Facebook keeps digging itself into the hole

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From a report in the Washington Post highlighted by Charles Arthur:

The Arizona ad, paid for by The Committee to Defend the President, is one of roughly two dozen such ads that two pro-Trump super PACs have purchased on Facebook over the past five months, according to an analysis of Facebook’s advertising archive by The Washington Post. Some of the ads falsely suggest that Democrats are purging voter rolls; others direct viewers to some version of a voter-registration form, but only after they submit information, such as their names, email addresses and political affiliations.

Responding to an inquiry from The Post, Facebook said this weekend that it was removing four of the voting-related ads for violating its policies. A spokesperson for the tech giant said it would send other ads purchased by another pro-Trump group, Great America PAC, to third-party fact-checkers to verify their assertions about states purging voter rolls.

Charles’s comment:

So Facebook won’t allow ads that might lead to voter suppression. Apart from the ones it allows. It’s exhausting; Facebook says it won’t allow something, journalists find multiple examples of it allowing something, repeat. The simple solution would be to ban political ads.

Yep. Remember Denis Healey’s First Law of Holes: when you’re in one, stop digging. And the funniest thing of all is that, in terms of Facebook’s revenues, political ads earn peanuts.

LATER The NYT is reporting that some Facebook employees are getting agitated about the decision to give politicians’ ads a free run.

Linkblog

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The Boeing 737 MAX story — and its implications

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This morning’s Observer column:

Here’s a question. Well, two questions, actually. One: how could an aircraft manufacturer long celebrated for its commitment to engineering excellence produce an airliner with aerodynamic characteristics that made it unstable under some circumstances – and then release it with remedial computer software that appeared to make it difficult for pilots to take control? And two: why did the government regulator approve the plane – and then dither about grounding the model after it had crashed?

The aircraft in question is the Boeing 737 Max. The regulator is the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The questions are urgent because this model has crashed twice – first in the Java Sea last October with the deaths of 189 people, and then in Ethiopia in March with the deaths of 157 people. Evidence retrieved from the second crash site suggested that the plane had been configured to dive before it came down. And the Ethiopian transport minister was quoted by Al-Jazeera on 4 April as saying that the crew “performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft”. The FAA initially reaffirmed the airworthiness of the plane on 11 March but then grounded it on 13 March.

The full story of this catastrophe remains to be told, but we already know the outlines of it…

Read on

Linkblog

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  1. Data protection experts want watchdog to investigate Conservative and Labour parties They’re probably contravening the GDPR by buying Experian data and then using it for targeting voters.
  2. Why the cost of education and healthcare continues to rise Essentially because of Baumol’s cost disease. Useful explainer.
  3. The ethics of algorithms: Mapping the debate Really helpful framework for thinking about this.
  4. There are bots: look around Terrific essay by Renee DiResta on the parallels between automated trading in financial markets and in the so-called “marketplace of ideas”.

Johnson’s plans for Singapore-on-Thames

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Terrific FT scoop today:

The British government is planning to diverge from the EU on regulation and workers’ rights after Brexit, despite its pledge to maintain a “level playing field” in prime minister Boris Johnson’s deal, according to an official paper shared by ministers this week.

The government paper drafted by Dexeu, the Brexit department, with input from Downing Street stated that the UK was open to significant divergence, even though Brussels is insisting on comparable regulatory provisions.

The issue will come to a head when the UK begins the next phase of talks with the EU to forge a new trade deal. However, the UK in effect still faces the prospect of a no-deal Brexit next week unless EU states agree a new extension date for when the UK will leave the bloc. France was on Friday pushing for a shorter extension date than the one Mr Johnson has requested.

In a passage that could alarm Labour MPs who have backed the Brexit bill, the leaked government document also said the drafting of workers’ rights and environmental protection commitments “leaves room for interpretation”.

The paper, titled “Update to EPSG on level playing field negotiations”, appears to contradict comments made by Mr Johnson on Wednesday when he said the UK was committed to “the highest possible standards” for workers’ rights and environmental standards.

Chlorinated chickens and other delights beckon.

Autumn books

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In one of my periodic attempts to impose order on my study I rounded up all the books I have been

  • reading
  • reviewing
  • need to read for work
  • want to read for pleasure

And, having done so, wondered about my sanity.

From the top down…

Zuckerberg’s ideology

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Facebook’s announcement that it will include Breitbart in its select list of ‘curated’ news sources speaks volumes. Charlie Wardle has an intelligent take on it in the New York Times:

Because Mr. Zuckerberg is one of the most powerful people in politics right now — and because the stakes feel so high — there’s a desire to assign him a political label. That’s understandable but largely beside the point. Mark Zuckerberg may very well have political beliefs. And his every action does have political consequences. But he is not a Republican or a Democrat in how he wields his power. Mr. Zuckerberg’s only real political affiliation is that he’s the chief executive of Facebook. His only consistent ideology is that connectivity is a universal good. And his only consistent goal is advancing that ideology, at nearly any cost.

Yep. The only thing he really cares about is growth in the number of users of Facebook, and the engagement they have with the platform. And the collateral damage of that is someone else’s problem. This is sociopathy on steroids.