Two brands suspend advertising on X after their ads appeared next to pro-Nazi content
Two brands suspend advertising on X after their ads appeared next to pro-Nazi content | CNN Business
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 (edit: among other things ofc) 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.
Russia probably saw this weakness
Good ol’ “Foundations of Geopolitics” by Aleksandr Dugin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
Russia probably saw this weakness, bet on it worsening much quicker than it did,
And helped it along as much as they could get away with.
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.
Correction: fake free speech absolutionism of Musk where he gets to decide who gets censored for their opinion is very popular with dumb dumbs.
Free speech is good and must be protected
I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech. Period. It's not like the government is going around throwing people in prison for being racist fucks on Twitter. Twitter can moderate content if they want to. If they don't want to moderate content they don't have to as long as the material isn't illegal.
I don't know why people keep thinking this has anything to do with the first amendment at all. Twitter is not public, not even close.
I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech.
Twitter positions itself as the Internet's public square, and free speech certainly does apply in an old-fashioned offline public square, so yeah, Twitter kinda does have something to do with free speech. Don't seek power if you don't want the responsibility it comes with.
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?
'Hate' is vague. 'Intolerance' however, is probably legally definable.
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
You seem to be suggesting that separating hate speech prevention from legislation will protect you from a "tyranny of the majority" situation.
But if the populace has a bigoted plurality, won't that also create a tyranny of the majority?
AFAIU this is a result of the wording in the US constitution. The freedom of speech in the US has a stronger legal implication than in other countries, even stronger than western democracies like the UK.
And, then in the civilian level, as you say, US netizens tend to write "you are entitled to your opinion" to basically anybody with any horrible belief as if they were government officials.
The US has limits on free speech in the name of public health and safety. There's no assumption of limitless free speech in the US. People who cry "free speech" typically have no understanding of its actual legal definition in the country and just want an excuse to be a bigoted asshole without consequences.
Twitter, not being part of the government, gets to decide what content they allow and doesn't need to worry too much about the legal definition of free speech. But, despite Musk's claims, Twitter is not actually a space of limitless free speech. They've taken plenty of actions since he took over that limit the speech of individuals he disagrees with. Twitter is just interesting in giving a platform to hate. There's certainly money to be made in monetizing hate (see Trump), but hopefully it doesn't work out well in the end for Twitter or Musk.
Things are going great, Linda
Also can news outlets please stop referring to Twitter as X? X is the stupidest name I've ever heard.
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
Doing the hard work over hear!!
What did they expect when doing business with a #fascist symp?
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.
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
Free speech is pro-Nazi!
You know what happened in Germany in the 1930s? Talking and lots of it! What’s Hitler doing in every video ever? Talking!
The connections are there man! You gotta open your eyes man!
Not yet. It's the inevitable outcome of tolerating Nazis on your platform but it takes time, especially with a userbase as large as Twitter's.
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.
Edit: I found the sources of the tweets thanks to a comment below. Here is the tweets the ads appeared next to.
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.
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.
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.
Mmm. Delicious fascism. Greasy!
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.
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.
And here you are trying to save the planet. The very same planet that created the Nazis. One has to wonder where your loyalties really lie.
Especially considering we're talking targeted advertisement so the ads are based on who you are and not which corner of twitter you're hanging on.
I believe it’s a matter of being in the same platform as controversial content.
In the end they’re paying Twitter to display their ads, and if Twitter allows questionable content to be in their platform, the companies are indirectly supporting it.
Tiki torch companies must be making bank off of Twitter ads now, though. They don't even have to use keyword matches to show up in all the right places.
A lot of advertising still works on association and suggestion. That industry was heavily influenced by Freuds son in law.
Juxtaposition is a type of association.
::Confused Musk noises::
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 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.
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.
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)
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.
What a surprise...
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary The issue came less than a week after X CEO Linda Yaccarino publicly affirmed the company’s commitment to brand safety for advertisers.
The nonprofit news watchdog Media Matters for America documented in a report published Wednesday that ads for a host of mainstream brands have been run on the account, which has shared content celebrating Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Ads for brands including Adobe, Gilead Sciences, the University of Maryland’s football team, New York University Langone Hospital and NCTA-The Internet and Television Association were run alongside tweets from the account that had garnered hundreds of thousands of views, CNN observed.
But Wednesday’s report suggests that the company still has work to do if it wants to avoid monetizing, and placing ads alongside, objectionable content.
“Media Matters and other observers have documented how X has remained a dangerous cesspool of content, especially for advertisers,” Wednesday’s report states.
Media Matters says it has also documented instances of brands’ ads being placed next to content from Holocaust denial and white nationalist accounts. :::
What the fuck is this?
Reported
