Thank you for volunteering to clarify. I've upvoted you, but I disagree with your points, I'm afraid.
I think the idea is that advertising isn't coercive.
I'm not sure what definition of "coercive" you want to use, but I think it is absolutely possible for an advert to lead to someone acting against their best interest. (The term "best interest" is also quite loaded, but we can at least acknowledge cases where someone's actions are influenced by an advert and they then go on to regret those actions).
Perhaps a more concrete example would be cigarette advertising, which many societies have deemed somewhat "coercive" (albeit not as "coercive" as the nicotine itself). If these ads didn't encourage people to smoke, and merely assisted existing smokers in choosing the brand which best suited their needs, then I doubt they would need to be banned.
"being able to find people that might agree with some ideas and showing them media that expresses those ideas"
While that sounds reasonable, I believe it misses some subtleties particularly in the case of elections.
Firstly, people should have a right to know which entity is authoring these ideas, so that they can be held accountable and any past reputation and potential biases taken into account. Just as importantly, the public should know which ideas are being selectively broadcast by each campaign, as it is more than possible that a campaign presents mutually contradictory arguments to non-overlapping groups of people, which again should factor into the credibility of the campaign.
If those concerns are taken into account (and the general concerns of people having their personal data used to target psychometrically-engineered adverts at them without their consent) then I have no objection to "bad" ideas being widely distributed.
Firstly, people should have a right to know which entity is authoring these ideas, so that they can be held accountable and any past reputation and potential biases taken into account. Just as importantly, the public should know which ideas are being selectively broadcast by each campaign, as it is more than possible that a campaign presents mutually contradictory arguments to non-overlapping groups of people, which again should factor into the credibility of the campaign.
I agree with all of this, and it all exists in Facebook today. Political ads on Facebook prominently display who paid for the ad, and there's a centralized ad registry containing all active ads by campaign.
Comments
Thank you for volunteering to clarify. I've upvoted you, but I disagree with your points, I'm afraid.
I'm not sure what definition of "coercive" you want to use, but I think it is absolutely possible for an advert to lead to someone acting against their best interest. (The term "best interest" is also quite loaded, but we can at least acknowledge cases where someone's actions are influenced by an advert and they then go on to regret those actions).
Perhaps a more concrete example would be cigarette advertising, which many societies have deemed somewhat "coercive" (albeit not as "coercive" as the nicotine itself). If these ads didn't encourage people to smoke, and merely assisted existing smokers in choosing the brand which best suited their needs, then I doubt they would need to be banned.
While that sounds reasonable, I believe it misses some subtleties particularly in the case of elections.
Firstly, people should have a right to know which entity is authoring these ideas, so that they can be held accountable and any past reputation and potential biases taken into account. Just as importantly, the public should know which ideas are being selectively broadcast by each campaign, as it is more than possible that a campaign presents mutually contradictory arguments to non-overlapping groups of people, which again should factor into the credibility of the campaign.
If those concerns are taken into account (and the general concerns of people having their personal data used to target psychometrically-engineered adverts at them without their consent) then I have no objection to "bad" ideas being widely distributed.
I agree with all of this, and it all exists in Facebook today. Political ads on Facebook prominently display who paid for the ad, and there's a centralized ad registry containing all active ads by campaign.