[jmedefind]

Traditional media political ads can't micro-target people that are more likely get sucked into their made up "facts" and conspiracy theories.

They also are broadly broadcast so that they can be dis-proven and discussed. Instead they are hidden away only shown to people that won't question it.

If facebook wants to do political ads then it needs to disconnect them from targeting, publish them for public display, publish who paid for the ad, and moderate them to some basic level of being truthful.

[Mountain_Skies]

> people that are more likely get sucked into their made up "facts" and conspiracy theories. If these people are so easy to fool and manipulate, why do we allow them to vote? If all it takes is some post on Facebook to change their votes, there will be dozens of other easy ways to manipulate them. Are the other ways better because they more opaque or tend towards one ideology or another? Almost all of these arguments boil down to "People are dumber than me so I should be able to control what they see". Dress it up however you want but ultimately this is about feelings of intellectual superiority and a desire to control outcomes in favor of those who wish to control the narrative.

[Tempest1981]

Not dumber, but easily influenced by lies. Similar to how scammers prey on the elderly.

[paulddraper]

> Traditional media political ads can't micro-target people

They may not "micro-target", but they can definitely target them.

Any political campaign will tell you they do their damnedest to ensure their ads are running at the right times on the right TV/radio stations.

Honestly, hours of traditional media itself (Fox, MSNBC) likely does far more to bias opinion than handfuls of 30-second ads.

[spunker540]

Do you think direct mail should be banned too? That is the original microtargeting platform, and is a $44bn industry (so only recently surpassed by Facebook in $ terms)

[solveit]

> Do you think direct mail should be banned too?

It should, but only because it's incredibly annoying.

[rayiner]

I’d put it differently: targeted ads allow campaigns to do more with less by focusing on people who are more likely to be receptive to their messages. That’s a valuable thing that shouldn’t be prohibited.

[JumpCrisscross]

> targeted ads allow campaigns to do more with less by focusing on people who are more likely to be receptive to their messages

Fair point. I suppose targeting could be balanced against a public cool-down period.

So you can randomly target people in the district now. Or, make your targeted ad publicly available for N days before it goes out. This would let the public see it, check it, and potentially respond before the damage is done.

No censorship. Just a head start for the public if a campaign wants to target.