[delichon]

The first amendment prevents prohibiting it by law. If one party decided not to use social media to get their message out, the other party would get a huge advantage. Even if the parties agreed to leave that battlefield (a nice fantasy), they couldn't enforce it on their own candidates. So it would require a revolution or divine intervention to stop.

[bee_rider]

Displaying ads might be constitutionally protected speech. But, other parts of the process, like running a giant surveillance network, doesn’t seem to be particularly protected. If anything, running a giant surveillance network would be a violation of the fourth amendment if it were done by the government and the fourth amendment were interpreted as broadly as the first couple.

[normalaccess]

This is true, it's an unfortunate race to the bottom of the attention economy. The only real solution is educating people about the trash tactics that are used to manipulate them.

[delichon]

Knowing how, why, when, and about what you are being manipulated unfortunately does little to prevent it. Knowing that encourages people to do the same to others in self defense.

I'd love to be wrong. If you can find evidence that learning the techniques provides some immunity from them, I'd be happy to see it.

I'm well aware of how I'm being manipulated with regard to the murder in Charlotte, yet it still presses my buttons. The same is true when a beautiful women asks me for anything. Self awareness has little effect on primal motives.

[JKCalhoun]

> The only real solution

Do there western countries have the same problem as the U.S.? Are they doing a better job at what you suggest?

[ToucanLoucan]

The amendments aren't god's laws passed to George Washington on Mt. Rushmore. We can change them if we feel it's appropriate.

Commenter isn't making the case that the action is illegal, he's saying it's dystopian that the Government is making such blatant use of targeted media. And I agree.

[delichon]

To change the first amendment such that it no longer applied to the speech of political parties would amount to a revolution. Even if it were somehow accomplished without violence, it would deeply change the form of government.

[ceejayoz]

Revolutions are the norm in the American setup.

The first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another is sometimes called the "Revolution of 1800". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidentia...

Every constitutional amendment changes our government. The people who wrote the mechanism in expected this. I doubt they expected us to just... stop amending.

[delichon]

To say that every election and amendment is a revolution may be true in some sense, but it isn't near the colloquial definition. Neither, strictly speaking, would removal of political speech protections by the approval of 38 out of 50 states be an actual revolution, but that's a lot closer. And I doubt it's possible.

[ceejayoz]

I certainly doubt it's going to happen - too many vested interests in power opposing. But it seems less impactful than, say, "women can now vote" in the spectrum of constitutional changes.

[ToucanLoucan]

I think it's a reasonable thing that the political parties shouldn't be able to use targeted online advertising that makes use of distressing amounts of demographic information to spread propaganda. Granted, I'm biased, I think we should ban targeted advertising altogether but still.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

We actually can't pass new amendments, it would require the red states to cooperate and there's more of them because they vote by land instead of by person

Same reason we're stuck with gerrymandering and the electoral college and the Senate and the misapportioned House and a generally dumb implementation of elections

[heavyset_go]

The last thing that ever needs to happen in the current US political climate is a Constitutional convention.

The worst people on the planet would love for an opportunity to carve up what few remaining rights people have left in favor of enshrining their power for centuries to come.

[normalaccess]

But they are the best set of laws invented by humans so far for self governance. No kings, no popes, no dictators. As flawed as the current system is, the laws are good even if the people executing them are trash.

You can change lots of things much higher up in the system without taking away our God given rights enshrined in the founding documents to fix these kinds of issues.

[ToucanLoucan]

Hell of an assertion to make when the laws have given rise to an administration that, by virtue of loading the courts, have effectively mimicked the exact sort of power plays one expects from a dictator, up to and including allusions from the leader about not having the next election.

[normalaccess]

The constitution is not a list of rights the people have, it's a list of rights the Government Doesn't have. You want to add government to fix government? Or take rights away to support your own chosen party? That's a fools errand.

It's easy to spot a problem, but very hard to get the right solution.

[ToucanLoucan]

Your entire assertion seems to boil down to "government bad" with no further analysis or theory. "Add government to fix government" is effectively how representative democracy works, at least in theory. The amendments we are currently discussing in fact fit the description of "adding government to fix government" quite literally; they were ratified additions to the Constitution.

And like, yeah spotting problems is easier than giving right solutions, but what you're discussing here feels a lot more like just giving up on it entirely, which seems a horrific practice when the entity in question literally runs your society?

[normalaccess]

The amendments to the U.S. Constitution generally limited the power of the government as time went on.

Less government is *almost* always better. I'm no anarchist but I do believe that we need to massively trim the fat from time to time. And I also believe that America has the best foundation to build upon. I have yet to see better founding documents.

[GuinansEyebrows]

if god gave us those rights, they wouldn't need to be in a document. they would be intrinsic to our nature.

i know this is cynical and people on Hacker News Dot Com hate when i say this, but it will never change the fact that the constitution was authored and approved by men who owned human beings (including at least one man who took the teeth from human beings he owned to put into his own mouth). i don't care how high-minded the ideals may seem. the foundation is as rotten as Washington's teeth.

[normalaccess]

Because that is not the nature of man. Even angels fall when they forget who they are.

So good men are needed to push back the overwhelming desire to rule as gods over our fellow men.

[GuinansEyebrows]

it's so perfectly, sickeningly ironic that the historical figures we refer to as "good men" who "push back the overwhelming desire to rule as gods over our fellow men" literally claimed the right to own other human beings.

[ToucanLoucan]

The big plan of the Revolution was not, in fact, any sort of revolution. It was merely consolidating power the landowning class already had, and not sending a cut back to Britain.

And like, that's fine. America, for better or worse, exists, and we'll never know if history would've been better or worse without us. But please let's let go of this fantastical origin story. We're a country, same as any other, just a bit younger, and already with frankly just as many atrocities under our belt as other countries. We are not unique, apart from we treat our citizenry uniquely poorly relative to other developed nations. If you want me to be proud of this country, I'm amenable to that, but it has to earn that.