1y ago

Two brands suspend advertising on X after their ads appeared next to pro-Nazi content

www.cnn.com Two brands suspend advertising on X after their ads appeared next to pro-Nazi content | CNN Business

At least two brands have said they will suspend advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after their ads and those of other companies were run on an account promoting fascism. The issue came less than a week after X CEO Linda Yaccarino publicly affirmed the company’s commitment to b...

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Two brands suspend advertising on X after their ads appeared next to pro-Nazi content | CNN Business

www.cnn.com /2023/08/16/tech/x-ads-pro-nazi-account-brand-safety/index.html

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Two brands suspend advertising on X after their ads appeared next to pro-Nazi content

www.cnn.com /2023/08/16/tech/x-ads-pro-nazi-account-brand-safety/index.html

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Things are going great, Linda
- It's the official name so the news is obliged. Your brain can handle this detail I'm sure.
  
  Yeah, it's just like when Prince changed his name. The media will just keep going "X, formerly known as Twitter" forever.
- X is really dumb, and I'm not a fan of Twitter personally... But twitters reputation shouldn't be completely obliterated because of who now owns it. Not that it matters, I guess, because there's no way people don't know X was once Twitter.
  So I don't know, guess I don't care either way. But X is dumb.

For those who don't want to read TFA: the brands are Gilead and NYU Lagone Hospital

Spokespeople for NCTA and pharmaceutical company Gilead said that they immediately paused their ad spending on X after CNN flagged their ads on the pro-Nazi account.
Alt-speak: we only care if the media report that our ad placements were next to questionable contents.
- lmao at the fact that even a company named GILEAD doesn't want anything to do with Musk trying to kickstart a handmaid's tale
- Gives them airtime. I wouldn't have heard of them if not for this.

Free speech is good and must be protected, that's clear. But it should not be virtually limitless. The US played a major role sorting out the negative consequences of the Weimar republic, which did not contain fascist ideology, which then lead to WW2.
It still baffles my mind how the US cannot see that tolerating the intolerant must inevitably lead to an intolerant and possibly facist society.
- I have thought about it for a while but the US is basically in a cold civil war, with a significant chance of it becoming hot. And it looks very similar to their previous one. Neither side seem to have a charismatic enough leader.
  It's easy to look over the pond and think it's none of our problem. But if the US falls to chaos a lot of other countries will follow suit. We can already see this influence in the UK and I'd argue many other EU countries. Russia probably saw this weakness, bet on it worsening much quicker than it did, but lost that bet (so far).
  With that said, addressing the US as a whole no longer makes sense. I'm sure plenty, plenty of Americans see what is happening.
  It's unfortunate that one of the wealthiest people on this planet has taken the anti-democratic side, but it's not the first or the last time in history a powerful man, rich beyond measure has done so.
  
  Very much so, the Bavarian Conservative Party literally has gone to have talks with republicans to use their election strategies, the German-wide AgD has ramped up their Anti-LGBT campaigning and started to use similar messaging to far-right propaganda networks, e.g. “protect our children”, “pedophiles”, photoshopped images of CSAM at pride events, etc.
  
  My country (Australia) has tied itself to you guys so if you go down we definitely go down with you. I'm 100% hoping the US doesn't fall into chaos. We also birthed Rupert Murdoch and he's played a huge part in heating up this civil war.
  
  It’s safe to say Russia and China have actually helped contribute to a lot of the issues in the last decade by holding a lot of soft power online. The US government can’t stop an enemy that blends in with their sovereign users, advertisers, and content creators.
- You're partly right. But it's the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state. We can't keep our heads down and hope it goes away on its own. We shouldn't allow the state, with its monopoly on violence, to fight our social battles for us.
  I dislike the idea of the state getting to start making decisions on what is "hateful". And I'm disgusted we don't have more people standing up and loudly declaring how wrong the hateful viewpoints are. It is our responsibility and we are failing.
  It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don't have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power and starts redefining what is "hateful".
  
  But it’s the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state.
  So what's the state for?

Isn't that while platform pro Nazi?
- Almost explicitly so, free speech for those who want to scream the N-word and (shadow/) bans for pro-union posters and those critical of musk

What did they expect when doing business with a #fascist symp?

What a surprise...

Why do people assume that brands explicitly endorse everything their ads run next to? Do they think companies are purposely seeking out these bad people to run their ads next to? I never got the whole not wanting your ads next to questionable content thing.
- I’m no expert but I think it’s the same reason ads are full of hot people: association. If you see an ad for a Baconator enough times next to a neo-Nazi spewing hate speech you’re going to start to link the two in your mind.
  
  It's gotta be this one. Marketing works partially with the subconscious and association. They want you to get a fuzzy feeling when you see their logo or a product of theirs in a (web) store. If you don't get a fuzzy feeling, but you are reminded of the vile fascist shit you read while you saw their ad, you will avoid buying their product, even if you can't quite put the finger on it.
  
  I know I associate Neo-Nazis with Pigs...I wonder why.
  
  Yep it's the association for sure
  But also a factor (for those that know) is that companies will pay for their ads to run to specific demographics of people based on the data that a advertising platform (Twitter, YouTube, Tinder, Facebook, etc) has gathered to determine specific things about you as a person.
  It's the whole concept behind targeted ads. You pay for eyes that will see it and are more likely to purchase your products due to that demographic data. Or at the very least, view your website for traffic that can be used to harvest more data about you so that it can be sold to other companies.
- People will presure companies not to allow it. "I will not purchase your product because it is helping fund hate speech"
  It doesn't matter that the company did not choose to place the ad there. The ad being there gives money to platform that they are recieving because of hate speech.
- It's not just that they don't want their ads next nazi crap, it's that they don't want to put ads on a platform that has nazi crap. You make a platform friendly to nazis, you lose advertising.
  
  Society still has standards! Thank God!
- Why do people assume that brands explicitly endorse everything their ads run next to?
  Where by "people", we mean "individuals with so little critical thinking, that they might get influenced by an ad".
  Well, that's why. Companies don't want easily influenciable people to associate their brand with something they're likely to view as negative.
  
  Everyone is influenced by ads but the tines you re you view as your choice. Immediate purchases aren't the goal of most ads, it's mainly uncaughous influence for the next time you have to choose between a few products!

::Confused Musk noises::

X: Definitely no hate speech here! Nope, you'll never find it! Those watchdog organizations are all full of crap!
Wait, we lost another sponsor? For what again? Uh oh.

Is there a link to the picture of this ad next to nazi content. I couldnt find it in the article.
- Also, was it fascist or nazi?
  Both terms have been watered down to mean nothing.
  
  Does the distinction even matter in this context? Neither is good and neither should be permitted.
  
  A day ago I was talking to a friend about Microsoft and they equated Microsoft to Nazis, I said let's be realistic, they aren't Nazis, they said fine the KKK. Watering down these terms to mean someone you don't like is super dangerous and let's actual Nazis and KKK just play off the accusations as someone not liking them.
  So I agree, it's been watered down and it's really a bad thing.

Any proof ?
I go regularly on Twitter/X, I still have to see suggested hate/nazi/whitethingy in my timeline. How people get exposed to this shit ?
- I imagine cnn doesn’t want to encourage people to visit the hate account in question by posting a link or screenshot. It doesn’t mean they don’t have proof, it just means they don’t want to drive traffic to hate content. Printing that would be kind of irresponsible. But CNN is known as a pretty reputable news source. I can’t see why they’d lie about it.
  If you aren’t seeing any white supremacy on your own timeline, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it just means the algorithm isn’t showing it to you, which is a good thing. It might seem surprising, but people do actually search for and deliberately seek out that shit. Hate groups use social media to network, I imagine that’s why CNN didn’t post a screenshot of the account name, or its content.
  
  But that policy creates a window for literally any accusation to be made. “Proof would encourage or glorify the behavior” basically means you get to accuse anyone of anything at any time .
- I mean, I’m sure there’s people’s jobs it is to monitor marketing at these companies? Unlikely they’d go thru the trouble of setting up an ad campaign just to cancel it and claim nazis if it wasn’t true?
  I don’t know though, I stay off twitter - especially now.
- Yeah proof or this didn’t happen. I haven’t seen pro-Nazi content anywhere in existence other than a museum, let alone on twitter.
  
  Really? I just spent 5 minutes searching for the fourteen words, and found a bunch of openly white supremacist/nazi content, with plenty of likes and retweets. Remember, Musk fired/let go most of his content and safety teams after he took the company over. You can report stuff but it won’t get taken down any more.
  (Note, I won’t link the content here in case that’s against rules, but it’s really not hard to find. Look at the “ChiefBarony” and “SindriThule” accounts for example)
  
  Behold, the Media Matters report that was attributed as the source in the CNN article.
  I understand wanting to know what evidence someone has for an argument, but when the source is attributed in the posted article then demands for proof come across as sealioning which is very much discouraged on Beehaw.
  For those that don't feel like reading that Media Matters report, the account in question was openly and explicitly neo-nazi, and Media Matters has screenshots of a number of posts with memes praising Hitler, Holocaust denial, and "great replacement" memes. There's also a meme that just says "It's okay to be a national socialist" which seems about as pro-Nazi as something could possibly get.
  
  Take a drive down rural parts of the midwest/south in the US. You'll spot some content.
  
  Do you realize there's a difference between one or few "events" and a platform promoting it? There's a fishy attempt to bind Musk to any right-wing/nazi shit.

65 comments