nazi propaganda. It was, in fact, the opposite. An actual human being looked at that appeal and still confirmed the ban.

What makes you think the process will be any more efficient and rational with political advertising? Relying on companies to police content is absurd in every respect, from freedom of speech rights to just plain capability. There's an entire court system built up with the sole purpose of determining truth and even that isn't 100% accurate. Trust the same responsibility on a corporation?

[criddell]

All I'm saying is that Zuckerberg could have answered clearly and correctly with yes or no answers for some of the questions but he didn't.