Jan Penfrat

I know some of us are really angered by #Meta's decision to stop running political, electoral and social issue ads in the EU.

I understand this will force many civil society orgs to painfully disentangle their own #campaigning from #Meta platforms.

But in my books it's a win-win: CSOs win because they finally break free from an abusive relationship, and society wins because less of our political debates and election campaigns are run on toxic #BigTech platforms.

#TrackingFreeAds #PoliticalAds

Oct 7 at 2:24pmWeb
Show threadGrow FediverseOct 7
@ilumium conceptually sounds great, but i hope it's what you get in practice. Because Meta claimed they were going to do that in the US but instead just allowed the conservative ones while squelching the non-conservative ones.
Show threadAlex / catilepticOct 7

@ilumium same as Google doesn't run political ads anymore?

i'm not saying i know the future, but i did go through two rounds of elections that were swayed heavily by paid political ads on another platform that forbids paid political ads: TikTok

"forbidding" is the code word that these companies use for pretending like regulation & responsability doesn't apply to them anymore. they "don't allow" something, thus it can't exist, thus they don't have to moderate it & be transparent

Show threadAlex / catilepticOct 7

@ilumium i don't disagree at all with your hope that more and more organizing moves off these platforms. i hope so, too!

i hope that we collectively move to safer, descentealized, community-organized spaces.

i just want the platforms to be held responsible to the full extent of the damage they have done. and they have racked up debt of years and years of illegal conduct.

Show threadJan PenfratOct 7
You are absolutely right to point this out @catileptic. If #Meta follows the #Tiktok model it'd be up to the @EUCommission to clarify that it indeed counts indeed still as provider of political advertising services regardless of what they claim in their ToS. 😬
Show threadNemo_bis 🌈Oct 7

@ilumium It would also need to clarify how one is supposed to determine that an ad is "political". For example Facebook now bans ads about climate issues; is an ad in favour of selling more combustion cars not about climate issues (that is, in favour of fuelling climate change)?

@catileptic

#EUpolicy