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)
> liable and designed to influence the outcome of an election or referendum, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process, at Union, national, regional or local level
Now, we all agree feminism is an important civil rights topic and Virginia Woolf should be (and is) celebrated in the western world. But how can a platform that is explicitly not allowed to permit advertising for political or social causes be allowed to run paid ads about "feminism" especially while Equal Pay for Equal Work is such a hot-button political issue [1] all over Europe?
So on the one hand we have the EU saying that no political or cause-centric advertising is permitted, and on the other hand the regulation is so overly broad that it is left up to everyone else to "figure it out".
As a result, and as we see here, most social media has just chosen to ban it all completely.
> Now, we all agree feminism is an important civil rights topic and Virginia Woolf should be (and is) celebrated in the western world. But how can a platform that is explicitly not allowed to permit advertising for political or social causes be allowed to run paid ads about "feminism" especially while Equal Pay for Equal Work is such a hot-button political issue [1] all over Europe?
This is a theatre show of material almost a century old. It is a historical piece just like movies about the Nazi regime are not political but just art dealing with a troublesome period in history.
And I would not consider women's rights to be "a hot-button issue". That implies it's heavily contested which it is not. It's just a problem that needs fixing just like environmental pollution does.
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 ↗
petcat · · focus · HN ↗
> liable and designed to influence the outcome of an election or referendum, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process, at Union, national, regional or local level
Now, we all agree feminism is an important civil rights topic and Virginia Woolf should be (and is) celebrated in the western world. But how can a platform that is explicitly not allowed to permit advertising for political or social causes be allowed to run paid ads about "feminism" especially while Equal Pay for Equal Work is such a hot-button political issue [1] all over Europe?
So on the one hand we have the EU saying that no political or cause-centric advertising is permitted, and on the other hand the regulation is so overly broad that it is left up to everyone else to "figure it out".
As a result, and as we see here, most social media has just chosen to ban it all completely.
[1] <a href="https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality/gender-equality-strategy_en" rel="nofollow">https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/ju...
welwala · · focus · HN ↗
This is a theatre show of material almost a century old. It is a historical piece just like movies about the Nazi regime are not political but just art dealing with a troublesome period in history.
And I would not consider women's rights to be "a hot-button issue". That implies it's heavily contested which it is not. It's just a problem that needs fixing just like environmental pollution does.
petcat · · focus · HN ↗
welwala · · focus · HN ↗