Slashdot Mirror
Senators Announce New Bill That Would Regulate Online Political Ads (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: As tech companies face continued scrutiny over Russian activity on their ad platforms, Senators today announced legislation meant to regulate political ads on the internet. The new bill, called the Honest Ads Act, would require companies like Facebook and Google to keep copies of political ads and make them publicly available. Under the act, the companies would also be required to release information on who those ads were targeted to, as well as information on the buyer and the rates charged for the ads. The new rules would bring disclosure rules more in line with how political ads are regulated in mediums like print and TV, and apply to any platform with more than 50 million monthly viewers. The companies would be required to keep and release data on anyone spending more than $500 on political ads in a year. It's unclear how well the bill will fare. Companies like Facebook have been successfully fighting regulations for years. But this latest attempt has some bipartisan support: the act, sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is also co-sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). "Americans deserve to know who's paying for the online ads," Klobuchar said at a press conference announcing the legislation.
Fox news is nothing but a continuous stream of lies and political ads and manipulations. Rush Limbaugh is also nothing more than a political operative. So how do we call out and punish these people and their absurd lies? For example trump claiming for seven years that Obama was not a US citizen was a lie inserted into Trump's political dialogue even when trump admits that it was a lie. To me that means Trump should be in prison. And how do we deal with those who bombarded us with crooked Hillary slogans now that it is known that Russian agents were often the ones pushing those lies. Is the ignorant citizen who makes such claims innocent when compared to foreign powers who spread the lies all along? Toleration of lies can destroy all of us.