[394549]

> Months ago, senior Facebook executives briefly debated banning all political ads, which produce less than 5 percent of the company’s revenue, sources said. The company rejected that because product managers were loath to leave advertising dollars on the table...

Gotta remember what's most important. /s

[3minus1]

Do you have a problem with political ads on tv? From my perspective we should have campaign finance laws that regulate political ad spending, but there's nothing inherently wrong with showing political ads on tv, facebook, or elsewhere.

[AlexandrB]

> ... there's nothing inherently wrong with showing political ads on tv, facebook, or elsewhere.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, Facebook is different than television because ads can be targeted extremely narrowly. This makes them hard to audit and possible to use ads for things like voter suppression of populations that are likely to vote a certain way.

Advocating for/against a specific policy or politician is one things. Attempting to disenfranchise a group of people through misinformation is another.

[moogly]

Not the person you asked, but yes, I do have a problem with that. Luckily, it's not allowed in most of Europe.

[6nf]

5% is a lot. Political ads are 5% of Facebook's revenue? Wow that's way more than I expected.

[r00fus]

They have a fiduciary duty to their investors to not leave money on the table... blah blah blah.

There is a lot of cheerleading of bloodthirsty capitalism in the hallowed halls of CNBC and the like.

[dlivingston]

They are a business, after all.

[tivert]

> They are a business, after all.

Just like a cigarette company that doesn't want to leave money on the table from not courting youth sales.

It's a twisted idea that the logic of business success can be used to justify all kinds of destructive and harmful decisions by businesses.

[dlivingston]

Agreed, but the idea that any publicly traded company can or will have ethics is an equally absurd idea. I tend to think of companies as Darwinian machines whose evolutionary 'fitness function' is the maximization of profits.

[nickodell]

There are both business and public policy arguments for not banning political ads, as the article notes.

[spiznnx]

Well, by not "leaving money on the table" they now have an existential crisis.