The article doesn't mention this, of course, but Meta prohibits "socially sensitive" advertising due to the EU's TTPA law, or "Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising."
It imposes substantial bureaucratic compliance burden on advertising platforms to accept ads that deal with political issues.
Meta decided that the revenue wasn't worth the compliance burden, so they do not accept any political advertising at all. They filter anything that smells like political or social issues, whether it be a campaign about anti-immigration or a play about feminism, because if they accept it they will get heavily fined by the EU.
This is why Meta does not ban this advertising outside of the EU. It's a EU regulatory problem. The Register does not mention this anywhere in the article.
That’s not true, you’re repeating the exact same wrong statement that has been said multiple times in the comments. The EU requires political ads to be labeled and restricts how targeted they can be. There is no EU regulation forcing Meta to ban anything. It’s very clearly a Meta problem, they are the ones deciding to make a blanket ban on ads for social issues (or at least say they are doing it, in practice that doesn’t seem to be the case, we don’t have a lack of such advertising in the EU)
> The EU requires political ads to be labeled and restricts how targeted they can be.
This doesn't sound like a good thing. Why shouldn't a political group be able to target people who are going to care the most about an issue/politician with an ad? Basically Meta has too good of a profile, so they aren't able to target ads. I would want to know personally, if Politician X is for/against a policy I feel strongly about.
This is to prevent bubbles, extreme polarization, and psychological manipulation. The goal is to prevent another Cambridge Analytica.
Also if you think about it, it would be bad if different people saw completely different political ads. Party could
"promise" one thing to some people, and completely contradictory thing to other people. Since people would live in their tight bubbles, most of them wouldn't notice. And this ("dark ads") is something that is definitely technically possible right now.
mediaman · · focus · HN ↗
It imposes substantial bureaucratic compliance burden on advertising platforms to accept ads that deal with political issues.
Meta decided that the revenue wasn't worth the compliance burden, so they do not accept any political advertising at all. They filter anything that smells like political or social issues, whether it be a campaign about anti-immigration or a play about feminism, because if they accept it they will get heavily fined by the EU.
This is why Meta does not ban this advertising outside of the EU. It's a EU regulatory problem. The Register does not mention this anywhere in the article.
dgellow · · focus · HN ↗
ecshafer · · focus · HN ↗
This doesn't sound like a good thing. Why shouldn't a political group be able to target people who are going to care the most about an issue/politician with an ad? Basically Meta has too good of a profile, so they aren't able to target ads. I would want to know personally, if Politician X is for/against a policy I feel strongly about.
ishouldnotbutk8 · · focus · HN ↗
Also if you think about it, it would be bad if different people saw completely different political ads. Party could "promise" one thing to some people, and completely contradictory thing to other people. Since people would live in their tight bubbles, most of them wouldn't notice. And this ("dark ads") is something that is definitely technically possible right now.