We have the first amendment in America. It says the government can't make laws that limit a private citizen's ability to express themselves (among other things). That includes their political advertising. This is a really dangerous / slippery precedent to set, and the whole "we should change longstanding laws to deal with a problem that feels like a local maximum" is something that many people throughout history have warned us not to do.
I think (and I don't think this is an uncommon position in America) that some political ads on facebook is way less of an evil than letting our government dictate what is allowed to be said by whom and when. No thanks.
This is a euphemism for quid pro quo bribery. The Europeans and other democracies recognize it as such.
It is clear that the Western Democracies have at least as much freedom of speech as the US. For example, they do not have leaders who get sport figures professionally banned for what is conspicuously an instance of unpaid political speech.
Absolutely not. Advertising is not bribery and the European region is nowhere near the freedom of speech principles of the US. It may feel the same, either because you have never said anything or have never been heard by anyone who cares, but there are countless examples of prosecution that would be summarily dismissed here in the States.
Professionally "banned" is not a free speech issue in the slightest. Athletes can do whatever they want, however they are still employees and if they want to enjoy their multi-million dollar salaries then they will need to follow the rules of their employer and the sports leagues. You will not be punished by the government for what you say, but you are not entitled to a job without consequences either.
> Professionally "banned" is not a free speech issue in the slightest.
This line of reasoning never made sense to me. Free speech is both a legal and a cultural issue. A modern society cannot credibly claim to be free on legal grounds alone. Yeah, the government won't put me in prison or fine me, but if I get fired for being a staunch liberal (or conservative) then I'm not really free, am I? This doesn't just apply to rich athletes -- in most organizations in SF I would not feel particularly safe expressing what seem to me fairly moderate views.
Depriving people of their livelihood for expressing political views is absolutely a free speech issue. Perhaps not in a legal/constitutional sense, but a cultural sense for sure. There were plenty of stretches in the Soviet Union where they wouldn't imprison you, but would fire you for a poorly timed political joke. Starting down that cultural slope is a really bad idea.
Depending on the state you're in it is, in fact, illegal to fire someone for their political views and is a protected class of sorts. (To varying degrees)
The US Constitution also codifies freedom of association so you can have free speech but you can’t force me to associate with you. In the US companies have freedom of association as long as they don’t violate a protected class ( race, religion, sex, age, national origin, etc...). Since you the government can’t force a company to associate with someone they disagree with, you can be fired for things you say.
GP explicitly called out that there is not just a legal issue of free speech, but also a cultural one. Your response, "but it's legal!" in short, does not address that at all.
Lots of things are legal but maybe not what we want. I'd say a working culture where having the wrong political opinion can get you fired is definitely one of them.
Think that through then - what do you want the government do to in that situation? Start to police culture? How would that go? Are you sure that won't end in unintended consequences?
Before you write that off, consider speech with built in impunity.
The shield is not there because there needs to be checks and balances on speech. While we do see unfortunate outcomes, review them. All those people had options.
People often cite the Mozilla event. It is not so often mentioned how a lot of people were going to leave.
Being a leader, in that example, carries with it some implications. People do not blindly follow in enough numbers to be a concern.
These are human dynamics. Legislating them, and or expecting people to deal en mass with others to the degree needed here is impractical.
There are risks and rewards in all aspects of life, very few sure things. We are nowhere near a state of society where it is possible to consider otherwise.
> Depriving people of their livelihood for expressing political views is absolutely a free speech issue.
I don't think free speech is the issue here. There's a difference between expressing your views on your own time and involving the company that you work for to adopt those views. We've all seen the disclaimers that people put on their twitter profiles and blogs distancing their personal views from the companies they work for. Such a disclaimer was not issued here. Colin involved the 49ers Franchise and the NFL in his political views. He used their broadcasts to send out his message. Not all the owners necessarily sympathized with his views, especially when it started bringing negative attention to their business. In that regard, I don't think it's all that surprising that it cost him his job.
Note also that there are plenty of current NFL players who express the same sentiments as Colin on social media and in interviews, and they still have their jobs.
Yes free speech means the government can't limit what you say (with some specific exceptions). It doesn't mean you won't face consequences or backlash or insults or derision from those in the civilian world who disagree with you.
People are people, and they're free to act however they want, including not liking you for what you say. As long as they are not harming you or infringing your rights, then they are within their rights to do so. This is the price for the freedom you have to also not associate with people you don't like.
We already have anti-discrimination laws and protections but what you seem to be asking for is government to limit other rights and freedoms to protect you "culturally"? Do you not see how that is dangerous and far worse?
You are allowed to say things.
You are assuming responsibility for, i.e. accepting the consequences of, your right to say things.]
Society is then free to cast you out if you say hateful things. You say this society is not free. This is meaningless to this society, it has chosen to operate on assumptions which are fundamentally incompatible with your behaviour.
Indeed. The EU and other Western democracies are far, far ahead of the US in many aspects, like health care, but free speech is absolutely not one of them. This just happened: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/calling-muhammad-paedo.... You'd be laughed out of court in the US for something like this, if you manage to find a lawyer to represent you.
> the European region is nowhere near the freedom of speech principles of the US. It may feel the same, either because you have never said anything or have never been heard by anyone who cares, but there are countless examples of prosecution that would be summarily dismissed here in the States.
In the other hand I think in most of Europe gag orders are much more restricted in scope and application than they are in the US.
First amendment seems to be interpreted broadly there, but not nearly as much as national security.
If campaign contributions never amount to bribery, then why do companies frequently donate to candidates from both parties? If it were for both some policy and it's opposite, those donations would cancel each other out.
The only reasonable explanation is to have the politician be indebted no mater who it happens to be.
And the Kaepernick issue can't be a mere employee-employer issue if the president claims to have gotten him fired by threatening the NFL with brand destruction[1].
And if the same group then calls the press the "enemy of the people" but defends receiving enormous donations as devotion to free speech seems, it seems disingenuous.
If, instead of you home country, say Saudi Arabia were doing these things, we would say they making great steps towards freedom.
Not sure about other EU member states or the EU itself, but in Germany free speech is intentionally not a right, because of the German right to live free of abuse by others. Speech can obviously be used as a form of abuse.
Herewith article 5 of the Basic Law of Germany stating the right to freedom of expression, one of the several fundamental rights enshrined in the Basic Law right up front, before anything else.
From the first article you linked...just...wow. Soo many U.S. progressives would suffer under that law.
> In 2015, France’s highest court upheld the criminal conviction of 12 pro-Palestinian activists for violating restrictions against hate speech. Their crime? Wearing T-shirts that advocated a boycott of Israel — “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel,”
a) the very article you linked states "...no publicised cases of blasphemy have been brought before the courts since the law was introduced in 2009 and a source said it was "highly unlikely" that a prosecution against Fry would take place." - and indeed, the case was dropped after an investigation found, effectively, that not enough people were offended to be worth proceeding...
and b) earlier this week "voters overwhelming[ly] supported a referendum to remove [blasphemy] as an offence in Irish law." [0]
There are plenty of anti free speech laws and precedent in the US as well, you just have to look for them. Only if you accept the exact American definition of free speech, then of course other countries look bad by that standard.
The ECtHr is not the EU, and this only means that the supranational court did not override national law, as the states are given a wide margin of appreciation:
> [Freedom of expression] may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary
Institute a special tax. Election Tax. 0.001% of all corporate/personal income. No exceptions, no write-offs.
Once every X years, a web-site, a tv station, and a radio station come online.
The money collection from the tax is then used to give 25, not more than 2 per registered political party, enough air-time to express their views. Money is distributed evenly and the entire process is overseen by 25 randomly-chosen people of which at least 13 have no party affiliation.
A federal 3-day holiday is in effect during which you, as a citizen, have no other job but to vote for a candidate after learning about their positions on various policies.
The whole circus ends after 3 days and we go back to living our lives.
there is a difference between advertising and communication, and precedent has been set for bans on certain topics/products for certain types of advertising, tobacco and alcohol being the notable examples
The flaw is that someone has to decide what speech is “political” or not. That person can prioritize their sides speech above competitors, by denying others a comparable platform.
Why is political speech a different category than other forms of speech?
Think of the plausible scenario of a certain Presidents FEC deciding friendly speech isn’t “political” (it’s “patriotic”!) But critical speech is clearly political and should be regulated.
Thanks. Your above says advertisement, you said speech. Thats a big difference. Advertisement can be regulated which is the focus of this thread. No one is saying to regulate some speech in a rally but is said speech is reshape as some advertisment then they should be regulated.
For the purposes of American law, "speech" is defined very broadly. It can apply to burning an American flag[0], plans for 3-D printed guns[1], and even bombmaking instructions[2].
Our Supreme Court has decided that corporations spending money[3], even in politics[4], is speech as well.
The O'Brien test[5] is generally used to tell whether a law encroaches on 1A rights.
You need even more money to organize rallies, get anyone to report on them and to get any airtime for yourself. Advertising is much cheaper and easier way to get people to look at your ideas.
Banning political advertising is just a play to strengthen incumbents and hurt new comers. I also think it's morally wrong. It's "you should not try to influence others by yourself - only government approved channels are ok and maybe you will get a minute a day if you're already visible in the polls" kind of law. It's censorship reminding me of Soviet days. Europe is terrible when it comes to freedom of expression. Blasphemy laws are another example of prosecuting speech some groups don't like.
That doesn’t change the fundamental problem. Regulating advertising for political content is a slippery slope that lets some people decide what is “political” and what is not.
This is orthogonal to my point. I'm just surprised (disappointed?) at how some people think it's so inconceivable to communicate without advertisements.
It's politics. How do you convince millions of people to look at your ideas and yourself without ads?
You need to be a billionaire to organize rallies in major cities and that will still be less effective than ads. You're only getting airtime if you're an incumbent or already popular. Internet made it possible to get attention of millions of people relatively cheaply. No wonder it's in the interest of ruling elite to ban doing that.
Why is insider trading a different category than other forms of speech?
Why is paying someone to murder someone a different category than other forms of speech?
Why are intentionally deceptive drug advertisements a different category than other forms of speech?
Why is pointing a gun at someone and telling them to do something a different category than other types of speech?
I'm going to claim that it's because these forms of speech enable types of coordination and coercion that corrupt processes and structures that we deem essential for the operation of society. So, pragmatic reasons.
Placing limits on the payments, direct or indirect (a dollar I spend is a dollar a candidate doesn't have to spend), that can be made to aid people in gaining a position that places them in charge of allocating public resources, that's something that very few people seriously argue against. What they argue about is what those limits should be.
You can make an argument that payments to candidates and government officials should be allowed, but making absolutist arguments that something is speech and therefore must be permitted isn't serious. Payments to a television station to run an ad that you financed the production of is surely less worthy of being called speech than calling in a bomb threat is - at least the bomb threat is using your mouth to say a thing. Speech, instead, is what we define to be speech. If it's to encompass all expression, you might as well call selling cigarettes without a tax stamp speech.
> Why is insider trading a different category than other forms of speech?
The speech isn't illegal - the act of trading based on insider information is. This works in a similar manner to bomb-making plans being legal to disseminate, but making a bomb being very illegal.
> Why is paying someone to murder someone a different category than other forms of speech?
This is solicitation to commit a crime, which is a specific exception to the 1A.
> Why are intentionally deceptive drug advertisements a different category than other forms of speech?
This is a false statement of fact, which is a specific exception to the 1A.
> Why is pointing a gun at someone and telling them to do something a different category than other types of speech?
That's not how this works. The constitution and amendments are the foundation. There are centuries of supreme court rulings and further legal precedent that determine the modern framework.
Actually, it is how it works. You are confusing case law with what k_sh actually claimed, which was specific exceptions. There do exist U.S. constitutional provisions with specific exceptions, such as the 5th Amendment. The 1st Amendment is not one of them. Indeed, it is famous for being neither specific nor having clear exceptions.
Contrast with the Basic Law of Germany article 5, that has already come up in this discussion, which outlines specific exceptions in paragraph 2. (For another example, see article 8.)
Incorrect. What is being discussed are the applicable rules to citizens today, and the cumulative legislation states that there are exceptions. We do not follow only the constitution and bill of rights, otherwise what do you think the thousands of other laws are doing exactly?
Real exceptions exist, regardless of whether they are written in the original amendment text or in rulings afterward.
The amendments themselves are not in the constitution itself, so do they not apply?
Amendments were added to the body of laws after the constitution, and congress and the supreme court have since added more to the body of laws after the amendments. The cumulative result is what governs citizens today.
Those laws are in fact very specific about their exceptions, as shown very clearly in the wikipedia link. What exactly do you find fuzzy or confusing about them?
Case law, as you linked, is not. It also keeps changing without the underlying documents changing. I don't know how you can look at all those dates marking times high courts had to get involved and still say it's clear.
I don't understand -- getting a message out is advertising by definition.
Not everyone attends a rally and not every rally is (or needs to be) covered in the news.
Also: in the US parties are less powerful (and not even mentioned in the constitution) so each candidate is presented individually and it's up to that candidate to bring up whichever issues (local or national) that they consider relevant. There is nothing like the party list system. So the structure of elections are quite different from the ones in, say, France or Germany.
No, getting your message out is marketing, advertising is a subset of paid marketing. Press releases that get picked up by news agency’s is a great example of the difference.
Do you not recognize the irony of asking this question on Hacker News? And for an additional layer of irony, Hacker News doesn't advertise either (that I'm aware of).
HN regularly ban/kill political topics. Good or bad some topics don't belong here even if popular among users. Things like: "I want to be a governorn of Y region or representative of X country, here is my program" either won't get any traction or be killed.
Buying ads is the cheapest and most effective way of getting eyes to your ideas. It's great it became more accessible. No wonder ruling elites in Europe want it banned tough.
Actually HN does advertise. Just yesterday I saw an add in the Google search bar for "news.ycombinator.com" on Firefox focus while searching "hacker news".
All those things are very expensive and someone without significant backing won't be able to afford them. Ads are cheaper and more effective, especially when you're just starting and don't know if you should invest more of your time and money.
Buying votes is way more expensive than asking for them is. About 30 people are in these mid term general elections doing exactly what I put there. None of them have significant means. Most of them beat the people doing it "the very expensive way."
You are not wrong, buying an office is not cheap. People lacking significant backing, or personal means cannot afford to do that.
It's not about buying the office. It's about getting your message to be seen without investing huge resources. No one with a job can afford organizing rallies and laying significant groundwork unless they are already rich, backed by major party or otherwise having most of their time free to do political activity. Ads are cheap way to try to get people to look at your message. It challenges monopoly of the media and gives platform to new players.
I am not sure why you talk about buying votes. Getting people to look at your message is not buying votes. Making crazy promises like free cash for everyone or flats for everyone as human right is.
"The report found the Department of Defense had spent $6.8 million on what they called 'paid patriotism' between 2012 and 2015. This money was spread out among 50 pro teams from the NFL, NBA, MLB, NASCAR, MLS and others.": https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/25/us/nfl-national-anthem-trump-...
Interesting, although I can't say I care much about the fate of these organizations that accepted money from the DoD. Accepting payments for allowing these patriotic displays is, IMO, a sort of deal with the devil (I don't actually think the U.S. is the devil). This sounds even less of an issue of government abridging free speech and more like the NFL breaching contract.
First, I said that he wasn't good enough for what he wanted, not that he just isn't good enough. Second, it isn't like Kaepernick is a hotshot quarterback. He is thoroughly middling. Kaepernick had a standout couple of games in the playoffs, but otherwise he was looking at qb ratings of high 70s to low 90s. Not horrible but really just run of the mill.
Europeans have bureaucrats in Brussels who are not elected by anyone. Thats way worse than allowing some dose of political advertising, as a whole.
As for Freedom of Speech, several European countries have actually very specific limitations on what one can say, while such restrictions are way lower in the US. Plus, the US has a strong constitution on that matter, while in Europe depending on the country it is certainly not as clearly written down.
The "bureaucrats in Brussels" are nominated by EU Parliament members, who in turn are elected every five years directly by citizens in European elections. They are there not because the EU is anti-democratic, but because you cannot realistically expect elected representatives to deal with every single detail. Otherwise, you would be in a direct democracy.
Doesn't the same thing happen in the US? Federal and state agencies are full of non-elected employees that take impactful decisions on a daily basis, but I don't see many Americans complaining about a lack of democracy in the USA because of this.
Actually, the U.S. follows the Common Law system in contrast with the majority of other countries (most of E.U. follows Civil Law). In that system the justice system participates in the shaping of law as it acts as an interpreter of the law and establishes precedent (you might have heard the term case law also [0]). Thus, as you are well aware, law is developed by their decisions and interpretations of the Supreme Court, and other lower courts. For instance, Arizona v. Gant, Roe v. Wade.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_law
What you describe is "legal precedents", not laws per se. Sure, that is also a power to make decisions, but it's quite different from enacting new laws altogether.
Legal precedents exist, because laws are interpreted / combined, deduced. Sure, it is not regulatory or statutory law (executive and legislative branches). Yet, courts (and police etc) are bound by the rule of stare decisis. Namely, a court has to abide and be consistent with rulings of higher courts. For instance, if a court says abortion is legal, lower courts, police, and the affected governments (e.g. states, municipalities) have to abide to that ruling/case law.
In other systems, if a law leads to contradiction, or is lacking clarity, the court applies specific 'procedures' to solve the issue (e.g. a law can be ruled unconstitutional or void). Here, the court decides on the details to produce a "reasonable" law.
Edit: But yes, you are right: unlike the legislative branch a court may not propose an arbitrary law (they can advise/make suggestions to the legislative branch).
Are you trying to argue that the Supreme court is just an irrelevant fluff job? Probably also the same argument could be made for general officers and diplomats?
If Facebook is to be the public square, then it needs all the protections and consequences that come with it. You can’t say you’re a senator on a TV ad - that’s impersonating an elected official which is a plenty reasonable curb on free speech - just as you can’t walk around with a police officers uniform. There is SOME limit to speech in terms of fraud.
Fraud is already a crime. And in most cases, prosecution comes after a crime is committed. Forcing independent organizations to pre-police is generally a bad idea. It's a good idea for them to do it, it's a bad idea to use threat of force (government) to do.
In the end, I do know several third party candidates that had a lot of trouble posting genuine ads... so there's a bit of a problem all around.
Because you can tell from the ad choice that it is discrinatory, and you cannot abet a crime knowingly.
With political ads? What is the crime being committed? If it is fraud, then we make it illegal to place an ad without rendering your ID, like with a bank account.
How so? Is craigslist required to pre-screen housing ads? I don't think so. The ads themselves are illegal, but there's no legal requirement to pre-screen that I'm aware of.
Online outlets have a specific exemption for user-created content (https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legal); print outlets do, indeed, have to pre-screen ads and that's worked very well.
Even for tech companies, that exemption is limited; Craigslist got an exemption, but Roommates.com didn't because of the level to which its platform actively encouraged discriminating on prohibited categories.
>Forcing independent organizations to pre-police is generally a bad idea. It's a good idea for them to do it, it's a bad idea to use threat of force (government) to do.
The financial industry as well as many others say hi.
That you need to ask the question sort of implies that there is 0 value to Facebook in catching that they were defrauded - if thats right, then there's nothing wrong with regulation. If Facebook doesn't have the ability to determine who is running ads, then I agree with the GP that political ads should be banned on Facebook altogether.
I'm sorry, we make people show ID to buy cigarettes and beer - mass political advertising needs SOME sort of regulation.
The freedom Facebook enjoys is not really the freedom of speech. It is the freedom of the press, the freedom to publish. Same amendment, different purpose.
What is less clear is: to what extent is Facebook the press? The press, in 1789, could not send you push notifications. It was not gamified with the intent of increasing user engagement. It was not interwoven with a person's private communications with their friends. It did not encourage users to build "profile pages" on which they hang their reputations and opinions. Someone might have seen you reading The Federalist Papers, but everything else was up to you.
Any of these provides a legal avenue to regulate Facebook without cheapening the broad freedoms prescribed to actual publishers. James Madison never dreamed that a Senator would send messages to his constituents that make their phones buzz when they aren't being looked at. In my unvarnished opinion, that's not freedom of the press, it's something else.
You don't consider delivering a paper to my door to be a form of "push delivery"? At least with facebook I installed the app. These local newspapers/flyer delivery vehicles don't have any business relationship with me at all.
> We have the first amendment in America. It says the government can't make laws that limit a private citizen's ability to express themselves (among other things).
No, it doesn't, and the U.S. isn't the only country that understands freedom of speech. God, this is so tiring.
The government can limit speech if they have a compelling reason (the governments reasoning outweighs the persons freedom of speech, think yelling fire in a crowded theater). If the government has a compelling reason they can only limit the speech in the most narrowly tailored way to accomplish their goal and still allow the most freedom of speech possible.
TL;DR: during WW1, Socialist Party members protested against the war, and particularly against the draft. As part of those protests, they handed out leaflets that encouraged those eligible to resist the draft. The government cracked down on it, and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government, likening the action to "shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic".
Thankfully, the present standard is "imminent lawless action" instead, which is a far higher bar for the government to meet if it wants to regulate speech.
I hear what you're saying. And I think there's plenty of room on this planet for many nations with different lines drawn in the sand on free speech.
On one hand, I think there are many nations that are subjectively better places to live than the U.S., whose citizens have ceded more of their freedom of speech for scores of years and it's worked out pretty well so far.
On the other hand, I think the manifestation of a nation is derived as much from the side effects of its laws as the primary effects. By this I mean it's likely impossible to answer, "would what makes America tick still tick if we changed freedom of speech?" Who can really predict what side effects would come out of trying to make the U.S. more like Europe, Canada, Australia, etc.
> ... there are many nations that are subjectively better places to live than the U.S., whose citizens have ceded more of their freedom of speech ... it's worked out pretty well so far.
As someone not in the US, I agree there are many places that are subjectively "better", but this is /definitely/ not because of free speech restrictions, but because of universal healthcare/welfare/education.
Freedom of speech is incredibly important, and countries who restrict it (in the philosophical sense) walk a dangerous path.
E.g. Australia making it illegal for people to comment on living conditions within refugee camps, or making it illegal to take photos inside factory farms.
You’re right to point out that many nations have better standards of living than the US. But I do think that standard of living has been mostly due to the relatively peaceful period of human history that we find ourselves in. It really wasn’t that long ago when most of Europe lived under some form of totalitarianism. Much of European history is filled with persecution of people for their beliefs, religion, etc... And so I think your statement shows how much you are taking your freedom for granted.
Maybe I am taking it for granted. I wish I knew the trick to be sure I wasn't but I think it's just kind of the condition of growing up in health and prosperity with parents who grew up in the same and grandparents who were a bit too young for the war. Canadian history has been fairly peaceful.
This "papers written by people 300 years ago and their interpretations are infallible" thing is a really common POV in America. People make mistakes. It's ok to correct them.
As brilliant as the Founding Fathers are, they did not, and could not, foresee a future where corporations have more money than entire governments, where they've been given personhood, and given carte blanche to just "buy" legislation. All in the name of free speech? How far does free speech actually extend - because we might as well cut the red tape and just auction Senators off the to highest bidder on an open market at this point.
I bet you $50 that if you were to resurrect the Founding Fathers and showed them the present situation and were ask "so - is this what you had in mind?" - they'd be absolutely horrified.
I too love idealism, but I have to wonder just how broken things have to get before people begin to accept that a thing that sounds good in theory just doesn't work right in the real world?
In theory, unregulated free markets are always self-correcting. In theory, socialism works great. In theory, uninhibited free speech is one of the pillars of a free society.
So if we start seeing torrential downpour of misleading ads with a "paid for" line that's a total lie, making it harder still for people to figure out what positions actually do belong to a candidate, will that be broken enough then?
I mean, we've already got pharmaceutical advertising, massive media conglomerates muddying the waters, and a huge rise in hate speech that's dehumanizing people to the extent that they're being mass-murdered.
We already accept a number of reasonable limits on speech. Society hasn't imploded yet, at least not for that reason, anyway. I think you've gotta do better here than "it's a slippery slope".
The question is, what do those limits on speech really add?
For example, Germany has extremely stringent limits on hate speech. In fact, it goes beyond that, and gives courts the authority to outright ban political parties, and even informal associations, that promote certain political ideas (e.g. any form of government that is not a democracy), even if such promotion doesn't involve hate speech per se: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie. They have a robust enforcement regimen, too.
And? They still have neo-Nazis marching in the streets (and, I must add, in far greater numbers than anything that happened in US to date). And they have AfD, which continues to grow in popular support, and to gain seats on both federal and regional level.
I would argue that in that regard, Europe and US inadvertently did a useful experiment: one side went all-in for free speech, another side decided to enshrine "intolerance of intolerance" in law. Looking at Europe today, I would dare say that the result of that experiment is that political censorship is a failure. It's not that you can't do it - clearly, there are many countries that do it quite successfully, even today. The problem is, all those countries are very heavy-handed about it - they don't wince at punishing people for being suspected subversives, for example. And so we call those countries dictatorships and tyrannies. But the amount of censorship that Europe decided it can afford while still retaining free society is fairly trivial to work around, and therefore ineffective. It's basically just security theater. It lets politicians point at all those laws and say, "See, we did something about the neo-Nazis! You're safe!" to their voters, even as said neo-Nazis openly march in the streets.
Interestingly, this has come after a huge rise in PC speech codes. There's been a grand experiment in trying to regulate peoples' thoughts by regulating speech, it appears to have the opposite effect.
This is a tiresome argument. The first amendment guarantees freedom of the press (ie, the printing press). The clear aim is to guarantee not just the right to speech, but also the right to _distribute_ that speech. In fact, without that the right to freedom of speech is of limited value.
This doesn't mean Facebook couldn't ban political ads, but it does mean it would be unreasonable for the government to do so.
One could just as easily the aim is to protect political graffiti. Especially given the actions of the founders during the revolution.
The choice of protecting money is a strategic one, not one of judicial sobriety. And as we expect from that kind of ruling, it falls exactly along the political lines of the appointing president.
It is an extrapolation to suppose the founders intended allowing every avenue of distribution regardless of outcome. It's just as (un)clear the founders would be appalled at the current tight feedback from campaign finance which in many cases is indistinguishable from bribery.
>And yet we regulate swear words and nude imagery on broadcast television
Maybe the reasonable answer is that you shouldn't, especially in the face of rapidly changing technology, which nowadays gives us huge choice of what to look at. The example of outdated censorship doesn't make a valid argument for more restrictions.
money isn't speech but the courts that ultimately decide this in the USA are directly appointed by someone who got elected using money instead of speech.
We have the first amendment in America. It says the government can't make laws that limit a private citizen's ability to express themselves (among other things). That includes their political advertising. This is a really dangerous / slippery precedent to set, and the whole "we should change longstanding laws to deal with a problem that feels like a local maximum" is something that many people throughout history have warned us not to do.
I think (and I don't think this is an uncommon position in America) that some political ads on facebook is way less of an evil than letting our government dictate what is allowed to be said by whom and when. No thanks.