Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday March 26 2017, @01:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the can-you-blame-them dept.

Google has failed to convince major brands (such as AT&T, Verizon, Enterprise Holdings, Volkswagen, and Tesco) to continue advertising on YouTube, following the "revelation" that ads can appear next to extremist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, raunchy, etc. content. From Google's Tuesday response:

We know advertisers don't want their ads next to content that doesn't align with their values. So starting today, we're taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content. This includes removing ads more effectively from content that is attacking or harassing people based on their race, religion, gender or similar categories. This change will enable us to take action, where appropriate, on a larger set of ads and sites. We'll also tighten safeguards to ensure that ads show up only against legitimate creators in our YouTube Partner Program—as opposed to those who impersonate other channels or violate our community guidelines. Finally, we won't stop at taking down ads. The YouTube team is taking a hard look at our existing community guidelines to determine what content is allowed on the platform—not just what content can be monetized. [...] We're changing the default settings for ads so that they show on content that meets a higher level of brand safety and excludes potentially objectionable content that advertisers may prefer not to advertise against. Brands can opt in to advertise on broader types of content if they choose.

The growing boycott started in the UK:

On Friday, the U.K. arm of the Havas agency, whose clients include the BBC and Royal Mail, said it would halt spending on YouTube and Web display ads in Google's digital advertising network. In doing so, Havas UK CEO Paul Frampton cited a duty to protect clients and "ensure their brands are not at all compromised" by appearing alongside or seeming to sponsor inappropriate content. The decision by a global marketing group with a U.K. digital budget of more than $200 million to put its dealings with Google on "pause" followed a recent controversy over YouTube star Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg, who lost a lucrative production contract with Maker Studios and its owner, Walt Disney Co., over "a series of anti-Semitic jokes and Nazi-related images in his videos," as the Two-way reported. As the BBC reports, "Several high profile companies, including Marks and Spencer, Audi, RBS and L'Oreal, have pulled online advertising from YouTube."

Google's Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler also promised to develop "new tools powered by our latest advancements in AI and machine learning to increase our capacity to review questionable content for advertising".


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:38AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:38AM (#484252)

    There is that. But also they changed something fundamental last year. The producers are saying their ad rev dropped like a rock last September or so. Many of the smaller ones switched to patreon/paypall to get people to donate. One I watch fairly regularly switched to click bait sort of videos to game the system and keep viewership up.

    This is the second or third time they have done something like this. The content producers are getting sick of it. Then on top of that if they make a slightly 'off color' joke they get regulated into 'SJW' hell. Suddenly having to pander to people that is not normally in their audience just to make youtube happy. Pretty much all of the ones I watch have 'the video' where they are talking about money from youtube. Many were doing 'ok' some VERY 'ok'. Now not so much. They are not taking care of their content producers and they are starting to resort to shocking things to say to attract viewers. Eventually they will just say 'screw that' and move on. The advertisers are reacting in kind. They do not want their brands associated to that (positive or negative). Many of them make sure everything is 'on brand'. So yeah I could see them saying 'uh dont want to be associated to that'. As the shocking things seem to be 'political' these days with one side calling the other 'nazis' (with no clue what a nazi is other than someone they dont like). There is also a concerted effort to harass celebrities who step out of line.

    I have taken to if it says 'trump' or 'hillary' in the title I just say 'not interested'. The whole site went bonkers and thought I wanted to hear all of that junk 24/7. Hell, I voted for the guy and I do not want to see it all the time, positive OR negative. Unfortunatly the trending list is still pretty much unusable. Where in the past it was usually pretty good. My 'home feed' has mostly calmed down to pre-2016 style videos with that one thing.

    Frankly these douchebags are ruining the freedom of the internet. Using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals#The_Rules [wikipedia.org] this to discredit anyone. Google has gone from 'do no evil' to 'do what we perceive as good' even if that means censorship and spitting on the very things we built the internet around. They have an idea what is 'good' and do not see that they are actually doing evil. They honestly do not see that the very tools they create can then be used upon them. They somehow think they will only ever have the power. It is pure narcissism at its finest. Just watch. Google will say it is not their fault and again double down and blame the very people that make youtube a success. They are making the classic mistake of a big business thinking they know what the customers want instead of listening to their customers. You can make the argument that the advertisers are the customer. But not really. We the viewers kinda are. But we are also the product. But we have a big say in what we want to see.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=2, Overrated=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:55AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @03:55AM (#484257)

    The trending list is a joke. It seems to be full of sponsored content, easily and obviously identifiable by having under a million views. Meanwhile, controversial videos (like a certain Content Cop) that make the list get removed fast, even if they have over 10 million views.

    Here's trending:

    https://www.youtube.com/feed/trending [youtube.com]

    It looks better than when I checked it a month ago, but not by much.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:17AM

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Sunday March 26 2017, @04:17AM (#484264)

    I gave up on the idea of posting videos to Youtube (not that I had that many) a while back when they introduced that retarded autoplay mis-feature. After my videos it was playing videos that I didn't approve of, while keeping the the page title the same as if it were still my content. Fuck no. They didn't fall in to any of the categories described in the story, they just sent the opposite message I was trying to send. Sure, each person could turn it off. But go to a new computer or open a new private window and there it was again.

  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @11:50AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @11:50AM (#484338)

    > Hell, I voted for the guy
    >
    > Frankly these douchebags are ruining the freedom of the internet. Using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals#The_Rules [wikipedia.org] this to discredit anyone.

    Ah yes, the saul alinsky under every rock conspiracy fantasy.
    Of course you voted for trump.

    Even when the nut job hard right think they are presenting as sane, the crazy always leaks out...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @06:49PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @06:49PM (#484411)

      Great job proving his point. Tool.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @06:53PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @06:53PM (#484416)

        He used rule #5. "Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions"

        He does not want to see it because he thinks it benefits him somehow.

  • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday March 27 2017, @02:02PM

    by Wootery (2341) on Monday March 27 2017, @02:02PM (#484607)

    It's a pity there's no more 'web-like' solution than YouTube recommendations. Or if there is, no-one uses it. Instead, essentially the whole world of free-to-view Internet videos is locked away in the incestuous YouTube ecosystem. YouTube doesn't link outside YouTube.

    There's nothing stopping you hosting your video on your own site and going with an advertiser who's ok with your content, but you'll never be discovered if you're not on YouTube.

    Exceptions exist -- DemocracyNow and TED don't primarily use YouTube, for instance -- but they're very much exceptions to the rule. Not to mention that, of course, they're large organisations and not mere individuals. Additionally I don't think either is ad-funded anyway.

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Monday March 27 2017, @04:16PM

    by Bot (3902) on Monday March 27 2017, @04:16PM (#484669) Journal

    > Frankly these douchebags are ruining the freedom of the internet

    Now that I think about it, the major brands are doing the same.
    "We don't want to be associated with content we don't like" means "Google, start censoring".

    Of course it's their money and they are free to put or retire it however they see fit. But it seems strange that conglomerate with business practices that usually echo mafia ones (which is not shocking as decades of laundered drug money possibly went to those conglomerates) and whose expert in communication pull every dirty trick in the books, don't want a viewership with the same attention span of a mollusc to associate the ad they are skipping with a video THEY WANT TO SEE and complain to a company whose video portal pushes clickbait. So hypocritical that I suspect the aim is, again, censorship of the internet and a technototalitarian society.

    The only video google should pull are that billion or so which have a totally unrelated thumbnail and/or have content unrelated to the title.

    --
    Account abandoned.