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Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

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Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#261

> Private company tells other private company which speech they should be censoring Welcome to the new era of information folks. You thought private companies were too powerful before, well, guess what? You've now given them the power to control almost all forms of communication. "But, but, private companies should be able to decide who they want on their platform! What about the free market?" Wake the hell up. Read…

Not quite as ironic as a President complaining about his right to free speech in a private forum (not a violation of the 1st amendment) even as he is threatening threatening to use the military to suppress peaceful protests (an actual violation of the 1st amendment).

> even as he is threatening threatening to use the military to suppress peaceful protests

Source? The “peaceful protests” in particular...

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The triggering event, as I understand it, is they did not censor the President of the United States who said something to the effect of riots lead to death. There's two ways to interpret this. One way is that eventually people will get hurt in some way if riots continue. Another way to interpret it was as a death threat to protesters. FB's position was that even if it was a threat, that the protesters needed to know…

He also said he asked to slow coronavirus testing down. When his staff said we were misinterpreting him, he corrected his staff and said he said what he meant. He also used racial slurs to describe coronavirus. How many gaffes before we stop presuming good intent?

> He also used racial slurs to describe coronavirus.

Source? I follow online controversies quite closely and haven’t seen this one...

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#263
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook already has a definition for hate speech and this boycott is not asking for any changes to that definition so complaints about how anyone but Facebook defines hate speech is mostly irrelevant.

They are asking for "experts", who will likely come from the extremely left leaning Social Science departments. If they attempted to fill those slots with centrists then they'd be decryed for not using the "real experts" or something similar. On most platforms racism is only defined using the systematic defintion and not the traditional definition [1]. Calling a white person a Karen seems to have definite racist qual…

>... Karen ...

>... N* ...

Your comment was being parodied[1] years before you wrote it. It is not a centrist position to think Karen is anywhere close to the N word on the spectrum of hate speech.

Once again, Facebook is not being asked to redefine hate speech. Instead the boycotters are asking that the people moderating hate speech are knowledgeable about hate speech. That seems reasonable to me. Do you think those moderator positions should be staffed by non-experts?

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg0UWxhJkfk&t=31

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#264
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was caused by insufficient brand safety levers for advertisers on YT. I was providing an example where advertisers paused spend to show the importance of their beliefs.

Why is it that advertisers did not care previously and for so long? The status quo for a decade was that all parties - consumers, YouTubers, advertisers, and YouTube itself did not care much about the minority of ad placements that happened to be next to niche political, mature, or sexual orientation subject matter. Was it the uptick in activists such as Media Matters and Vox conducting name-and-shame campaigns, cont…

I can't speak for each brand or agency, but the majority have been vocal with YouTube or FB or Twitter for years. Each of those ad platforms has a slew of teams that work directly with the enterprise buyers (top advertisers). I remember a major USA bank giving explicit feedback to the YouTube product team six years ago due to limited brand safe content control. I was in the room. There are still two accepted strategies for delivering ads on user generated content networks. One, that if user targeting is used and an ad is served against questionable content, then the content is less important. Why? You delivered an ad to your target market. Two, even with user targeting, the ad's context and content should align with the advertisers ad. I think we are seeing #2 uptick across the board.

For networks like YouTube and Facebook they are in control of the algorithm, feed, ad decisioning, user targeting, and cost. Why can't they afford transparency and more control for advertisers? I don't know to be honest. I assume those features would limit revenue.

To answer your last question, I also don't know what tipped it. It seems like society is shifting quickly right now and brands want to better align with those changes. Someone else asked if all of this was for the sake of practicality. That is a part of it. Users are influenced by advertising and while we can't decipher the exact mix of it that truly influences behavior, brands are trying to protect themselves from egregious content.

I try to create physical analogies for my clients. Let's pretend the path to our storefront (selling clothes) is in a manufacturing warehouse park. Who is going to be enticed to enter the path to the store, or be curious to learn about the store's wares? I predict few folks would enter. It is similar to ads across the web. Some are there to entice you to click (enter) their store and some are there to inform you. Either way, context likely has some influence. Brands acknowledge that. Not to mention, zero brands want someone to screenshot their video or display ad next to something deemed malicious.

Lastly, it is hard for advertisers to turn their backs on channels that generate high returns or are table stakes. What would you do if the billboard that drove the most customers to your store was in a seedy location 20% of the time? The billboard owner sold it as is. So you either take it or leave it. Most business owners would buy it and deal with the risk. That is what we've seen play out on YouTube and Facebook.

Edit: I will add that sophisticated advertisers are shifting their performance metrics from pure lead-generation sales or site visits to incrementality measurement. They want to measure if ad exposure changes consumer behavior. Perhaps we will see that FB and YT have high influence or not or something in the middle. The changes in measurement will have major impacts on advertising spend.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#266

The outrage in this thread doesn't make sense to me. This is how advertising works, it's a business decision based on business interests, Verizon doesn't care about any of this one way or another, they are simply taking a stance based on pressure from their customers. What so many of you flippantly dismiss as an outrage mob is a coalition of concerned citizens who believe Facebook is wrong for allowing dishonest poli…

I don't think people are asking for a FB boycott over "dishonesty", despite the way it is being framed. You literally have organisations like Sleeping Giants whose mission is to convince sponsors to dump sites that host conservative content. The current Facebook boycott is Stop Hate For Profit and is focused around hate speech (using the definition of hate speech as defined by the left). I lean quite heavily left, I'…

Australia, left leaning.

I think Twitter's response generally on speech has been terrible. Putting a label on a couple of Trump tweets doesn't fix that when they always move second to ban bot nets after Facebook discovers them, or to remove people who call for violence (eg the Alex Jones Sandy Hook conspiracy theory).

> ALL the polls showed a landslide for Hillary

No they didn't. The ones that were incorrect (state polls in a few states) were all within 3% of the correct outcome, with margin of errors of around 2%. Just because some bad modellers used that to make "Hillary is 99% likely to win" doesn't mean the polling showed a landslide.

That national polling was almost exactly correct.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#267
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also said he asked to slow coronavirus testing down. When his staff said we were misinterpreting him, he corrected his staff and said he said what he meant. He also used racial slurs to describe coronavirus. How many gaffes before we stop presuming good intent?

> He also used racial slurs to describe coronavirus. Source? I follow online controversies quite closely and haven’t seen this one...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/24/kellyanne-conway-tr...

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#268
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choosing how to spend your own money is hardly 'policing speech'. It sounds more like it's not that you don't understand it but you're set on framing it in a specific way. As you point out, this can lead to hearing loss.

The premise is that the advertisers are pulling out bc they are disappointed with Facebook's relative lack of policing speech

Yes, it’s Facebooks right to run their site as they see fit, and it’s the right of all consumers and companies to associate with Facebook or not based on their own feelings about Facebook. End consumers are also free to express their opinions about Facebook, Verizon, and their relative agreements or lack thereof.

The marketplace of ideas is a pretty messy place.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#269
post #267
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He also used racial slurs to describe coronavirus. Source? I follow online controversies quite closely and haven’t seen this one...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/24/kellyanne-conway-tr...

To save everyone a click: the term is “kung flu”. Slur maybe, racist definitely not (China is a country, not a race).

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#270
post #269
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/24/kellyanne-conway-tr...

To save everyone a click: the term is “kung flu”. Slur maybe, racist definitely not (China is a country, not a race).

A slur against an ethnicity is generally accepted as racist.
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