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from the dishonest-politicians?-say-it-ain't-so dept.
Facebook pulls Trump campaign ads for fake census claims:
Facebook infamously has a broadly laissez-faire policy for political candidates. If you're running for office, you can lie as much as you want in your paid and unpaid content—with one small catch. Anything that lies about voting or the census, such as sharing fake registration links or deliberately spreading incorrect polling dates, is prohibited. Even if it comes directly from the Trump campaign.
It just turns out that Facebook needs a lot of prodding—in the form of negative media attention—to follow through.
The site Popular Information first reported on the Trump campaign's ads early yesterday. The sponsored posts, which appeared on the accounts of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, were paid for by the Trump Make America Great Again committee, a joint fundraising effort by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee.
One ad Popular Information featured includes an image of a sheet of paper labeled "2020 census," next to a picture of Trump giving his characteristic thumbs up, and it exhorts readers, "President Trump needs you to take the Official 2020 Congressional District Census today." It continues, "The information we gather from this survey will help us craft our strategies for YOUR CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT."
Clicking through the ad directed readers to a website labeled as the "Certified Website of President Donald J. Trump," Popular Information reported, billing itself as the "Official 2020 Congressional District Census."
Popular Information pointed out to Facebook that the ads seem to violate the company's bright-line policy prohibiting "misleading information about when and how to participate in the census," but a spokesperson for the company at first disagreed. According to Facebook, since the campaign ads also referenced the campaign, it was clear they were not official Census advertising.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/technology/facebook-trump-census-ads.html
WASHINGTON — Facebook said on Thursday that it had removed misleading ads run by President Trump’s re-election campaign about the 2020 census, in a stand against disinformation ahead of the decennial population count that begins next week.
Earlier this week, Trump Make America Great Again, a joint fund-raising arm of Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and the Republican National Committee, started running ads on the social media site that Facebook said could have caused confusion about the timing of the census.
“President Trump needs you to take the Official 2020 Congressional District Census today. We need to hear from you before the most important election in American history,” the ad said. The campaign asked followers to “respond NOW” to help our campaign messaging strategy, with an appeal to text “TRUMP to 8022.”
The Census Bureau will not begin to survey the public for its population survey until next week. The ad linked the census to the Trump campaign, a misrepresentation of the official government survey, said civil rights groups.
The census has become another disinformation test for social media companies. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have come under pressure for their handling of political speech and what has been a piecemeal approach to policing their platforms. Candidates in this year’s presidential election are expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on political ads, and the companies have already struggled to enforce consistent policies.
Facebook has taken the most permissive — and most criticized — approach to political speech, allowing candidates and their campaigns to post misleading information and target those messages to specific audiences.
https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-removed-misleading-census-ads-from-trump-campaign-2020-3
- Facebook has removed a series of ads posted by the Trump campaign that gave the misleading impression respondents would be taking part in the official 2020 US census.
- One of the ads reportedly read: "President Trump needs you to take the Official 2020 Congressional District Census today," implying the survey it linked to – a survey on Republican talking points – was the official census.
- A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider that "there are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official US Census and this is an example of those being enforced."
- Facebook has faced criticism for its general unwillingness to fact-check political ads published on its platform, though it seems to draw the line at interfering with the US census.
The story is also widely reported elsewhere.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ilPapa on Monday March 09 2020, @03:17AM (28 children)
He's only president because votes in Montana and Wyoming count for more than those in New York or other big cities. Land means more than people in the United States. Our constitution was designed that way to make sure we were always governed by a self-appointed aristocracy.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @03:39AM (1 child)
I'm impressed. This is a really deep rewrite of the intent of the electoral college - which we don't have to leave up to guesswork, because the framers went into it in some detail.
For folks who are a little weak on their civics, it has nothing to do with land meaning more than people. Montana and Wyoming would get the same number of electoral college votes if they were the size of New Jersey and Maryland. It has to do with preventing mob rule by counterbalancing the influence of highly populated states. California still gets way more electoral college votes than Montana.
And why would they do this? One important reason is that thinly populated states, if they genuinely had no effective say in the union, would have very few reasons to remain.
But you know, the federalist papers are publically available. Go read it for yourself.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:00AM
You know, I read some of the Federalist Papers about the electoral collage. One of the big goals was to avoid a Trump but rather to have a statesman as President. That is why the actual electors are chosen the way they were/are and why they were supposed to vote their conscious.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @06:38AM (3 children)
Out of curiosity, is this what you were taught in school or something you 'thought up'? I've become increasingly cynical towards our education system, but this takes the cake if you were taught anything remotely supportive of what you're saying here.
New York gets 29 electoral votes. Montana gets 3. The number of votes a state gets is equal to the sum total of its senators + representatives. And there is actually substantial inequity here, except the exact opposite of what you're on about. The house of representatives is distributed by population. New York only has about ~19.6x the population, but they get 27x as many representatives as Montana due to the method of congressional apportionment which is fair, but can lead to ostensibly unfair outcomes like this for reasons outside the scope of this post.
The constitution was designed, first and foremost, to try to prevent a tyranny of the majority. The reason for this is that the more you disenfranchise a state, the less incentive they have to productively participate in the union. You have to keep in mind that democracy is still very new. Yes, the Greeks developed it thousands of years ago - and their entire civilization collapsed shortly thereafter, never for it to return until extremely recently. And the modern system of near complete suffrage is entirely novel, and also very much in its infancy. And at the rate we're going it won't live to see adolescence.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:05AM (2 children)
What is this thing about a tyranny of the minority being superior? Why is it better if most people are tyrannized instead of people working together? Seems to me if you're going for tyranny, ideally it should tyrannize as few people as possible but there's always a vocal minority who thinks it would be more fair if they can be the tyrants over the majority.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:34AM (1 child)
As was pointed out above -- why would any state agree to join the Union if it was going to ignored? And why after having joined with promises of having a say, should a state stay if that all turned out to be a bait and switch?
What the EC==Evil crowd is missing, is that you may be a bare majority, but when 55ish% of the population can run roughshod over 45ish%, you are disenfranchising a massive number of people -- well north of 100,000,000. If you really really want chaos, that's the way to go and if you are hell bent on engaging in that sort of short term thinking inviting long term chaos, merely to get someone like HRC or the like into office, then maybe you should re-think whether all those Trumpabillies actually are the stupid ones.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday March 10 2020, @03:17AM
My Province joined Confederation for trade, mutual defense, the realization that our population was too small to go it alone amongst other reasons.
My point was that 45% of the country running roughshod over 55% means north of 120 million getting disenfranchised, in States that joined thinking they weren't going be ignored or subject to bait and switch as you put it isn't an iprovement. What you're saying is it is the more that are disenfranchised, the better.
From the outside looking at the 2016 election, it was sad that people were willing to vote for either evil and there is something really broken about a system that forces you to pick Pepsi or Coke with 7up not even considered and claims that's freedom.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @07:35AM (9 children)
No. I'm not even American, and I seem to have more fucking clue why you have a system like the Electoral College than you do?
The "founding fathers" didn't want a democracy. What they were afraid is tyranny of the majority. That is when some idiot, like Trump (or Hitler-like figure) manages to rile up the idiots that vote to vote in enough numbers to get majority of the votes. The *purpose* then of the electoral college was to make sure such a fuck-up does not happen and they would overrule and place their votes for someone more sane. They were suppose to be the final check against idiots winning. Votes for electoral college are suppose to be a request, not an order.
What the "founding fathers" didn't take into account is the speed of information in the modern world. And because of this, the electoral college became nothing more than a symbolic gesture, kind of like the Queen of England is holding all the power but actually none.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#Original_plan [wikipedia.org]
Yeah, I don't see that happening today.
(Score: 2, Troll) by tangomargarine on Monday March 09 2020, @04:42PM (7 children)
Except that in this example, the opposite actually happened, because Trump lost the popular vote but got in on the electoral college.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @07:54PM
Except that is EXACTLY what happened. The President of the United States is not just the President of the west coast, the northeast, and Chicago. Everybody else knew Hillary gave precisely zero shits about them. She publicly admitted as much.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:43AM (5 children)
Calling Trump Hitler is flat out moronic. He isn't. He may be a slimy bastard, but that's just par of presidential politics.
What really strikes me as ridiculous, is that the most literally fascistic and most un-American policy we have (due process free execution where the justification is rooted in secret legal memos, where the Executive serves as cop, judge, prosecutor, defense and executioner in secret using secret laws) was put into practice by who? Trump? No, if he had done that, Democrats would have flipped out in the same way the excoriated GWB for due process free detention based on secret legal memos. I'll give you one fucking guess. Lastname starts with a vowel.
This is a major reason why I quit being a Democrat. I realized that Democrats don't care whether a policy is evil or fascistic, they ONLY care that THEY get to be the ones doing that policy. That's not what I signed up for.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday March 10 2020, @02:43PM (4 children)
I didn't? Were you the one who modded me Troll for quoting somebody and not even addressing that point, instead adding factual data to the conversation?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday March 10 2020, @10:13PM (3 children)
No I didn't mod you -- but taking your comment in context you said Trump was Hitler. The part you quoted said the EC was designed to prevent a Hitler such as Trump, to which you responded that it failed to do that this time because it gave us Trump. In that context, it is 100% fair to chastise you about the Trump==Hitler thing, either because you were careless and sloppy because of how easily and commonly this epithet is thrown around, or because you meant it.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:45PM (2 children)
Bullshit.
A) Quoting somebody is not the same as agreeing with them. Do you think every reporter who writes an article about somebody they interviewed, who uses quotes, agrees with their source?
B) No, that's not what the quote is saying, either.
If OP was saying "Trump is a Hitler-like figure" wouldn't it have been
? "Trump" and "Hitler-like figure" are two separate classifications. If you still want to argue "well that's what they really meant", that's on you for your interpretation.
Thirdly, there's also the argument whether Hitler was an idiot. He obviously held a bunch of idiotic beliefs, but he was very good at giving speeches and swaying public opinion when the Nazis were on the rise. As a military commander he was an idiot, but as a politician, one can't deny he was pretty effective.
If it gets your panties untwisted, feel free to substitute any other president who lost the popular vote but won the electoral college: Benjamin Harrison (1888), or George W. Bush (2000).
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Redundant) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:49AM (1 child)
The quote and your comment, taken together, made it look like you considered Trump a Hitler. If you don't hold that view, it was merely sloppy wording. If you do hold that view (which I doubt given objection), you were factually incorrect. Just be more careful in the future.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 12 2020, @03:04PM
Nice response to any of my points.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Tuesday March 10 2020, @03:06AM
Correct. They wanted a plutocracy where white male landowners made the decisions for everyone.
The Constitution was an anti-democracy document. It was written by a bunch of wine snobs who didn't want to pay their taxes. Everything else is just lip service. They never had any intention on any "consent of the governed".
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @08:26AM (11 children)
Okay, this is my personal pet peeve. I've seen this kind of statement over and over again, and it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on.
Listen, if you are a US citizen, but have not personally been chosen to be an Elector for the presidential electoral college voting in your state, then you have never voted for President. I know it seemed like you did -- the ballot sure makes it seem like that's what you're doing. But you didn't.
When you poked your chad or filled in the oval or poked at the electronic screen next to the name Clinton or Trump, you weren't voting for Clinton or Trump. You were voting for the slate of electors who had previously pledged that THEY would vote for Clinton or Trump when they went to your state's Electoral College presidential election. THEY voted for Clinton or Trump or whoever won your state. NOT YOU. YOU voted for the electors.
The electors for the state of Montana are a completely different set of people than the electors for the state of New York. Two completely separate elections are going on in Montana and New York (and all the other states). They have NOTHING to do with each other. The ballots make it look like they are the same election. The media treats it like the same election. But (inhale deeply) IT'S NOT THE SAME ELECTION. Different people are being elected in Montana than are being elected in New York.
It didn't used to be this way, that makes such confusion easy. In earlier times, they didn't list the people running for President on the ballot, they listed the actual names of the actual people vying to be chosen to go to the electoral college, so voters knew exactly what was going on and what they were doing. But then "they" decided just listing the name of the person the potential electors had pledged to, would be sufficient. It might be sufficient, but it hides what is really going on from a legal perspective.
Can you see that voting for the mayor of New York City is not the same as voting for the mayor of Billings? Complaining that votes for mayor in New York City don't count as much as votes for the mayor of Billings, since there are more people in New York City than in Billings, doesn't make sense because they're completely different elections. Different city, different people being elected. Well it's the same for state electors -- different people are being elected in different states. Different states elections for their electoral college have nothing to do with each other. At all!
Now if you want to argue that all this electoral college stuff is bogus as hell and we should do things another way, that's a valid argument, and knock yourself out. But comparing "vote value" between different states just doesn't make any sense in any way, and just shows that like most Americans you don't know what's actually going on from a legal perspective.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday March 09 2020, @02:06PM (3 children)
But it does.
The influence you have with one vote (numerically the reciprocal of the number of votes received by the candidate in order to achieve the position of influence) is different depending on where you are in the country, and that is independent of whether you're actually just voting for a proxy or not. The number of times that such proxies have been faithless is so low it's below the noise floor and completely ignorable.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @02:59PM (2 children)
Then what you're really complaining about is the way the votes for president (and vice president) are distributed among the states within the electoral college. Like I said, that's an argument you can make if you care to.
Of course you'd have to ignore that the US federal government was set up to be a republic, not a democracy. Although it's become more democracy-like over time (especially with the 17th Amendment and the horrible Reynolds v. Sims decision), the Founders explicitly did not want a democracy. You'd also have to forget that the electoral college was a compromise needed to get the smaller states to join, because without it they knew they'd be swamped by the bigger, more populous states and they wouldn't have joined the proposed new federal government and this whole mess wouldn't have gotten off the ground.
Eh, bitch all y'all want about it, people have been doing it since the ink was dry on the damn parchment.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:18AM
One of the weird things is the way representation has turned out in America with the House of Representatives capped at 435 or such for a hundred years as the population has ballooned. Hard to represent your constituency when its so big and it has affected the electoral collage. Shame that Article the First hasn't passed yet though as the passage of Article the Second shows, it is still possible to ratify.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:46AM
Well, it's not my argument, I was responding to your response to:
>>> votes in Montana and Wyoming count for more than those in New York
Which *is* complaining about the distribution of EC votes among the states.
So he was making the argument you now support him making, and yet you previously argued that it didn't even make any sense as an argument?!?!?
Perhaps it's not others that not making sense, it's you having very shallow levels of comprehension.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 09 2020, @03:53PM (1 child)
You definitely have a grasp on the fact that we do not live in a democracy. We live in a republic, with a democratic method of choosing representatives, who in turn choose representatives. The "democracy" bit is in play, but it's not what most people think it is.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:26AM
Today, democracy means representative democracy. Whether a republic or monarchy doesn't really matter in western countries, personally I'd say your President has too much power.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday March 09 2020, @04:39PM (4 children)
All true, but in the end what difference does it really make?
Yeah, and then those different people being voted for that you're harping on about so much all vote for the same people. It's called representative voting.
The only time this distinction without a difference matters, is when you have faithless electors. Which admittedly does happen from time to time.
This has got to be one of the most confrontational posts I've ever seen over such a tiny pedantic difference lol
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @08:09PM (3 children)
You don't get it. When a citizen in Montana goes into the booth to vote "for the president", they're actually voting for who Montana will vote for as president. The States elect the president, not the people. (It's called the United States, not the United People.)
It makes no sense to compare a citizen's vote in New York with a citizen's vote in Montana, because the people in New York don't get a say in who Montana votes for for president. It's apples and oranges. Well, okay, it's Red Delicious Apples and Crimson Delight Apples, but they are different.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday March 09 2020, @08:29PM (2 children)
Yes, I do get it. What you're saying is factually true in regards to how the system works, but it doesn't matter unless said electors don't vote for who they say they're going to, which happens rarely enough in practice that it doesn't make a difference. (I want to say the result of an election has never been changed by a faithless elector? They even throw out those votes in a lot of states these days--see Trump's election)
No, but they're both voting for the same president, admittedly through intermediaries. It's a matter of opinion whether it "makes no sense."
In practice, electors vote for who they're pledged to, or they get replaced. This is one of many things that were designed a certain way back in the 1700s, but don't still work that way anymore.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday March 09 2020, @08:42PM
Alright, there *was* one time where faithless electors could've changed the result of an election, but it wasn't for President.
Apparently unpledged electors [wikipedia.org] are also a thing.
Educating myself today :)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:15AM
This is *more clearly* demonstrated in an EC-based system than in a system without the EC, so any arguments of "you don't understand how the EC affects things" are pure sophistry, and at that both fallacious and false.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves