How to Destroy the Business Model of Breitbart and Fake News
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Attack the business models of companies who produce content we find offensive, politically incorrect, or don't align with our world view -- yet are still protected under the first amendment.
The problem is that Mr Phillips mentioned in the article must lack a sense of humor and/or information literacy if he thought he was reading hate speech. He was reading an opinion / sarcasm piece from Milo, Breitbart's in-house provocateur.
It is such a tiresome narrative that the liberal media outlets continue to trot out their own versions of fake news when they attempt to label breitbart sexist, racist, homophobic, or antisemitic.
It is sites like the nytimes who, through their reporting, have completely defanged the labels of "racist" and "hate speech" to the point that they mean nothing.
Calling women fat and unattractive for their use of birth control is not hate speech. It might be in poor taste, but it is not hate speech. Mr Phillips, the professor quoted in the article, would do well to leave his ivory tower and actually talk to someone from another walk of life. Leave the coddled campus life, head to a bowling alley, and listen to the Thursday league banter. Maybe then, in the cloud of rough and jockular language Mr Phillips and his ilk will see a small piece of the substrate of Americans who tell dirty jokes. Who make fun of their spouses. Who call each other names (often politically incorrect) and do so as members of a tribe.
They read breitbart and Drudge Report because those sites offer an alternative narrative to what comes from regular mass media.
Just because it is a different point of view does not make it fake or hateful or undeserving of ad dollars.
How does this end? My guess is it won't matter in the end. Thankfully.
Breitbarts traffic shows no signs of slowing. That inventory vacated by the brands too weak to ignore these internet-crybullies will be snapped up by the brands who want to reach a conservative readership.
>Just because it is a different point of view does not make it fake or hateful or undeserving of ad dollars.
Without quibbling over whether some of their content is hateful (I think it is; you disagree), what's wrong with letting the free market de-value ads run on their network? What's wrong with attacking their business model? Companies don't have to run ads next to headlines like "Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?" That's the free market at work.
Which is distinctly not limited to attacking feminism. Commenting on the Turkish prime ministers' family oil industry enterprises, for instance, got people banned from things like twitter. Various political actors got banned. Twitter has in fact threatened to ban a presidential candidate. Yes, it was Donald Trump, yes I may even understand why. It is still a bridge too far. Now we're talking about firms refusing to work with one another based on political differences. Is that REALLY the society we want to become ?
Besides, this is discrimination. There was a time, not that long ago, that everybody was clamoring against that. According to the Geneva convention definition, what you're suggesting is definitely discrimination.
No we're not. We're talking about reaching out to companies advertising on websites that contain both broadly offensive (e.g. against women) and specifically hateful (e.g. against certain individuals) rhetoric to let them know these ads exist.
>Now we're talking about firms refusing to work with one another based on political differences. Is that REALLY the society we want to become ?
You don't have to get into bed with people you find rude and offensive. That's a cardinal rule of an open society. Saying "Sir, I find your content offensive and I will not pay you to show ads to your visitors" is discrimination in only the sense that companies can discriminate between whom we want to do business with.
And when the southern bakery refuses to sell to democrats ?
The rule is that if you sell to the public you don't get to discriminate. I don't know the details about how that applies in this particular case, but ... It seems an entirely reasonable rule to me.
> Calling women fat and unattractive for their use of birth control is not hate speech
Something isn't quite lining up here...
People on the second list make a conscious decision to use birth control.
Thus the two are different.
Same way hating men in general would be misandric. Hating men who do X is not.
Condoms
Besides, whatever happened to just ignoring it and getting on with one's life? It is this constant cry-bully public outcry and constant whinging that has propelled people like Milo into the daily news cycle.
Your threshold for hate speech much be pretty low if you think "fat and unattractive" fits the definition.
More generally, the definition of acceptable opinion will shift to something you will find unacceptable, and this system will still be in place.
Note: before you say that'd be illegal, I'd like to remind you that the republicans control Congress, the Senate and the presidency, and soon the Supreme Court and the Fed. Illegal actions for the republicans is effectively only things that violate the constitution, and only when so judged by republican judges.
The right has discovered social media. If you start brigading right-wing sites by going after their advertisers, they're going to start doing the same thing to you.
What's more, as the recent election showed, the right's brigading ability is far greater than the left's at the moment. What do you think would happen if Milo Yiannopoulos were to post the contact information for advertiser at Vox.com and the Huffington Post and tell his followers to demand that they pull their ads? I'd be willing to bet a good deal of money that it would be more impactful than an opinion piece in the NY Times.
Do you really think advertisers would pull their funding from Vox or HuffPo absent very offensive headlines like the ones on Breitbart?
I'm not even a conservative, and my choice of employers is drastically limited by politics. I won't work in California, New York, Maryland, Illinois, or several other states because of their gun laws. I know I'm not alone in that.
The talent pool for companies with liberal politics is artificially limited by the liberal states where they are located. There is an echo chamber effect at play that the left seems to be completely blind to.
Likewise, I see no evidence that liberal politics are less offensive to population sub-groups across the country. In major cities, sure, but that's only around half of the country's population.
I also suspect that you're conflating inclusivity with liberalism. Yes, LGBT issues have been a liberal cause, but the resistance to that is waning very quickly. To most people outside of the major cities, "liberalism" means "higher taxes", "anti-business", "welfare", "pro-union", and "anti-gun". Each of those alienates a substantial part of the country.
> Do you really think advertisers would pull their funding from Vox or HuffPo absent very offensive headlines like the ones on Breitbart?
You may not find HuffPo or Vox offensive, but the right absolutely does. Consider things like this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-fox-news-ey...
> Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
In short, there is a culture war in full swing in the US. The left has been winning that war for a long time, but they're not recognizing the rise of real resistance to their agenda. That's in large part because it doesn't look like what we're used to seeing as a movement.
Nobody changes by bring attacked.
Mote. Beam.