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  • Posted by Solver 4 years, 11 months ago
    People that tweet 12 hours a day don’t likely make much money, and don’t have much time to work.
    People that work 12 hours a day do likely make much more money, and don’t have much time to tweet.

    Is the solution now to use your political advertising budget to hire professional tweeters?
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  • Posted by $ 4 years, 11 months ago
    When I worked at Coin World, I was one of two editors who was not a j-school graduate. Amos Press takes their journalism seriously and maintains a bright line between advertising and editorial content. That said, during staff meetings, the priicing ("Trends") editor often quipped that advertising is content.. His primary concern was for the marketplace. And to an Austrian economist, everything is marketplace: it is all human action. The j-school folks did not agree, of course. They held the same mixed-premise philosophies that most people do and subscribed implicitlly to the premise that money taints and tarnishes. Twitter's Jack Dorsey shares that view.

    Mark Zuckerberg argues that people need to understand they are reading.
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  • Posted by Lucky 4 years, 11 months ago
    Yes, journals and all the print media have always been opinionated, political, taking sides, pushing self-interest, and representing some philosophical standpoint. The media have always been a raucous cacophony of conflict with facts selected, or made up, to suit.

    But there is a recent trend for nearly all the media to take the same side.
    Gulchers describe it as communism, socialism or fascism.
    I would not put it as that philosophical.
    Yes it is collectivist and leans to statism, but is more post-modernist, it includes the idea that victimhood confers merit and deserves compensation, but these victims are not victims (except of mental derangement) but accusers and attention seekers, sometimes these victims do not exist but are invented by the (self) righteous.
    I call them: post-modernist, wokist, progressivist.
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    • Posted by $ 4 years, 11 months ago
      Just to pick at a point, Lucky, there is nothing wrong with self-interest.

      OIn the wider philosophical theme, post-modernism is a new version of the same old collectivism, which is based on altruism, whichi is founded on mysticism.

      I suggest that Eric Hoffer's The True Believer points out that being a victim was important to fascism and communism both and is an essential factor in all collectivist movements.

      Donald Trump capitalized on the image of America as a victim and as Americans as victims. He is a post-modernist.
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      • Posted by Lucky 4 years, 11 months ago
        nothing wrong with self-interest
        nor with the other items in my list. I was pointing out that with many journalists, and over the range of media comments, variety is to be expected, but there is convergence, something is wrong.

        America as victim? Hardly.
        But certainly a sacrificer to collectivist mythology of which the Paris Climate Carbon Agreement is an excellent example. Trump has just formally withdrawn, on the first day allowed, Nov 4th.
        There is dismay from the moral posturing, hand-wringing promoters of the fake catastrophe, used by world leaders ie incompetent politicians to raise taxes and give power to their gang.

        post-modernism is a new version of the same old collectivism, which is based on altruism, which is founded on mysticism.
        I think this is too deep for me so soon after dinner. Could be a good essay topic.
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  • Posted by $ 4 years, 11 months ago
    Jack Dorsey's tweets on why Twitter will no longer accept paid political content.
    @jack
    Follow Follow @jack

    We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…
    1:05 PM - 30 Oct 2019

    A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.

    While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.

    Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.

    These challenges will affect ALL internet communication, not just political ads. Best to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity taking money brings. Trying to fix both means fixing neither well, and harms our credibility.

    For instance, it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well...they can say whatever they want! 😉”

    We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we're stopping these too.

    We’re well aware we‘re a small part of a much larger political advertising ecosystem. Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents. But we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising. I trust this will only grow.

    In addition, we need more forward-looking political ad regulation (very difficult to do). Ad transparency requirements are progress, but not enough. The internet provides entirely new capabilities, and regulators need to think past the present day to ensure a level playing field.

    We’ll share the final policy by 11/15, including a few exceptions (ads in support of voter registration will still be allowed, for instance). We’ll start enforcing our new policy on 11/22 to provide current advertisers a notice period before this change goes into effect.

    A final note. This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.
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