The problem is that there’s no way to limit these tactics to just the “good” candidates.
Do we really want an election system where these types of tactics are legal? Because if they’re legal, they’re going to be used. By both sides. By candidates you like as well as those you don’t like.
Either everyone gets to do this, in which case, our elections are going to be rife with misinformation and dirty tactics, to a degree we haven’t experienced before, or no one gets to do this and it’s illegal. You can’t have it both ways.
We absolutely can have it both ways. I’m long past believing in semantically limited, absolute principles that must always be applied universally. Is spreading a conspiracy theory always good or always evil? Neither.
Spreading a conspiracy theory to elect someone who will vote for universal health care and better the lives of millions is a distasteful means that is justified by a terrific ends. Spreading a conspiracy theory to help elect an evil climate-change denier that will doom the earth is not ok. Simple as that.
I’m talking about the law, whether these types of misinformation tactics should be legal, and when we’re dealing with the law, yes, it has be be applied universally.
Once again, you can’t have the good without the bad. By allowing candidates to spread a conspiracy theory to elect someone who will vote for universal health care, you’re also allowing a candidate to spread a conspiracy theory to elect a climate-change denier. You don’t get to pick and choose.
Allowing the types of tactics that the Russians used in 2016 is opening a Pandora’s Box in our election system. You can’t limit the use of these tactics to just Democrats, or candidates you like. If they’re legal, they’re legal. If they’re not legal, then everyone needs to be punished for employing them, to discourage others from doing the same thing.
This isn’t some hypothetical question, this is real life. There is no way to allow one group of candidates to use these tactics without also allowing a different group of candidates to do the same thing.
So, to go back to my original question:
Should these tactics be legal? Because if they are, EVERYONE is going to use them. We won’t get to cherry-pick which candidates get to spread conspiracy theories about their opponents. If they shouldn’t be legal, than NO ONE gets to use them, and campaigns who do, need to be severely punished.
Now you’re just talking out of your ass because you clearly have no idea what the law actually is.
Just one example:
For TV ads, every ad has to say who paid for it. “I’m Joe Smith and I approved this ad.” Or “Paid for by the Partnership for Less Talking Out of Your Ass”
For Facebook ads, or Twitter, or Youtube, or pretty much anything online, this isn’t the case. A Democrat can pay for a Facebook ad pretending to be a Republican. They can create a fake group. They can hire bots to spread a rumor about the rival candidate. If you applied the same rules for TV to the internet, and actually enforced them, it would go a long way to cut down on the internet BS we see on Facebook and other sites.
This is an interesting conundrum. The inherent problem is that the type of manipulation here isn’t direct vote count changing - it’s manipulating the voters themselves. It’s how Russia interfered in 2016 - provoking discussion and massaging people’s worldviews towards a particular agenda.
This relates back to what @no_fun_girl posted in that same thread:
We know, for a fact, that we can manipulate people to act in particular ways and believe certain things. It straight just works, nobody’s immune to it, and it’s alarmingly effective. We can discuss ethics left and right, but at the end of the day it will be tricky legal territory and unless we can figure out how to limit speech in such a way as to prevent intentional psychological manipulation, these tactics will remain in play.
So we go back to the question of ethics.
Here’s the thing. Let’s say you’re playing a board game against someone, and they start cheating to win. What are the ethical answers to that?
The politics “game” has an inherent assumption that people are rational actors who make their own informed decisions. That’s the conceit. We have laws against bribery because the idea is that we should elect people solely on their merits - but if we can find ways to accomplish the same end as bribing within the confines of the law, we can “cheat” the system.
IMO, it’s sort of pointless to discuss ethical considerations when you’re facing down someone disingenuously engaging in a competition. We could talk all day about being “right” in the face of someone who has abandoned good-faith engagement, but what does that get us? What good is moral self-righteousness when at the end of the day it cannot accomplish the reality you want?
I again go back to “we’re in the shit, somebody’s gotta shovel it.” These tactics work and your opponent is using them, so what do you do?
If this were a board game, I could walk away. If you were my guest, I could stop inviting you over for being a filthy cheating asshole. If this were a sparring match I could yield the floor. If this were any situation without significant lasting consequences, you could concede and hold your moral victory.
But politics is a necessary inescapable conflict. You cannot simply concede the fight, because 1) it has real consequences and 2) the fight is eternal.
Faced with that situation, I see no use in worrying about “clean” tactics. It’s dirty work, so get dirty and get it fucking done.
"To test it, VICE News applied to buy fake ads on behalf of all 100 sitting U.S. senators, including ads “Paid for by” by Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer. Facebook’s approvals were bipartisan: All 100 sailed through the system, indicating that just about anyone can buy an ad identified as “Paid for by” by a major U.S. politician.
What’s more, all of these approvals were granted to be shared from pages for fake political groups such as “Cookies for Political Transparency” and “Ninja Turtles PAC.” VICE News did not buy any Facebook ads as part of the test; rather, we received approval to include “Paid for by” disclosures for potential ads."
The issue of advertising and internet advertising is a separate. I view almost all advertising as immoral. The first amendment does not protect commercial speech. The regulation of advertising in general, and not just political advertising, should be a huge and heavy fucking fist whereas today it is barely a feathers light touch.
If you’re gonna spread a conspiracy theory, you’re gonna spread it. If you’re going to buy and sell ads as your means of spreading, well that’s a different story entirely.
No law is 100% effective. The law is always playing catch-up with ways of getting around it. That doesn’t mean we should just give up and have no laws whatsoever.
@thewhaleshark Do you believe in campaign finance reform? Because based on the philosophy you’re advocating here, we shouldn’t have it. Why should we have campaign finance reform if people will find ways to “cheat” the system? It’s a fools errand.
If winning by any means is OK, as long as the outcome is good, then bring on the Super PACs. Bring on the Dark Money and the anonymous donors. Let Corporations and people contribute as much as they want to campaigns.
If we win, it’s all good, right?
If we extend your philosophy further, why should I pay taxes? I know other people lie on their tax forms and find loopholes to pay less, why shouldn’t I do the same? Why collect taxes in the first place and have laws to punish people who don’t pay, if people are just going to find ways around the laws?
Society functions, and civilization works, on the assumption that people follow the laws. It’s impossible to get 100% compliance, but just because not everyone plays fair doesn’t mean we should scrap the whole system.
This past mid-term, just two months ago, the Democrats were able to pick up around 40 House seats without resorting to these tactics. They retook state legislatures. They won governorships and attorney general elections. Was every campaign 100% squeaky clean? I have no idea, but probably not. Did the Democrats resort to the kinds of dirty tactics that Republicans use? I can’t answer with 100% certainty, but overall, I would guess no. Yet even without using every technique and strategy available, the Democrats were able to decisively win the 2018 midterms. The Blue Wave crashed over the country. Clearly, it is possible to win without sinking to the level of the Republicans.
And again, it IS possible to limit these kinds of tactics through laws.
The problem is that if the advertising is related to political candidates and similar issues, then it is no longer commercial speech but political speech, which is protected by the first amendment. For example:
Advertising talking about the awesome new Ford Whatchamacallit car and why you should buy one: commercial speech, not protected.
Advertising talking about how political candidate Joey Joe-Joe Shabbadoo eats kittens (whether true or not) and therefore you shouldn’t vote for him: political speech, fully protected.
Edit: Oversimplied of course, given how there is only a narrow band in which commercial speech loses first amendment protection and, of course, the second case can be addressed via slander/libel lawsuits.
Citizen’s United only refers to the spending of money with regards to political speech, not the speech itself.
While some sort of limit of the amount of money that may be spent by an individual entity on political speech probably would be a good idea, given the outsized influenced moneyed influences have on our political system, overturning it won’t completely remove first amendment protections on political speech. It just means something like an individual entity can only spend $XX,XXX any given year as opposed to $XXX,XXX,XXX or more, any given year.
Can I just point out, before this conversation devolves even more, that the First Amendment only applies to the government?
Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc can do whatever the hell they want. They’re private corporations. They can limit speech on their platforms as much as they goddamn want.
True, we could change it, but we also need to be careful of unforeseen consequences of changing it.
I’m more in favor of better disclosure laws, like @jabrams007 suggested, so that we know (as much as possible) who exactly is paying for political ads. I’m old enough to remember a time where there was no real disclosure on TV/radio political ads, back before they started or ended with, “I’m Joey Joe-Joe Shabbadoo and I approved this message,” or “This message was paid for by the Coalition Against Eating Kittens.”
Internet political ads on sites like Facebook seem to be roughly in the same state that TV/radio ads were in the 80’s and 90’s. That’s how Russian Troll Factories and other groups were able to game the system so well – their ads were pretty much anonymous and Facebook didn’t care so long as they kept getting cash.
That’s the kind of weak whack-a-mole problem solving I’m not into. Sure, we should definitely fix the disclosure aspect, but that doesn’t go nearly far enough. Gotta strike at the root.