Tech and Liberty – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

It may feel totally wrong to take Facebook’s side in anything, really, but they are doing the right thing with the political ads.

At times it is easy to think that lies in political ads may be an attack on the truth, rather than free speech, and due to FB’s ultra targeted advertising features there is an inherent danger in that, yet when it comes to upholding values of free perch, their decision is the right one.

But, at the same time, it is important that we do not underestimate the power of the platform and thus influence elections. The power of tech, and its current capabilities, vastly outweigh the potential reach of any possible truth-checking setups.

And that is probably the real reason why FB doesn’t want to restrict political ads. Because the platform just couldn’t deal with the possible deluge of both tailored, automated programmatically targeted ads in hundreds of thousands of variations and non-disclosed political campaign ads.

Any other reason, right or wrong, is merely bullshit.

Read: Tech and Liberty, by Stratechery

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