I don't buy defeatist statements like this anymore. Let's be real, if it turns out lies actually do "need" to be censored for whatever basically measurable definition of need you prefer, are you literally going to give up on democracy? What are you going to replace it with? Unless you just give up on morality entirely, you're still going to try to find a solution.
That means that the only thing "...then we can just say democracy is a failure" accomplishes today is give you a clever-sounding way to avoid thinking about a hard problem. That's not a good thing.
You could give up on a particular implementation of democracy, without giving up on the whole thing.
Council democracy does not require politicians to try to appeal in absentia to hundreds of thousands of voters they ostensibly "represent", for example.
>> are you literally going to give up on democracy
American democracy? Oh yeah I've absolutely given up. Candidates I like never even come close to winning. Often they don't win ballot access. I'll still vote, but I'm done contributing to campaigns or being optimistic about the outcome.
I would expect most of the ads in question here fall into one of two categories. One of them is considered false by one side, but an argument can also be made by the other, because each side is probably cherry-picking some data, looking at different contexts with different values, etc. I honestly don't think FB can do this at scale without bias, arbitrary judgment calls that don't seem fair and take too long to resolve, etc. So let's say they just let all those cases slide. The other category is things that are what we on HN would call blatantly false, where there is no supporting evidence, tons of evidence to the contrary, and it just violates common sense. Are we saying that we trust people who fall for the latter, and do no independent research before basing votes on things they see in FB ads, are people we should still trust to judge national economic plans and foreign policy in the debates? I'm sorry if this is defeatist, but I just don't think so. Those aren't people I even want to be on a jury of my peers. I'd rather just be judged by the man with the law degree and years of experience. Maybe this is a step in the right direction, but I just don't even think it's a drop in the bucket. With so many people who lack basic knowledge of civics but have the right to vote, I think we're just past the point of no return to idiocracy until there's some major collapse and we start from the ground up.
But the mere fact that we're having this argument is beyond me. After every election, which ever side loses goes grasping at straws. With Obama it was the birthers. With Trump it's social media ads. With the last 2 Republican presidents it's been the electoral college. I mean I'm sitting here watching the 49% (concentrated in a few dense areas), claim they have more of a democratic mandate than the 48% (spread out in very culturally distinct areas), when most people don't even vote. I see both parties as being inappropriately quick to judge and legislate matters that they're completely unfamiliar with. I'm pretty individualist, but US democracy seems to just be a constant race to a tyranny of the majority, with the legislature having abdicated many of their responsibilities to the executive. Violations of the law by the government just seem to get ignored because that's the way it is now. So if I did get to pick what we replace the current US democratic system with, I'd far rather go for at least a parliamentary system where instead of me thinking I have a representative for my geographic area, my party gets a share of the power and has to figure out a way to share power with the other parties. It's less direct, but if I don't get to be as self-governing as I want to be, I don't want to be governed by a bunch of people who fall for Facebook spam.
That means that the only thing "...then we can just say democracy is a failure" accomplishes today is give you a clever-sounding way to avoid thinking about a hard problem. That's not a good thing.