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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday November 26 2016, @02:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the businesses-choosing-their-customers dept.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38076579

A leading ad exchange has blacklisted Breitbart News, which until recently was run by one of US President-elect Donald Trump's closest advisers.

AppNexus said it would no longer allow Breitbart to sell ad space via its platform, after determining that the site had broken its code on hate speech and incitement to violence.

Breitbart responded saying it "has always and continues to condemn racism and bigotry in any form".

AppNexus has not given examples.

But a spokesman said a "human audit" of Breitbart had flagged several articles that had caused it concern because of the language they had featured.

"We use a number of third-party standards to determine what is and isn't hate speech, and if we detect a pattern of speech that could incite violence or discrimination against a minority group, we determine that to be non-compliant and we simply won't serve ads against it," AppNexus's spokesman Joshua Zeitz told the BBC.

"I'm not going to put the examples out there because I'm not going to engage in a tit-for-tat on what is compliant."


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 26 2016, @04:06PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 26 2016, @04:06PM (#433265) Journal

    I don't go to Breitbart for my news. If/when I go to Breitbart, I'm looking for opinion, and to see what the whackos are saying. Breitbart is less a news organization that Fox News, and Fox is a pretty poor example. But, come to think of it, the US doesn't have many good examples for comparison.

    It's a sad state of affairs when Americans confuse a propaganda machine for a news site. But, we do it all the time!

    BTW - to the submitters above, discussing censorship. Private organizations do censor the news. In this case, the advertising agency is attempting to censor Breitbart. The attempt will fail, but that doesn't change the fact that an advertiser feels justified in censoring Breitbart. It's "legal" because the advertiser isn't a government agency. But it's still WRONG WRONG WRONG!

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @04:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @04:14PM (#433269)

    In this case, the advertising agency is attempting to censor Breitbart.

    No, it's not. It's essentially boycotting Breitbart on behalf of its merchants. There are plenty of other ways Breitbart can sell ads, including other ad networks.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 26 2016, @10:42PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 26 2016, @10:42PM (#433431) Journal

      Perhaps we don't speak the same brand of English? The advertisers are ATTEMPTING TO censor Breitbart, by means of threatening to cut Breitbart's advertising funds. If these advertisers were in a monopoly position, then they would indeed be able to censor Breitbart with this method. Unfortunately for the advertisers, they are kinda like alligators - all mouth, and no ass. They can't shut Breitbart down, so we have a failed ATTEMPT to censor Breitbart.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @11:13PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @11:13PM (#433443)

        And by not visiting Breitbart's web site am I also failing miserably in my attempt to *censor* Breitbart?

        You alt right folks really enjoy exaggeration and conspiracies. It's a joke.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @12:31AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @12:31AM (#433467)

          You'd like to suck on an alt-right - and an alt-left too!

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @04:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @04:50PM (#433287)

    > It's a sad state of affairs when Americans confuse a propaganda machine for a news site. But, we do it all the time!

    When so many partisans are running around calling legit news sources propaganda it should be no surprise that the gullible start to believe that real propaganda is legit news. All the work that goes into journalistic integrity is invisible to the casual reader. Its just words on the screen to most.

    • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday November 28 2016, @02:36AM

      by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 28 2016, @02:36AM (#433877) Journal

      Is that so, well the solution is easy then: make all that work (it's a lot!) you're claiming on their behalf visible and verifiable.

      When someone like for example the US State Department says something then let these "legitimate" news sources challenge, prod, and poke it publicly and argue for and against the statements made and why or why not it makes sense, and lately how it could possibly makes sense in any way would have been a very good start.

      Goes for the "illegitimate" news sources too, although note what I say a bit further below.

      If they're doing all the work you think they do then they can show it.

      And until the day this starts to happen I will continue to prefer the places where people are allowed to argue, scream, debate, vent, inform, troll, quarrel, and question. Places like SoylentNews (and also just about every "fake" news site labeled as such by the MLM) :)

      --
      Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by n1 on Saturday November 26 2016, @05:32PM

    by n1 (993) on Saturday November 26 2016, @05:32PM (#433298) Journal

    The end result of this is the same as what i said regarding the DailyMail/Lego story the other day.

    Companies who want to present certain images of themselves, and want to reach as many customers as possible do not want their brands associated with divisive opinions and overtly politicized content, especially when it's emotionally charged and negative in perspective.

    It's not worth having your brand tarnished by being associated with content publishers that present controversial opinions, and it's also not great for business to support another organization that spends it's own resources trying to undermine or cast negative light on your own business practices.

    It's been true forever, you can have an audience of millions of people watching your content, but it doesn't mean advertisers will want to associate themselves with it. Porn is obviously a very popular form of content, but the commercial benefits of associating your family friendly product or household brand with that industry is not worth it. Even if you can get more impressions for a fraction of the cost.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by fritsd on Saturday November 26 2016, @07:08PM

      by fritsd (4586) on Saturday November 26 2016, @07:08PM (#433352) Journal

      About the Daily Mail:

      This is what image they want to present of themselves:

      Note that, even though the opinion article is written in the Guardian (left-wing newspaper), it describes facts of a publication in the Daily Mail newspaper.

      Why didn't the Daily Mail put the jailing of Jo Cox's murderer on its front page? [theguardian.com]

      Context: Jo Cox was a British Member of Parliament who was murdered just before the Brexit referendum. The verdict of the judge was that it was an ideologically/politically motivated murder.

      Those are rare. So I think it's newsworthy.

      That article also has a link to the story of the murder, but before you decide to click on it, be warned that it may make you feel sick.

      R.I.P. Jo Cox.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @06:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @06:23PM (#433331)

    Maybe you should consider giving it a try. Then you and yours would stop making idiotic predictions such as "Hillary in a landslide!". Nothing worse that a fucking dipshit who has to virtue signal how superior he is by telling us which websites he doesn't visit. Save it for your useless crowd of Twitter fuckheads.

    • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @08:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @08:43PM (#433379)

      To be fair, the predictions are based upon standard polling and do not take into account such things as soliciting help from foreign governments to change vote counts. That hasn't been worked into the current models.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @09:44PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @09:44PM (#433408)

        yeah, damn those cultural marxists for trying to get more illegals over the border to vote clinton in. oh wait...

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 26 2016, @10:45PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 26 2016, @10:45PM (#433433) Journal

      You should call a technician of some sort, see if he can help you connect with reality.

  • (Score: 4, Touché) by Nollij on Sunday November 27 2016, @03:29PM

    by Nollij (4559) on Sunday November 27 2016, @03:29PM (#433647)

    In this case, the advertising agency is attempting to censor Breitbart

    I'll just leave this here [xkcd.com]