[HN Gopher] All political ads running on Google in the US
___________________________________________________________________
All political ads running on Google in the US
Author : cellis
Score : 346 points
Date : 2024-10-24 17:16 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (adstransparency.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (adstransparency.google.com)
| Dig1t wrote:
| Am I reading this wrong or does it seem like the majority of
| these are for Harris/Democrats?
| Dwedit wrote:
| When one campaign raises 3 times as much money as the other
| campaign, that tends to happen.
| lucianbr wrote:
| Interesting that money is considered to have a large
| influence on US elections, one side has a lot more money, and
| yet the race is incredibly close.
| cwillu wrote:
| The polling may be close, but we really won't know if the
| _election_ is close until the final numbers come out.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| Money is a lot in US politics, but Michael Bloomberg will
| tell you himself that it isn't everything. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg_2020_pr
| eside....
| nradov wrote:
| Money has an influence but it's not decisive. In the 2016
| presidential election, the Clinton / Kaine campaign spent
| about twice as much as their opponents but still lost.
| Could they have won with even more money? Maybe?
| Yawrehto wrote:
| In my view, money might once have, but the number of
| persuadable voters is quite low. If someone has decided to
| vote for Trump, it's unlikely they will change their mind.
| And if someone is undecided, they'll probably vote for
| Trump, because let's face it, most people voting for Harris
| aren't voting because they like her platform - they're
| voting because they dislike Trump. If you don't dislike
| Trump, Harris's platform is nothing world-changingly new or
| different.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > most people voting for Harris aren't voting because
| they like her platform - they're voting because they
| dislike Trump
|
| That seems to be a popular conclusion by people who are
| on the Trump side. I see little evidence for it in real
| life. Many factors go into a political choice, and sure,
| disliking Trump is one of them, but most Harris
| supporters would not be voting R in any case because they
| do not agree with that platform.
| Yawrehto wrote:
| True. But if you look at Harris's platform, it's not very
| ground-breaking, honestly. It's mostly just par for the
| course. A fair portion of the reason my family is voting
| for them is because Trump is a danger to democracy.
| Frankly, I'd barely looked at her platform - I just knew
| Trump had tried to destroy American democracy, and that
| is all that matters.
|
| I don't know how many people are genuinely enthused about
| her platform. Mostly it feels like it's fueled by hating
| Trump's platform and Trump (which, to be clear, is a
| valid reason!). I guess I should have been clearer - I
| meant that they're voting Harris not because her platform
| is great (honestly it seems about average for Democratic
| candidates), but because they dislike Trump's platform
| and Trump himself. They don't really care what Harris is
| proposing, as long as it's vaguely reasonable.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Well, I don't like her and her platform is alright
| compared to trump's, but that just words. Tim Walz is
| alright tho. I still voted for her. My sample size is
| definetly biased and small, but that is the sentiment I
| get from her voters that I know.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Yes remember when billionaire money interfering in election
| campaigns was considered a bad thing?
| loeg wrote:
| What do you think the demographics are of Google ad viewers vs
| Harris / Trump potential voters?
|
| But also, yes, the Harris campaign has spent about 2x as much
| in aggregate:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/us/elections/kamala-harri...
| Macha wrote:
| I'd expect the demographics of google ad viewers to be more
| or less "the internet at large, minus a few markets like
| China were Google is much less prevalent, and a few groups
| techy enough to disproportionately run adblockers"
| afavour wrote:
| If I were in the Trump campaign I'd be targeting Facebook
| over Google by a fair margin. A lot of older folks live on
| there.
| ryandrake wrote:
| "Facebook users" or "Google users" are way too broad for
| a political campaign ad to target. Party A's ad will go
| to too many of Party B's users and vice versa. They need
| to be much more carefully targeted to be effective.
|
| The purpose of a political ad is not to convince
| undecided people to vote for [party]. The number of
| undecideds is vanishingly small, so there's no ROI there.
| The purpose of a political ad is to convince people _who
| have already picked a side_ to actually vote vs not
| voting. So you need to carefully target your "go vote"
| message to your own team.
| loeg wrote:
| > more or less "the internet at large"
|
| Right.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-
| bro...
|
| Older voters are less likely to use the internet (and those
| who do use it probably use it less). And there's a small
| urban/rural divide still.
| rsynnott wrote:
| You'd be amazed. A surprising number of people,
| particularly older people, do not use the internet as such
| all that much; they use Facebook, or Instagram, or Twitter,
| or YouTube.
| _xander wrote:
| I was completely shocked to find out how many people use
| search in those apps to query open questions rather than
| 'search the web' via something like Google
| netsharc wrote:
| At least YouTube is Google...
|
| Heh, interesting, the lords of the Attention Economy is
| Zuck, Google and TikTok. And Musk, but he's busy burning
| his kingdom.
| delichon wrote:
| I bought a Kagi subscription when I discovered that Google
| was de-indexing Covid podcasts that it didn't like. I doubt
| that the population who moved on from Google is
| demographically neutral.
| Macha wrote:
| > I doubt that the population who moved on from Google is
| demographically neutral.
|
| They are however, a relatively small group. I suspect
| more people have moved to ChatGPT than to Kagi.
| teach wrote:
| I suspect that the given the different demographics of the
| voting population, the republican side probably advertises more
| on Facebook.
| loeg wrote:
| Or day time TV, yeah.
| romanovcode wrote:
| You are reading it right
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Keep in mind it is only google. Trump has been developing his
| comms channels for a decade with a core base composed of people
| who hate 'the media' in every form. And he has gotten pretty
| good at using those channels. It's also the case that everyone
| has heard of him now (you may recall that he was recently The
| President).
|
| Harris was put into candidacy at the last second and needs to
| speedrun building a president's worth of goodwill from scratch
| against a guy who functionally already has it. That means her
| marketing base is 'the entire country' and you need to hit that
| as hard as possible as fast as possible, which is expensive.
| neilv wrote:
| Kudos to Google. We also need this for all the non-Google
| outlets.
| mkmk wrote:
| Here's the equivalent from Meta:
| https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=active&a...
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| Here's one from X via CNN:
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/04/politics/doj-alleges-
| russia-f...
| omoikane wrote:
| Looks like you have to supply a search query for the link to
| work. I just search for the letter "a":
|
| https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=active&a.
| ..
|
| They also have an aggregate report page. It doesn't seem
| possible to break it down by ad category, but looks like the
| most recent big spenders are all political ads:
|
| https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/
| ccleve wrote:
| This really interesting, but I think they have an odd idea of
| transparency.
|
| I searched for some ads for a congressional race in 2018,
| obviously inactive, and they were all there, but I couldn't
| view them because: "This content was removed because the
| disclaimer didn't follow our policy for ads about social
| issues, elections or politics."
|
| For what conceivable reason would they block historical ads,
| ads that actually ran in the past but are no longer active?
| Those ads probably didn't meet the disclaimer rules because
| the rules were different back in 2018.
| neilv wrote:
| Sounds like that defeats much of the purpose. One thing
| they definitely need to do now is to be certain to retain
| all that data, for future transparency and historical
| record.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Interesting to compare the top ads when sorting "Amount spent:
| high to low" and "Number of times shown: high to low". Political
| ads from 4 years ago appear to have been shown many more times
| for much less cost. This year's ads seem considerably more
| expensive while also reaching a smaller audience.
| xnx wrote:
| Inflation is part of that.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Nah, I think this one is just greed.
| jpadkins wrote:
| what caused this sudden change in greed? Were these actors
| not greedy before 2019?
| namrog84 wrote:
| Covid was a catalyst for bigger changes to go potentially
| unchallenged and opportunity for extra greed. 1 company
| dared do a thing and no one batted eye. Then 2nd.
| Domino's of greed and fake excuse on supposed inflation.
| But it was just domino's of greed
| exe34 wrote:
| boiling the frog slowly. if you start out being more
| expensive than traditional media, they won't use you.
|
| same thing with streaming. start out cheaper/more
| convenient/more comprehensive than traditional media -
| and an enormous market to grow into, so your shareholders
| are happy even with a reasonable price. wait a few years
| until you have saturated the market, and now the only way
| to achieve the holy growth is to raise the prices
| indefinitely.
| karakot wrote:
| https://imgur.com/presenting-recent-findings-by-fucking-
| magn...
| exe34 wrote:
| now look at the same plot for Netflix:
| https://flixed.io/netflix-price-hikes
|
| can you spot any difference? Look closely!
| pownie3xpress wrote:
| While rates were low they could offset nickel and diming
| consumers by handing them cheap cash in the form of
| inflated wages to work lame jobs. Now rates are high,
| jobs cut, less consumer nickel and diming as consumers
| are tapped out
|
| For the time being it's back to the old way of screwing
| the public by over charging government for consulting
| work
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The greed was always there.
|
| The pandemic provided an unprecedentedly easy excuse for
| implementing that greed.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| First of all, the above comment says "part" and that's
| incontrovertibly true.
|
| Second of all, by what mechanism is this greed and from
| whom? You do know this is an auction, right? In that case,
| are the greedy actors the other auction bidders, trying to
| also spend more money?
| jsheard wrote:
| The politicians are having to bid against Temu this year and by
| god do they spend a lot on ads.
| Semaphor wrote:
| It's kinda crazy. We are in Germany, so no US ads. But even
| 8EUR eCPM floor still makes temu show up.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| The only Temu ad I've ever seen was during the Super Bowl.
| I'm guessing I'm in the wrong demographic?
| Semaphor wrote:
| I'm talking banner ads. I block almost everything
| everywhere, except my work. My boss (who doesn't block
| anything and accepts all tracking everywhere) doesn't get
| their ads. So I think they just have a scattershot
| approach.
| strix_varius wrote:
| I guess it's a testament to my daily driver (Brave browser)
| that I had to Google "what is temu."
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Do you actually include "what is" in your searches?
| 0x457 wrote:
| I would, this would hint google's classifier that I want
| a tl;dr and not temu's website.
| rsynnott wrote:
| More targeted, perhaps. "Meh, whoever" has always been cheaper
| per view than targeted.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I think you're right. I've been comparing these two directly:
|
| 2020: https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR1236561
| 09299...
|
| 2024: https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR1046216
| 81140...
|
| Looks like it's primarily the "location" demographic that is
| actually different. Neither ad excludes any demographics for
| Age or Gender but the 2024 includes specific locations for
| advertisements. So maybe fewer people in Europe and elsewhere
| seeing American political ads, which I'd assume is preferred
| by the advertisers. I can see how that would compound to this
| effect; fewer valuable targets and more value per target.
|
| (Another thing I notice is the ad run length. The 2020 ads
| ran for a single day (with over 10M views!) and the 2024 ads
| have been running for weeks or months. Not sure if that's
| relevant to the expenditure but it's interesting to note.)
| alwa wrote:
| Competition might be part of that too: more money chasing the
| same number of eyeballs as the election season ramped up (for
| that matter, probably chasing a smaller number of eyeballs, as
| critical segments of swing voters became more clear)
| charliebwrites wrote:
| Sounds like Google is making good money on this then
| unglaublich wrote:
| Gold rush shovels
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Ad impressions were artificially cheap during Covid as people
| spent more time on their devices. There was such an increase in
| prices post-Covid that it caused a bust in e-commerce
| companies. This was also partially caused by Apple privacy
| changes.
| matsemann wrote:
| In Norway it's forbidden with political ads _on TV_. Reasoning
| being that live images can have a huge influence, while also
| possibly being inflammatory and dumb down the debate. But main
| reason mainly is that it would give those with enough money to
| afford these "expensive tv ads" a leg up.
|
| However, this law hasn't been updated in decades. So it's still
| only TV ads that's illegal. So it feels like a quite arbitrary
| restriction now.
|
| Not saying it should be illegal on other media as well, but I do
| like the idea of it not being the size of your pockets
| determining the election. I guess that would be hard to police
| anyways now, with how influencers can sway stuff without it being
| an "ad", or how algorithms drive you into a rabbit hole of
| tailored content anyways.
| sneak wrote:
| The population of all of Norway is substantially less than that
| of the New York, LA, Chicago, or Houston metro areas.
|
| The scale of these markets or the spending related thereto is
| not comparable at all.
| maest wrote:
| ?
|
| What is your point?
| sneak wrote:
| Comparing what works in one with what works in the other is
| meaningless at best. The idea that any of these concepts
| could be generalized between the two is silly.
| matsemann wrote:
| I didn't say it worked, rather I said it kinda doesn't
| because it's so limited compared to where people get
| their ads nowadays. It also wasn't really meant as a
| comparison, more of a segue into a discussion around if
| the huge ad spending and influencing is good or bad.
| lysace wrote:
| Ah, scale-ism. ;-)
|
| I can't instinctively imagine how the size of a nation
| could realistically impact the results of this particular
| decision (banning political ads). Could you perhaps
| propose a realistic theory?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Well, there's an enormous amount more money to be made in
| the United States with political advertising, so you're
| going to get a great deal more pushback from advertisers
| on any such attempt /s
| lysace wrote:
| :-)
| triceratops wrote:
| Could any of these metro areas ban political ads on TV
| locally?
| fallingknife wrote:
| Also media outlets are free to propagandize all day. You can't
| restrict that because we don't want to restrict freedom of the
| press. But then that begs the question, don't all companies and
| individuals have the same freedom of the press that media
| companies do?
| ggregoire wrote:
| This is the most shocking part from an outsider POV. In
| Europe* mainstream media must obviously be neutral about each
| candidate but also give the same amount of airing time to
| each candidate. So like if candidate 1 is invited for a 10
| min interview, candidate 2 must be invited too and offered
| the same airing time. Meanwhile here Fox can just call Harris
| "stupid" (and CNN reciprocally call Trump whatever they
| want), lie to make them look good/bad and support their
| candidate all day long while spitting on the other one, and
| it's fine.
|
| Edit: my bad for generalizing all countries of Europe
| ztetranz wrote:
| How much do they have to be "neutral" when there are
| multiple candidates with significantly different
| popularity?
|
| If there are three candidates polling about equal then
| okay, it's easy to be neutral. But what if they're |40, 35,
| 25| or |60, 20, 20| or |55, 40, 5|?
|
| When does a minor candidate drop out of their neutrality?
| I'm not saying the general idea is bad but just pointing
| out that neutrality is kind of a vague concept. It's a bit
| like giving climate change deniers equal airtime with
| serious scientists.
| ggregoire wrote:
| I don't know if I follow you. My point was that TV
| networks can't do propaganda for a candidate, i.e. they
| can repeat the policies of each candidate (without giving
| you their opinion on those policies and trying to
| convince you if it's good or bad or modify them) and fact
| check what they say, but they can't tell you who to vote
| for or blatantly lie about them. Hence they are neutral.
| Meanwhile here Fox will just tell you to vote for Trump
| to save America and that if Harris wins she will turn
| America into communism, and millions of people are
| watching and believing it.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| If that's what the Fox presenters truly believe, should
| the government be allowed to censor them?
| lazide wrote:
| And this is the crux of the issue.
|
| Most countries don't have the pretense of free speech,
| and media is heavily regulated to be 'fair' (which means
| different things in each country).
|
| It has pros and cons.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| This is certainly not true for the mainstream media in all
| of europe. It might be true for public television stations
| in some countries.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Not in Poland. Before the last election we had 100%
| partisan media with the public media campaigning for the
| ruling party and the opposition controling the private
| media. Both had the Fox News/CNN/Pravda levels of
| objectivity showing a strange propaganda version of
| reality.
| pvaldes wrote:
| In Spain, public TV must show a list of parties with a
| minimum same time for even the tiniest craziest parties
| several times a day. After that, they are free to keep
| doing their thing.
|
| But the biggest parties can buy more time by several
| subterfuges. In resume they can pay somehow for receiving a
| special treatment. Every politician has a market value and
| TV programs always compete for showing adds to the most
| eyeballs possible, so they will try to fill their programs
| with the more popular politicians 'for free'.
|
| If I'm not wrong, private channels, funded without public
| money, can show people making pancakes all day it they
| want, but they will also try to maximize their advertising
| revenues.
| kldx wrote:
| How are TV ads any different from MDG posters or the AP ads at
| bus stops? We allow the latter in Norway and they're not that
| much cheaper than TV ads.
| matsemann wrote:
| They're different as in a video can influence you much
| stronger than a poster. But maybe you misunderstood me, my
| point was that the way we have it today isn't necessarily
| good either. Just curious about how one can give people good
| information, without it being too inflammatory, and without
| making an election a race about who has the most money.
| kldx wrote:
| No, I agree with your remark completely but I'm still
| ambivalent about the tradeoff.
|
| We agree there should at least be one medium of advertising
| for political parties. But where do we draw the line?
|
| For instance, I would be happy with making all ads plain
| text, standard font and size so that the ads won't abuse
| human attention by showing bright colors, happy images etc.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Reasoning being that live images can have a huge influence_
| kldx wrote:
| Adding some context here - TBane stations (the subway) in
| Oslo have posters that show live videos - usually static
| images with dynamic attention-grabbing effects but
| sometimes full blown videos too.
| acomjean wrote:
| Kind of new in the US, you can't stop people in the US from
| spending money on ads that amplify there speech. [1]
|
| Political spending is regulated, but we now have "political
| action committees" that can support candidates but can't
| coordinate with them. They can accept money from anyone in any
| amounts. Its brought tons of money from wealthy doners into
| polics in the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
|
| Comedey Centrals Colbert Report (Colbert playing a Conservative
| pundit) once set one a PAC with a political lawyer.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colbert_Super_PAC
|
| I'm not a lawyer..
|
| As someone who is "swing state adjacent", and avoiding them
| mostly this year, I feel for those under the crush of political
| ads.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| PACs can now coordinate with campaigns! What could possibly
| go wrong?
| sirspacey wrote:
| I've spent years blocking them or their source sites wherever
| they show up. It's been surprisingly effective over time.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > But main reason mainly is that it would give those with
| enough money to afford these "expensive tv ads" a leg up.
|
| I think the main reason for rules like this is because it's
| literally politicians and political parties shoveling huge
| amounts of cash to the media, and 1) one of the purposes of the
| media is to inform people about politicians and politics, and
| 2) the politicians who are elected will oversee the media and
| their mergers. An intimate relationship is created where
| democracy demands an adversarial one.
|
| It's rotten. It's the same reason no media can criticize any
| drug in the US, since they were allowed to advertise to the
| public. I'm sure there's some value in having people ask for
| specific drugs from their doctors, but that's minimal; the main
| value is being immune to any criticism unless an e.g.
| television station wants to lose 20% of their income.
| teach wrote:
| It's fascinating. I'm at home and my pi-hole ad-blocking rules
| apparently trigger for that page, so although I can see the
| titles, all the images just fail to load.
| scythmic_waves wrote:
| Oh _that's_ what's happening. I was wondering why so many
| images were broken but I hadn't investigated.
| xyst wrote:
| I don't run a pi hole but use quad9 dns. Getting the same thing
| yccs27 wrote:
| Some filters trigger simply on the word "ads" in the url.
| lysace wrote:
| From the insights tab, with a date range of the past year, the
| state where the second most ad money was spent was California
| (after Pennsylvania).
|
| California is not even close to being a swing state, afaik?
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| There are a ton of smaller races in California that end up
| hotly contested. The state has big money on both sides of those
| smaller races.
| fallingknife wrote:
| There are lots of people on the ballot besides Harris and
| Trump.
| pchristensen wrote:
| California has over 10 million people more than Texas. It's
| huge, so absolute number comparisons are often confusing.
|
| As usual, XKCD (can't find the comic) -
| https://x.com/xkcd/status/1339348000750104576?lang=en
| lysace wrote:
| Sure, but it's a winner-takes-all situation.
|
| (That tweet is excellent.)
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > can't find the comic
|
| The tweet quotes the alt-text of https://xkcd.com/2399/ "2020
| Election Map":
|
| > There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more
| Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New
| York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts,
| more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more
| Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont.
| swatcoder wrote:
| California is strongly "blue" on the national issues these
| days, but that doesn't mean that there aren't hotly contested
| elections and ballot measures at issue within the state.
|
| Seperately, it brings potential as a _source_ of funding to
| spend elsewhere specifically because some of the national
| questions aren 't really open. If you are confident in the ROI,
| you can run ads there to drive fundraising -- especially early
| on -- and then spend those raised funds in contested elections
| elsewhere.
|
| The same dynamic happens in soundly "red" markets, although
| that may not be apparent in this dataset because of the
| specific demographics of Google advertising.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I'm probably going to mail my ballot on Monday. Are there any
| particular hot button issues in California to look out for?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| IMO this year the ballot props are much more meaningful to
| the average person than usual. The perennial niche prosp
| about kidney dialysis aren't making a showing for what
| feels like the first time in a decade.
|
| There are some big proposed changes to how local bond
| measures work, rent control, and the criminal justice
| system, IMO those are the ones spending the most time
| researching and considering the consequences.
|
| As far as the more niche ones this time around, there's the
| same-sex marriage prop (which I believe is purely symbolic
| and doesn't have an actual impact on same sex marriage in
| California) and the prop designed to force the AIDs
| Healthcare Foundation to spend more money on AIDS
| healthcare (IIUC currently they spend most of their money
| on political causes like lobbying against rezoning that
| would allow denser housing)
| SllX wrote:
| > there's the same-sex marriage prop (which I believe is
| purely symbolic and doesn't have an actual impact on same
| sex marriage in California)
|
| It removes an on-the-books clause that was rendered
| inoperable by a SCOTUS decision. I think it's a step
| above symbolic since any future changes in SCOTUS
| jurisprudence reversing or partially reversing Obergefell
| (which I don't think are at all likely with this court on
| this issue, but it doesn't hurt to be prudent) could make
| it operable again.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I think prop 8 was previously nullified by Hollingsworth
| v. Perry?
|
| Not saying it'll never matter, but if OP has a finite
| amount of focus IMO it's better to spend it on laws that
| will have an immediate impact over ones that require
| multiple hypotheticals to come into play
| swatcoder wrote:
| > Finite amount of focus.
|
| It revises one statement in the state constitution in a
| very straightforward way.
|
| It takes an infintessimal amount of focus to decide if
| you're in favor of that change or not.
|
| Whether the reason it's on this year's ballot is neurotic
| or strategic is on a level with whether you should buy 4
| or 6 rolls of toilet paper next time you're at the store.
| You already know if you need toilet paper or not, so that
| difference is relatively inconsequential.
| SllX wrote:
| > I think prop 8 was previously nullified by
| Hollingsworth v. Perry?
|
| Looks like it. That decision came down around the first
| time I excised the daily news from my life after spending
| too many years as a news junkie and before I valued
| reading court opinions so I missed it.
|
| Re: Focus: Most ballot measures that have ever appeared
| on the ballot aren't worth the paper they were printed
| on, yet they're still there. Short of eliminating the
| popular ballot initiative process--something I could get
| behind--we're long past the point of asking whether
| something is "worth" voting on for a reason like that.
| Someone wanted it on the ballot badly enough to make it
| happen and by our own laws that's basically their right,
| so it's on the ballot. Just like the mofos who always try
| to get that dumb kidney dialysis measure passed almost
| every election cycle.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Prop 8 has essentially become a trigger law banning gay
| marriage, the same as many states pre- _Dobbs_ had
| trigger laws banning abortion that would become
| operational as soon as the Supreme Court lifted the
| national rule against them. While it may viewe by some as
| unlikely in the near term, thr fact is there is no
| guarantee kf any warning (much less sufficient earning
| for signature gathering and an election to repeal it)
| before such a change would go into effect. Removing the
| time bomb from the State Constitution is a prudent thing
| to do if you are at all concerned with the right it would
| deny.
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| > same-sex marriage prop (which I believe is purely
| symbolic...
|
| Same-sex marriage is currently outlawed by the California
| constitution as a result of Prop 8 from 2008. That clause
| is void as a result of the _Hollingsworth_ and
| _Obergefell_ decisions, but there are multiple members of
| the Supreme Court who have explicitly said that they
| would like to overturn Obergefell, so it 's a good idea
| to get ahead of the potential catastrophe by taking the
| bad law fully off the books, rather than relying on a
| capricious and extremist court to stick to a rights-
| defending decision for any amount of time.
| triceratops wrote:
| Doesn't the Respect for Marriage Act [1] ensure they
| can't roll back same-sex marriage like they did abortion?
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_for_Marriage_Act
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Doesn 't the Respect for Marriage Act [1] ensure they
| can't roll back same-sex marriage like they did
| abortion?_
|
| No. RMA lets states ban gay marriage. It just requires
| them to honour _other_ states ' gay marriages.
| triceratops wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification. I still wonder if it
| matters all that much. You only need one state to allow
| non-residents to marry on Zoom, and it's a non-issue in
| practical terms.
|
| States banning same-sex marriage within their borders
| takes away the dignity and respect of same-sex marriages
| and couples, so it's quite awful. But they can't actively
| prosecute people for crossing state lines to marry. They
| have to provide them the same rights as hetero-married
| couples, even for things like state benefits and taxes.
| tivert wrote:
| > Seperately, it brings potential as a source of funding to
| spend elsewhere specifically because some of the national
| questions aren't really open. If you are confident in the
| ROI, you can run ads there to drive fundraising -- especially
| early on -- and then spend those raised funds in contested
| elections elsewhere.
|
| Exactly. A lot of the ads are fundraising ads, like this one:
| https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR059412260615.
| ..
| candiddevmike wrote:
| California has an enormous economy and holding office at any
| level of government there opens a lot of "doors".
| sangnoir wrote:
| > California is not even close to being a swing state, afaik?
|
| As the most populous state, California has a _lot_ of political
| donors - likely the most registered members in a state for both
| major parties. 1 in 8 Americans are in California. Those many
| small-value & high-roller donors help finance the swing state
| operations, but need to be activated. Donors are why both
| Republican and Democratic party candidates held events in
| California, when it's not in play.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| The population of California is so large that even though
| nationally it is solidly Democratic, there are more Republicans
| in California than in smaller states that are seen as solidly
| Republican. This matters in the local and state government
| elections.
| bvirb wrote:
| Recent spending in CA (Sep 1-now) looks like it's heavily
| landlord associations running ads against prop 33, which would
| allow for new rent controls.
|
| https://adstransparency.google.com/political?region=21137&to...
|
| As a CA voter I find it very awesome that I could look that up
| so easily.
|
| EDIT: The sort order isn't part of the URL, so you have to sort
| by Amount spent: high to low -- blew that one Google!
| pembrook wrote:
| Democrat, Republican, or Independent, Google gets rich either
| way. You can clearly see price per view has gone up dramatically
| from the historical comparison. $2B in Google ad spend so far
| this cycle.
|
| Also interesting, the New York Times is the most viewed ad of
| this election season, having been seen 10M+ times.
|
| It appears the only true winners of US presidential election
| mania are Google and the Media.
| netsharc wrote:
| In the middle of the 2008 Dem primaries (H. Clinton vs Obama)
| it was obvious it won't be much of a race anymore, Obama was
| going to clinch it, but the media narrative was still
| portraying it as one... it made me wonder how much of it came
| because if the audience thinks it's a race, then they'll tune
| in, and more eyeballs = better ad sales.
|
| Ah, Allah bless the everlasting Attention Economy!
| akomtu wrote:
| NFL is a microcosm of american politics. Two opponent teams,
| each has a trainer, a rich donor, some ideology and millions of
| fanatics who vote for their team no matter what. It may seem
| like the goal is to win the game on the stadium, but behind the
| scenes it's a well calculated auction of advertisements.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Your first sentence is spot on. Your analysis is dead wrong.
| edm0nd wrote:
| I disagree. The point is kinda spot on. Their end goal is
| to have their team perform the best possible in order to
| sell out tickets/stadiums/merch and have high ratings from
| viewership and syndication.
|
| It's about as American as you can get.
| j1mmie wrote:
| In the age of information warfare, ads are a weapon and Google
| is the modern day Colt. If you sell guns to the North, the
| South needs more guns from you. If you sell to the criminals,
| the cops need more guns from you.
|
| Not sure what this is called but it's definitely not "don't be
| evil"
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The term I heard was fence-setters. It's a little off though,
| becsuse it implies your allegiance changes. Google allegiance
| is always clearly on money.
| mwest217 wrote:
| Why in the world is a generic NY Times ad categorized as a
| political ad?
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| Good question. These ads don't look political to me:
|
| The New York Times:
| https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR047539896236...
|
| The Economist:
| https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR129237820966...
| YZF wrote:
| If certain media is associated with a certain political
| position then one could consider their advertising to be
| political?
| hammock wrote:
| The top-spent ad in the last 7 days included no targeting other
| than "nationwide, 18+." That seems folly, doesn't it? Huge waste?
| silverquiet wrote:
| Wouldn't an essentially untargeted ad be the most expensive to
| run? Meaning that something like that will always be the top-
| spent?
| hammock wrote:
| How "expensive" (in the sense of total spend) an ad is is
| entirely driven by what budget you allow for the order.
|
| But without targeting constraints you will get essentially
| remnants and are unlikely to reach any of your actual target,
| e.g. undecided likely voters in swing states
| mh- wrote:
| Not necessarily. If you bid low, you're effectively picking
| up "remnant" inventory that no one else was willing to pay to
| target.
| nradov wrote:
| A lot of nationwide ads aren't intended to directly influence
| voting. Rather they are campaign donation solicitations to get
| more money to run future ads targeted to undecided voters in
| swing states. Just about everyone 18+ nationwide could afford
| to make a small campaign contribution if they care about the
| outcome.
| swayvil wrote:
| Talk about normalized bad behavior.
| mettamage wrote:
| Seems like a general handy site in general as a sort of Google
| Trends alternative. I know it's not an actual alternative but to
| pick up on certain trends from advertizers.
| cedws wrote:
| Political advertising just makes democracy look like a total
| joke. If you can buy votes by shoving ads in peoples' faces
| that's not a democracy, that's an oligarchy.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Circenses et panem
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm confused how that applies to political ads.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| There is a perspective from which all politics is just
| entertainment with audience participation, while The Powers
| That Be control the things that actually matter.
|
| (I'm not saying I endorse this view, I'm just trying to
| explain)
|
| t. Kooky conspiracy theory collector
| unclad5968 wrote:
| Well anyone can buy ads so it's not really an oligarchy.
|
| What alternative would you propose for candidates to get
| they're name out?
| Biganon wrote:
| Equal time on national television, by law. Like they do in
| France for example.
| thrance wrote:
| Honestly it doesn't work that well. Far-rights channels
| will push left-wing candidates to graveyard slots, or put
| them against 3 trained "interviewers", etc.
|
| Maybe it's still better than in the US? It's far from
| perfect.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| In Spain at least, radio and TV time slots for political
| ads are assigned by the Electoral Commission in a session
| which can be attended by representatives of each
| candidacy.
| addaon wrote:
| So replace oligopoly with gerontocracy? Who consumes
| national television?
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Then enforce equal slots per online platform and forbid
| targeting by demographic cohort.
| mh- wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious how this works. What constitutes a
| platform?
|
| Is TikTok a platform? Reddit? HN?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Why don't you make a proposal for what you think is the
| best approach?
| unclad5968 wrote:
| Fortunately our government can't force private entities
| to sponsor specific political candidates, due to our
| constitutional right to freedom of speech.
| unclad5968 wrote:
| As in state sponsored television? No one is watching CSPAN
| to learn anything about candidates.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Yes, that's the problem. American media is a sewer which
| tends inexorably toward the lowest common denominator,
| with dismal effects on its polity.
| thfuran wrote:
| They might if that's the only way to see political
| debates and such.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Ah yes, I'm extremely glad that both myself and Charles Koch
| have the equal right to buy ads. I see no problems that could
| ever occur because we're equally legally allowed to spend
| unlimited money on political advertising.
|
| Now... How many ads will 5 bucks buy? I'm pretty deeply in
| debt, but I could probably skip a meal in order to fully
| exercise my political freedom.
| sweeter wrote:
| anyone can buy ads but who buys the majority of ads and ads
| with the greatest overall impact and impression? That is very
| obviously skewed. Campaigns directly have limitations on
| these things, PACs however, do not.
|
| and to your question there, one example is to look at Japan.
| They give candidates an allotted minimum amount of time on TV
| for free. A candidate gets platformed purely by running. Not
| only that but we already do grass roots calling/texting/door-
| knocking campaigns... it is all definitely possible, but
| unlikely given that the current organization of elections
| heavily favors the entrenched two party system and the
| structures that back them (corporations, PACs, private
| interests, party structures etc...)
|
| When our entire system requires billions to run and win an
| election, we are guaranteeing ourselves that we will continue
| to live in an Oligarchy.
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| > and to your question there, one example is to look at
| Japan. They give candidates an allotted minimum amount of
| time on TV for free. A candidate gets platformed purely by
| running.
|
| I would be willing to try it in one of our laboratories-of-
| democracy, but my expectation is that a lot of people would
| run just for the free opportunity to self-promote. "Hi my
| name is Ron Popeil and I'm running for city council. I
| firmly believe that every homeowner deserves, nay, needs a
| Ronco food dehydrator!"
| gosub100 wrote:
| How about advertising anything other than a product or
| service is illegal? No more campaign ads, period. You want to
| know more about a candidate? Go research her yourself!
| gosub100 wrote:
| Yet when another country does it? "You're _meddling_ in the
| election! ".
|
| Mhmm, okay.
| hfdgvvff wrote:
| Yeah, freedom of speech is a joke.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The concept of freedom of speech does not imply a free
| platform to spread your speech.
| leereeves wrote:
| I think the movie The Insider expressed it well: "The press
| is free, for anyone that owns one."
|
| Apparently that comes from an older expression dating back
| at least to a 1960 quote in The New Yorker: "Freedom of the
| press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
| pawelmurias wrote:
| The alternative to buying ads is buying newspapers and other
| media outlets.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Well there is no way to ban political messaging in-practice, so
| we have to regulate it. Also, imo, making education accessible
| to the masses is important for combating the effectiveness of
| straight-up misinformation. Right now a good chunk of the
| population doesn't even seem to understand why they believe
| things generally, so there's plenty room to improve.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Political advertising emerged within a decade of the birth of
| the republic. Abraham Lincoln famously had his face plastered
| everywhere, and his campaign monikers like "Honest Abe" are
| still in use today.
|
| The real push toward oligarchy, in my opinion, is the Supreme
| Court decision in Citizens United vs FEC. The only available
| remedy at this point is for the American electorate to stop
| relying on political ads and make a decision on policy
| alignment alone (like the Founding Fathers did) - this is a
| totally unrealistic goal in today's polarized environment.
| outside1234 wrote:
| This. Something like 5 people are almost entirely funding
| Trump's slump (hard to call this mess a campaign) towards the
| White House and for sure they are going to want pay back.
| This is what oligarchy looks like.
| fakedang wrote:
| 5 people? Last time I was on X, nearly every Silicon
| Valley/tech billionaire was crooning from the rooftops for
| Trump.
|
| You could argue it's the native X bias, but these were all
| the famous billionaires and multimillionaires who are top
| names in the SV space. All rooting for a Trump win, perhaps
| anticipating a quick Vance presidency.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Which is ironic since in 2016 everyone on SV was holding
| back tears of sadness over Trump getting elected. Oh how
| the turntables.
| outside1234 wrote:
| I do believe that something like 70% of SV can't stand
| Trump. You can see that in the insane amount of money
| Kamala has raised from SV (which probably even dwarfs
| Trump's XX person oligarch haul).
|
| It is largely the sociopaths at the very very top that
| are Trump donors.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| SV only cares about whoever will help them make more
| money. Everything else is virtue signaling by champagne
| socialists pretending to care about current day social
| issues and the struggles of the lower classes.
| fakedang wrote:
| Somebody (an SV VC actually) once gave me some advice:
| Silicon Valley VCs will be all nice to you in front of
| you but talk shit behind your back. East Coast VCs will
| outright tell you your product is shit and that you are
| shit, just like your n-th order ancestors.
|
| It was very good advice.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Entirely possible - I spend as little time as possible
| thinking about this and am just looking forward to our
| national nightmare of Trump being a plausible president
| candidate being over the week after next.
| fullshark wrote:
| He's a plausible candidate and he's at worst a coin flip
| to win. Almost a 3-2 favorite based on betting markets.
|
| https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-
| win-t...
| outside1234 wrote:
| You mean the betting markets the oligarchs have gamed? :)
|
| Though I will agree with you that he has a coin flip
| chance of being president, which is totally terrifying.
| Is that what it felt like to be in Germany with Hitler?
| zamadatix wrote:
| A lot talk but only a ~half dozen actually bother to put
| together 100s of millions where their mouths are about
| it. I haven't looked this year but usually Bloomberg tops
| the chart on the blue side.
| labster wrote:
| Of course all of the billionaires are rooting for Trump,
| because they want to be in business next year. Harris
| will understand voting for other parties, but Trump
| punishes disloyalty.
| NekkoDroid wrote:
| > 5 people? Last time I was on X, nearly every Silicon
| Valley/tech billionaire was crooning from the rooftops
| for Trump.
|
| From what I heard Bezos interfered with Washington Post
| for (one of?) the first time to make them not post on
| endorsing a candidate for president (first time in 36
| years).
|
| What the actual reason behind it is is unsure, but they
| say they wanna "return to their roots". I honestly doubt
| it and expect its more political interest like to not be
| on Trumps "land in prison because radical marxist
| leftist" since he didn't do anything like this in the
| previous years.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Trump's slump [...] towards the White House
|
| Somehow my mind supplies "slouch" instead, probably because
| of a poem [0]:
|
| > And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
|
| > Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
|
| [0] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-
| second-comi...
| specproc wrote:
| > The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of
| passionate intensity.
|
| Every time I read this poem it nails something.
|
| Incredible sense of tension and dread.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| It's fitting that you would quote Yeats, yet another guy
| who predicted an apocalypse that never came.
| Terr_ wrote:
| It's a poem by a poet published right "the Great War", so
| I'm not sure what kind of predictive-standard you're
| trying to apply here.
|
| More generally, predicting a disaster is sometimes an
| important step in ensuring it never occurs. Self-negating
| prophecies can have high utility.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| While I am sure we would agree on the dangers posed by
| certain wealthy donors _on both sides_ , the ruling of
| Citizen's United allows for something far more insidious -
| effectively a nullification of regulations set forth in a
| bipartisan campaign finance reform act eight years earlier
| (BCRA).
|
| Essentially what we have today is a free-for-all. Any
| corporation can spend unlimited amounts of money (commonly
| referred to as "dark money") to influence politics, with
| virtually no oversight (i.e. FEC reporting requirements).
| As an individual, my ability to fund political campaigns is
| limited to thresholds set at the local and federal level,
| but a billion dollar company like FTX can give millions of
| dollars to politicians who put forward favorable
| regulations. Billion dollar AI companies will control
| potential future regulation in a similar manner. I'm
| oversimplifying here, and added some helpful links for
| anyone interested:
|
| - _Two Challenges for Campaign Finance Disclosure After
| Citizens United and Doe v. Reed_ -
| https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol19/iss4/8/
|
| - _The Death of Non-Resident Contribution Limit Bans and
| the Birth of the New Small, Swing State_ -
| https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol28/iss4/4/
|
| - _Why Contribution Limits on a Hybrid PAC's Independent-
| Expenditure Arm are Impermissible_ -
| https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol25/iss1/10/
| shadowmanifold wrote:
| You could even say it started with things like Thomas Paine's
| pamphlet propaganda.
|
| It seems the problem is we have a system that was born from
| the printing press and this system simply doesn't work in the
| age of the internet.
|
| All that really holds it together are these religious
| sentiments about the inherent good of democracy. Sentiments
| that have almost nothing to do with lived experience at this
| point.
|
| It seems to me because of the scaling properties, the
| internet finds an issue free equilibrium of "vote for me
| because the other person sucks."
|
| Then it is just a race to get the most views on how much the
| opponent sucks.
| Discordian93 wrote:
| "vote for me because the other person sucks." seems to be
| indeed the status quo that politicians in all democracies
| feel.mlst comfortable with. I think we need to add an
| "execute everyone on the ballot" option so that politicians
| have to do positive campaign because if their only
| contribution is making people disgusted with politics
| altogether, they'd be risking their lives.
| NekkoDroid wrote:
| A major problem of the US 2 party system _is_ that there
| really is someone specifically you can point at to
| villainize. With multiple parties its much harder to say
| "everyone except us is a villain" (unless you kinda wanna
| be seen as crazy), in the worst case it's calling out the
| extremist parties, which still leaves room for many other
| parties.
| tgv wrote:
| Bezos simply told one of the leading newspapers what to do.
| Musk buys votes. Oligarchy is about to become reality, and it's
| powered by useful idiots.
| sweeter wrote:
| its been reality...
| leereeves wrote:
| Musk pays people to sign a petition, which is legal.
| reaperducer wrote:
| So legal that he stopped after being warned by the feds.
| leereeves wrote:
| Who says he stopped? I can't find that in the news, and
| the offer is still up at:
|
| https://petition.theamericapac.org/
|
| Even the Biden DOJ only warned him that it "might be
| illegal". They're stretching the law, trying to apply a
| law against paying people to register to vote, but Elon
| will pay people who are already registered so that's
| quite a stretch.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Widely reported today.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Germany doesn't have negative ads criticizing opponents (at
| least it didn't have them when I lived there). This makes them
| refreshingly boring. I would guess at least 90% of the US ads
| are basically "the other guy is bad. Be afraid" without much
| content. Getting rid of the negative ads would help a lot.
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| You might find this interesting!
|
| "The Impact of Negative Political Advertisement on Voter
| Behaviour in Germany - an Experiment"
|
| https://www.kas.de/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=f8324712.
| ..
|
| "Negative campaigning has been a feature of German political
| campaigns from the very beginning of the Federal Republic...
| the central idea of this paper is to examine the considerable
| difference between negative campaigning in Germany compared
| with that in the US."
|
| It seems like you're correct that German political ads are
| almost never US-style 'attack ads' because among Germans,
| "negative campaigning in Germany is much more risky for the
| attacker than the impact it may have on the attacked party"
| datavirtue wrote:
| Sounds like their system isn't in the later stages of
| cancer like the US.
| NekkoDroid wrote:
| I think part of the reason why attack style ads don't
| work is because you usually need to choose some
| "villain", which just isn't feasable with more than 2
| parties since voters will still have other options than
| you. Well, unless you vilify every party except your own
| but that kinda makes your party look crazy.
|
| The closest I can think of is somewhat vilifying the
| extreme ends of the political spectrum since most parties
| can agree on that (assuming you have more than like 5
| parties).
| 0x457 wrote:
| Every since election cycle started I've been bombarded by two
| kinds of text messages (local election):
|
| - Don't vote for that guy he is a pedo
|
| - Don't listen to this, he isn't a pedo, and also endorsed by
| local police department
| imiric wrote:
| Political advertising is just the tip of the corruption
| iceberg. When lobbying and gerrymandering is legal, can you
| really claim you're living in a democracy?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _When lobbying and gerrymandering is legal_
|
| Have you ever given money to the EFF? They're lobbyists. Call
| your represenatative? That's lobbying. Lobbying, _i.e._
| constituents talking to electeds, is fundamental to
| democracy.
| rurp wrote:
| A huge industrial corporation spending millions on
| lobbyists in order to make it easier to dump pollutants
| into the environment without consequence, increasing their
| profits at the expense of local populations, is _also_ a
| form of lobbying. I would bet that amoral corporate
| lobbying accounts for far more activity than good mission
| driven orgs like the EFF.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _huge industrial corporation spending millions on
| lobbyists in order to make it easier to dump pollutants
| into the environment without consequence, increasing
| their profits at the expense of local populations, is
| also a form of lobbying_
|
| Yes. You're describing a policy disagreement between a
| polluter and everyone else. Pick any political system and
| you'll have the same divide. (Again, lobbying involves
| hiring someone to present the case to an elected. It's
| categorically distinct from giving to a PAC or campaign.)
|
| > _would bet that amoral corporate lobbying accounts for
| far more activity than good mission driven orgs like the
| EFF_
|
| I mean sure, for a given value of "good." Social policy
| lobbying tends to vastly outstrip commercial lobbying, in
| part because the latter is more focussed.
| analog31 wrote:
| Gerrymandering isn't legal. The Constitution says that the
| states shall have a republican form of government. The
| founders intended this to mean an elective republic. If the
| government chooses its own electors, then it's not a republic
| by any wild stretch of the imagination.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah, we have the whole package right now. Grift on top of
| grift where trust and accountability wither rapidly.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I tend to agree. I was thinking last night that all elections
| should be write-in only. You want to vote for someone to fill
| an office, you have to write their name. This would change the
| entire system because you wouldn't be able to vote party in ten
| seconds flat. The propaganda and parties and grift are so
| cemented in that making party-line voting difficult seems like
| a logical first step. Ranked choice wouldn't hurt either.
| Ninjinka wrote:
| Why can't they show the ads that violated policy on the ads
| transparency page? Seems like part of the transparency would be
| seeing what they removed.
| standardUser wrote:
| Now THAT would be extremely interesting.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Fascinating stuff.
|
| I went down a rabbit hole with this particlar ad:
| https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR132650406472...
|
| It links to a website called fultongrandjury.com, which I at
| first thought would be an official government website, and what
| initially made me curious was the idea of spending money to
| advertise a government website, getting this additional
| credibility. Like, if the facts are so strongly on your side that
| you merely need to spend ad money to point people to official
| sources, that's a strong signal.
|
| > Fulton County Jury is a project of Our Community Media, Small
| Town American Media, and Small Town Truth.
|
| None of these are linked, but they can be found with Google. _Our
| Community Media_ appears to be a website with stories scraped
| from Google News, one even has the Google News default image.
| _Small Town America Media_ claims to support Small Businesses,
| Telehealth in Rural America and Digital Literacy. Their latest
| news: Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws Are Political Theater by
| State Politicians.
|
| Small Town Truth is probably the most inspiring:
|
| > For over 200 Years
|
| > American has fought for truth
|
| > Now....
|
| > We need you to help
|
| They have page dedicated to "discovering truth", telling it apart
| from "russian fake news"[1] which is copied from and links to a
| medium post.
|
| None of these websites have information about who's behind them.
| No person. No address. They have contact pages, but these are
| just forms, probably to add you to some spam mailing list.
|
| [1]: https://www.smalltowntruth.org/discover-truth
| jodacola wrote:
| Small Town Truth says it's a registered 501(c)(3). I just found
| it by searching here: https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/
|
| It leads to further rabbit holes I don't have the time to dig
| into now, but I might later, because now I'm very curious where
| it leads.
| jodacola wrote:
| Meetings ended and I couldn't wait to get back!
|
| So, searching via that Exempt Organization Search led to a
| 501(c)(3) letter being issued to Small Town Truth, mailed to
| a residential address in the care of the "Better Narrative
| Group" - another "interesting" site[0].
|
| Doing a little more searching, I've found another 501(c)(3)
| in care of Better Narrative Group: Soul of a Nation Media.
| Similar setup. In trying to find more information to connect
| some dots, I found Soul of a Nation Media's taxes were filed
| by ChurchBiz[1], but this hasn't led to anything interesting.
|
| Both Small Town Truth and Soul of a Nation Media changed
| addresses to a PO Box in Virginia in 2022.
|
| Oh, and here are another two I just found related to Better
| Narrative Group: American Volunteer Corps[2], Better
| Neighbors Network[3].
|
| To not assume malice, maybe it's a concerned citizen trying,
| in their own way, by establishing these organizations.
| Something feels off about the sites, though - not much
| content, a little dead behind the eyes, and I can't put my
| finger on the actual purpose of the sites. Odd.
|
| [0] https://www.betternarrativegroup.org
|
| [1] https://www.churchbiz.com
|
| [2] https://www.americanvolunteercorps.org/
|
| [3] https://www.betterneighborsnetwork.org/
|
| edit: formatting
| dartos wrote:
| Not at my desktop, so I can't really dig into the technical
| details of these sites, but by the look of them, they were
| all made either with the same tool and general components
| OR they were all made by the same group (maybe the same
| contracting firm or something)
| neom wrote:
| The images are all hosted on wix, so I guess they're all
| built with wix (I checked through them all to see if I
| could track the images back to anything, it's all stock
| photos)
|
| The weirdest thing I find about everything in there is
| this hobby lobby page:
| https://www.smalltowntruth.org/our-economy
| dartos wrote:
| Yknow maybe these are just actual us political groups...
| they have to exist, right?
| crazygringo wrote:
| "Real" legitimate domestic political groups usually have
| the names of the people running them, with bios, etc. Who
| founded them, etc.
|
| They try to make it easy to figure out who they are so
| you trust them.
|
| When that information is missing it's extremely
| suspicious, and rightly so.
| uoaei wrote:
| I think that's a pretty obsolete take that hasn't been
| reliable since Obama '08 and the "digital strategy".
|
| Not saying anything about "should", zealous downvoters...
| singlepaynews wrote:
| Why? Do you know something I don't? Intuitively to me it
| seems like "unverified identities are usually fake" is
| the core tenant of post-internet media literacy.
| uoaei wrote:
| Have you interacted with any political organizations in
| the last 10 years offline? If/when you interact with them
| online, do they claim provenance through some actual
| recognized body or just some vagaries around how they
| want to depict their alignments?
|
| If this was such a big deal, where is the hubbub about
| pretty much every email in my inbox?
|
| NGPVan (for instance, on the Dem side) doesn't require
| much except the bare minimum of legal registration for
| political organizations, I don't buy that what is
| essentially a "marketplace for voters' email addresses"
| suddenly legitimizes anyone who signs up for their
| service.
|
| My point is, if this is a problem, it has been one for a
| long time and the cultural zeitgeist seems to have simply
| ignored this except in cases that can be used to demonize
| enemies.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't understand anything you're talking about.
|
| Nobody likes e-mail spam from anonymous groups. NGPVan
| has an about page that lists who runs it with photos,
| they have an office and a phone number, they have a
| Wikipedia page. But they don't legitimize anyone else, as
| you seem to be suggesting.
|
| Anonymous interference like this _hasn 't_ been a problem
| for a long time, contrary to your assertion -- it's very
| specific to this and the past two elections, because it's
| a tactic especially used by foreign influence like
| Russia. And this isn't about "demonizing enemies", it's
| about identifying illegal foreign influence, which is a
| very real thing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Both Small Town Truth and Soul of a Nation Media changed
| addresses to a PO Box in Virginia in 2022_
|
| What else is at that P.O. box?
| jodacola wrote:
| Good question. Uncovering some more things here, with a
| wider web.
|
| Another tax-exempt org was established in 2021 (like the
| others), named NORTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEER CORPS. This one,
| though, was established in Asheville, NC. Like the
| others, it was moved to the same P.O. Box in 2022. It was
| registered under the care of a different name. Its taxes
| were also filed by ChurchBiz.
|
| Another entity registered at this address is AMA AL
| PROMIJO. This has a web presence like the other original
| sites[0]. It was also registered in 2021 and changed
| address in 2022 to the P.O. Box, but was registered in
| care of another different name. The fact that the website
| has the same feel as those others that branched off Small
| Town Truth is odd, though.
|
| There is also a BORN BROWN INSTITUTE, which has some
| different presences on LinkedIn and such[1].
|
| Now that this address appears associated with some
| different non-profits, I wonder if there's some entity
| that acts as an agent for helping establishing non-
| profits operating out of this P.O. Box, hence the mix of
| entities I'm now bumping into.
|
| Still. It's an interesting web here I can't quite make
| sense of. I'm also being a little circumspect here in
| order to not accidentally dox someone, but the research
| is fairly straightforward with the Exempt Organization
| Search site and some googling.
|
| [0] https://www.ama-al-projimo.org/
|
| [1] https://www.wjbf.com/business/press-releases/ein-
| presswire/6...
| jodacola wrote:
| One more interesting update: AMA AL PROMIJO was
| established in care of an individual named Eric Sapp.
| Some googling landed me on an org's site named Public
| Democracy. One of the other team members at the
| company[0] is the person named in care of one of the
| NORTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEER CORPS.
|
| Seems we have some glue here! Time to learn more about
| this Public Democracy thing to try to figure out their
| angle.
|
| [0] https://www.publicdemocracy.io/teammates
| riley123 wrote:
| Here's the website that has info about the program, and
| lists AMA AL PROMIJO as a 'partner':
| https://www.publicdemocracyamerica.org/better-angels-
| program
|
| All these orgs are taking advantage of the 'Google
| Grants' program, which provides up to $10,000 per month
| in free search advertising for registered nonprofits.
| $120,000/yr in free ads for the cost of registering a
| nonprofit seems like a no-brainer for spreading a
| message. Likely drives up ad prices and gives a nice tax-
| break to Google, so they win too.
|
| https://www.google.com/grants/faq/
| fHr wrote:
| this is insane and shows how dangerous big tech is, break
| them up already
| actionfromafar wrote:
| These incentives are incredibly misaligned. How big is
| this tax loop hole to Google? Truck sized or Battlestar
| sized?
| rapind wrote:
| So to summarize, someone saw the Google Grants program,
| figured out how to abuse it and scaled it up. I wouldn't
| even call this much of a loop hole because it seems so
| obvious.
|
| How widespread / prevalent is this? Does Google care? Is
| Google incentivized to not care? Is it such a small drop
| in the bucket that it's basically irrelevant (and
| boring)?
|
| I wonder if we'd see the same on other ad platforms like
| Facebook.
| euroderf wrote:
| headline: Russian disinfo webring busted by HN diligence
| datavirtue wrote:
| Spot on.
| zamadatix wrote:
| When I see .com I immediately assume it's not a government site
| until proven otherwise. It's sometimes done, particularly for
| affiliated and contracted sites, but also anyone can just go
| register a .com (see the history of whitehouse.com - from porn
| to gambling and more) plus government ones overwhelming tend to
| be .gov, .org, .us, etc anyways. (.gov is really the only one
| of those that's a particular guarantee of much but the others
| are at least slightly more likely to be real sites).
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _fultongrandjury.com, which I at first thought would be an
| official government website_
|
| Are you being straight serious here, or are you doing a
| rhetoric thing where _" I was confused"_ is just a shorthand
| for _" I think some people might plausibly be confused"_?
|
| I could see some people who aren't net-saavy thinking that
| domain looks like a government website, but I'm surprised that
| anybody here might see a .com like that and think it an
| official anything. Official government websites in America
| almost always use a .gov, and when they don't they usually have
| some goofy long string of subdomains like
| www.courts.state.md.us (I'm not 100% sure that is actually
| official, but it's in the style government websites use and if
| an unofficial website used that style I'd definitely consider
| it an attempt to deceive people.)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| usps.com. amtrak.com. mta.info. These were just the first
| that came to mind.
|
| I think there are specific reasons behind each of these, but
| the fact is that I am used to interacting with government
| websites that end in .com, so it wouldn't surprise me if some
| county's court system also used a .com.
| Discordian93 wrote:
| Those are state run businesses, not exactly government
| agencies.
| edm0nd wrote:
| USPS is a federal government agency tho
|
| https://www.usa.gov/agencies/u-s-postal-service
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| None of those are government websites.
| kylecazar wrote:
| It seems to be the work of a man named Scott Shalett. Not sure
| in what capacity.
|
| https://www.publicdemocracy.io/scottshalett
| idrios wrote:
| Looking at that smalltowntruth website reminds me of someone I
| met in 2015.
|
| I stayed at a guy's airbnb in Denver. He was in breach of his
| renting agreement by hosting the airbnb and had previously
| spent about a year in jail (forget for what). He said he had 2
| websites that he was promoting on Facebook and were making him
| money. On one website he posted lots of pro-Trump content and
| on the other he posted lots of pro-Bernie Sanders content. This
| was during the primaries so these articles were largely in
| opposition to Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. He said he didn't
| care about either candidate but both websites were making him
| good money in ad revenue. He was not actually affiliated with
| either party.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if he or someone else like him had
| scaled up their efforts.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I find that quite satisfying. At least someone is getting
| something tangible out of the screaming and shouting, and
| best of all, it's something straightforward. Money.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This is the data Googles (and others') models are trained on
|
| Extreme biases in data mean extreme biases in inference
| technotarek wrote:
| If anyone is interested in connecting with someone working in
| this space, please hit me up. We've been building tools for
| political media buyers for the last several years. We draw data
| from the Google Transparency DB, Meta's equivalent and other
| disparate sources to allow campaigns to analyze the spending in
| greater detail. It has been really interesting from an
| engineering perspective, but also just to learn more about how
| this industry operates.
| NotBoolean wrote:
| If the spend figure is right the difference between the money
| spent in the USA and UK is larger than I expected.
|
| Highest weekly spend in the UK is just under PS1M (Dec 2019)
| while in the US it's PS50M (Oct 2024). That's 10 times more
| spending with only 5 times the population.
| kevin_p wrote:
| The UK is poorer than you think. Per-capita GDP is $82k in the
| US vs $49k in the UK (source: World Bank), which accounts for
| about two thirds of the gap in ad spend.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| According to the site, ad targeting is allowed based on gender
| and age, but not race or religion, for example. All four of those
| categories were previously used to restrict voting and are now
| legally protected from voting discrimination.
|
| Why allow targeting some of them but not all? Either all should
| be disallowed (for the same reason that race, religion, etc are),
| or all should be allowed (on the reasoning that this is about
| choosing who to promote your message to, not in any way affecting
| who can vote or independently search about election issues--which
| is presumably why age and gender are allowed).
| lazide wrote:
| Well, targeting works. Really well.
|
| Advertisers love it.
|
| It's also why it gets banned when it gets used to hurt people
| too much.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Why allow targeting some of them but not all? Either all
| should be disallowed (for the same reason that race, religion,
| etc are), or all should be allowed
|
| Easy: as already mentioned advertisers love targeting. On the
| other hand, considering the current sentiment in society
| allowing gender and age as targeting category causes much less
| of an outcry (or even shitstorm) than race and religion. So, to
| balance earning vs risk for reputation damage the first two
| categories are allowed for advertising targeting while the
| latter two are not.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I see the sentiment often from people who want a categorically
| clear legal system.
|
| The answer is that these choices are often made taking into
| account real world situations. Not just theory. When different
| rights come into conflicts, the courts weigh them against each
| other, and take into account the magnitude of the real world
| impact.
|
| Ban all for a logical simplicity sounds appealing, but the
| courts frequently find that this would lead to a greater
| Injustice then mixed decisions.
| zahlman wrote:
| Showing untargeted ads to children might be worse than showing
| them targeted ads.
| mef wrote:
| interesting that the company that has the most viewed ads for
| 2024[1] ("FORCE VECTOR COMMUNICATIONS") has a total of 3 matches
| when you search for them[2]
|
| [1]
| https://adstransparency.google.com/political?region=US&topic...
|
| [2]
| https://www.google.com/search?q=%22force+vector+communicatio...
| tomschwiha wrote:
| Now you added hackernews :)
| xyst wrote:
| Just shell companies for various PACs and how rich people
| donate through dark pools.
|
| The Citizens United vs FEC ruling is a sham.
| kristopolous wrote:
| The obscuring seems to be unnecessary these days. I don't
| know how many people are still fooled by names like
| "Americans for America" who would actually change their vote
| after finding out it's just a group of real estate
| speculators or whatever.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| I think it's the other way round. You're a respectable
| individual, you're buying some low-brow ads - and you don't
| want a newspaper to publish an expose about you, your
| employees throwing a hissy-fit, or a neighbor getting
| upset.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I understand that mentality but it's clearly not how
| people behave. People who buy into bullshit do so as a
| core personality behavior. It's like how doomsday cult
| members double down when the predictions don't come to
| pass.
|
| I mean https://www.heavensgate.com/ is still around.
| Being discredited has the opposite effect as the
| intended. It instead concretizes the delusions. Exposing
| charlatans seems to only increase the fanaticism of their
| adherents.
| kelipso wrote:
| You are thinking of a completely different situation. No
| one is thinking of some real estate guy who wants the
| dems or republicans to win as their cult leader when
| seeing those ads.
| kristopolous wrote:
| At least in the US, political partisanship I think is
| operationally pretty similar to a cult. It certainly
| doesn't have to exist like this but right now I think it
| is which is why I brought up the observation in the first
| place.
| kelipso wrote:
| I feel like that's an impression caused by the current
| political media environment but it's not reality. Voter
| turnout is less than 50% of voting age population in the
| US and a significant portion of the voters are
| independents. Silent majority or whatever.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Those observations are somewhat in agreement. If politics
| became less culty there might be higher engagement.
|
| Everyone I know who posts about a particular politic or
| election are totally batshit.
|
| Really the only reaction I have is of concern. Like, are
| they getting therapy, does their family know...
| pishpash wrote:
| You overestimate ad consumers. Think about it, most people
| don't use adblock.
| progrus wrote:
| Ok, now let's see the breakdown of winred/ActBlue email getting
| through spam filtering. IOS only capitalizes one of those, so
| there's a clue
| Aeolun wrote:
| Title: Please vote!
|
| Views: 8-9k
|
| Total spent: $14-15k
|
| This country is doomed.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I'm still amazed these stock images with highlighted text don't
| send off immediate red flags in everyone's mind that they're
| being tricked.
|
| Especially ones that have children, veterans, or old people,
| usually with big frowns or drooping flags. "Don't disappoint this
| stock image! Vote no on prop blah-blah"
|
| It works. This strategy actually works
| JadeNB wrote:
| > It works. This strategy actually works
|
| It works because, in any context, people are easily persuaded
| that something that they want to believe is true. Willingly or
| not, people are often looking for excuses to believe something,
| not evidence to help determine whether it is true. (Of course,
| you and I are included in this; believing oneself immune to
| propaganda is just a way of being more vulnerable to the kind
| of propaganda targeted at people who pride themselves on this
| supposed immunity.)
| kristopolous wrote:
| Sure but if I see a mailer or an ad in that format, it's a
| red flag.
|
| The only way this would work as a propaganda tactic on me is
| if they reversed that, if say, the "yes on 3" campaign sent
| out a glossy mailer with a frowning minority wheelchair bound
| veteran that said "save our seniors. Vote no on 3".
|
| If that subterfuge happened, then I fell for it
| tgma wrote:
| Weird that some ads are hidden on that page indicating "policy
| violations." You'd think in the ads transparency section they
| would be particularly interested in such ads or at least the
| reason for their violation for investigative purposes. That seems
| like a good way to slip controversial things under the rug.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| In France we limit campaign budgets to 50M$ (population adjusted)
| and the state fully reimburses it. US presidential campaigns are
| 60x more expensive per capita!
|
| Have people in the US proposed such a cap to prevent corporations
| from buying elections, or is that too foreign of a concept ?
| aegypti wrote:
| That was the case until 2010. Controversially, the Supreme
| Court then found the First Amendment/freedom of speech prevents
| the federal government from restricting spending by
| corporations, unions, nonprofits, etc.
| bluesnews wrote:
| There have been attempts but when corporations are considered
| people limitations on their "speech" all eventually fail
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I hate this phrasing.
|
| Corporations aren't people.
|
| The finding was that people dont lose their rights when
| working together via a corporation.
|
| If you can buy a political sign and your friend can buy a
| sign, then the two of you can buy a sign together.
| asynchronous wrote:
| The issue is then the theoretical contract of the two of
| you together takes no real repercussion for breaking the
| law, whereas separately if you committed crimes
| independently then you could be put in jail. We don't have
| capital punishment for corporations, and we should.
| handfuloflight wrote:
| The state fully reimburses the campaign budget to each
| candidate?
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Yes, if you get >=5% of the votes!
|
| Our system isn't perfect though, it's a two-round system that
| has non-linearities, notably the Condorcet paradox :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox
| pishpash wrote:
| There is that too but you can't win this way now. Every year
| on the US tax form you can contribute $3 to publicly financed
| campaigns.
| YZF wrote:
| I'm curious how France deals with external entities running
| influence campaigns on global platforms in this context? What
| prevents external entities (countries or corporations) from
| effectively buying elections in France?
| idatum wrote:
| Early voting has advantages, one being that once I drop my ballot
| in the local ballot collection box, I can more easily ignore
| political ads. It's liberating.
| pishpash wrote:
| Why couldn't you ignore them in the first place?
| verisimi wrote:
| Same as when you ignore the whole cringe-comedy festival by not
| even considering voting. Liberating.
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