Meta joins Google in ragequitting EU political ads over onerous regulations Meta has followed in Google's footsteps in deciding that pending EU political advertising regulations are so onerous to comply with that they're not even going to bother. Zuckercorp said in a statement Friday that the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation, due to go into effect this October, …
Trump Lite, aka Farage is attempting to follow Trumps playbook, recycling MAGA ideas. So don't be surprised when The National FrontReform start trying the advertising tactics the US employs, pushing (and possibly crossing) the bounds of, decency, good taste, accepted practices and the law. I'm sure they'll cross the bounds set by the ASA because they will have noticed that crossing the line only results in a slap on the wrist and "don't do that again" result, by which time the offending advert has already done it's job and isn't needed again anyway.
They already worked that out with Cambridge Analytica when they mislead the country over Brexit, they broke financing laws and more as well.
But, the traditional media and broadcasters have a vested interest in not letting them get away with that shit, so the Meta/Google decision is a good tesilt
It is a good idea, but it I do not think many countries allow the heavy political advertising the US does. The UK does not allow broadcast advertising (parties get allocated a number of free slots each) and there are caps on total advertising spend during elections. I would guess enough EU countries had similar rules to make it seem natural, rather than a major change to the status quo.
When the Eastern Invaders come calling this time, don't call us
We gave up on that a long time ago when we realised that, fundamentally, the US was very little different to 1939-era Germany.
The reason they got involved in WW2? Noting to do with "doing the right thing" and very much to do with one of Germanies allies attacking. And let's not forget all the failures that the US has dragged some of us into:
Korea
Vietnam
Afganistan
Iraq
So, no, we won't call. And, hopefully, our politicians will grow a spine and start saying "no" to the next US military failure-in-the-making.
.... can we have further laws that place similar burdens on other forms of advertising on Meta, Google, et al.
I see this as the only way that we can finally persuade them that we don't want them spying on every aspect of our lives just so they can feed their advertising machines.
The downside is that it does nothing to restrict bot and troll farms run by suitably motivated parties, like the infamous Internet Research Agency.
On the plus side, though, the IRA used small scale paid ads to gather hard diagnostic data on which types of messages were most effective, so even they would still be impaired a little.
Something of value was gained... faecesbook no longer interfering in politics, hedging their bets, and gaslighting people with false information and propaganda.
Zuckerberg is a despicable piece of shit. Look how he switched gears as soon as it looked like Trump was coming back.
They do.
The BBC has created social media accounts representative of many types of political views in the both the US and the UK, and monitors not only which ads they see, but what type of content is directed at them. The misinformation which they are exposed to is pretty horrific, and definitely a threat to democracy in both nations (or what is left of it, in the case of the former).
"users would see less relevant ads"
I tried allowing tracking, monitoring etc., on an old pc for a while. I saw precisely zero ads gat were in any way relevant to me. It was all for stuff I'd already bought, so need no more, stuff I'd already looked at and decided not to bother with, so no interest there. I saw ads for stuff a bit like what I'd looked at, as if that was something I'd give a rats arse about. I saw what was "trending" but for the life of me I couldn't work out why I should be even remotely interested.
Tracking is still off on any "real" platform I use.
Dear marketing execs. Just fuck off.
About six weeks after I purchased a corded electric lawn mower online, the vendor emailed to offer me the "opportunity" of buying another - as though anyone would need more than one for a ~50 m2 lawn; or did they think the product was so crappy that it didn't last 6 weeks *and* I would be daft enough to replace it with same crappy model ?
"Dear marketing execs. Just fuck off." Concur completely.
FWIW: I had to buy online as only the battery models were available in bricks and mortar stores. The mower worked as advertised.
I remember the good old days where adverts worked. They would be showcasing something I didn't know about, and would sometimes be interesting enough to warrant a look, and in some cases a sale.
This was *before* the bullshit tracking, when ad's were placed not on some perceived insider knowledge of the reader, but on the actual knowledge of the pages content.
Reading a site reviewing new cars? Adverts for car companies.
Browsing a tech site for "latest gadgets" - ads to (wait for it...) new gadgets.
A site for sheep fanciers? Links to buy maps of Wales etc.
How outrageous - demanding responsible reporting about political donations in the form of "free advertising" for the platforms supported by the billionaires.
Once again, the decision seems to be "We're American; Fuck You!"
I think their arrogance even exceeds the Pumpkin Fuhrer on this item.
Not that these septics aren't simultaneously furiously engaging in vigorous autofornication.
Fittingly given it's only acceptable that American may slaughter Americans (which they do enthusiastically) that only Americans might comprehensively fuck over other Americans (which they do with even greater enthusiasm, if possible.)
And note especially that they've had years of knowing this was coming and by the time it's in force will have had 18 months of the being able to read the law as enacted. Have they spent any of that time trying to implement processes so they can carry on while staying within the law? Of course not. That's dev money. They'd far rather spend far more of it lobbying to get the law overturned than, you know, complying with. Now they finally realised that's not happening, they're spitting their collective dummies instead of accepting reality.
It's [Meta] chosen the latter, and blames the EU for it. "Once again, we're seeing regulatory obligations effectively remove popular products and services from the market, reducing choice and competition," Meta said in its statement.
Funny, because EU citizens will be thanking the EU for it.
Are they so up their own bubble that they believe this shite they spew?
No, they're just so used to distorting reality in a way that turns anything they don't like into a disaster for everyone else that they are completely failing to see that they'll lose any credibility overdoing it. Still, people enough will believe them on face value because even an absolute minimum of critical thinking is hard.
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