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Comment by infodroid | Hacker News Reader

Someone needs to put a stop to this bad meme... On social media, advertising is not an endorsement of the content. This might be the case for traditional media, but social media is different. Advertisers and platforms need to recognize the difference, to accept the lack of control over user-generated content as a feature, and to push back on unfair criticism. But perhaps their real goal is increasing their control over social media content.

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Wait, what makes it different? There's the old adage that half of your advertising money is wasted, you just have no way of knowing which half. Why would you willingly spend it on putting your ads next to content you don't want to associate with your brand? It seems exceedingly likely that this is the half that isn't productive.

(This is also what I don't get about the Twitter fake-account-number business and the YouTube videos-targeting-children business - if I were an advertiser, I would have no interest in spending money advertising to bots or to young children. I would prefer to pay for ads in front of 4 million users I want to reach than in front of 5 million users, 1 million of whom I don't want to reach. Why are advertisers not pushing back hard on inflation of account metrics?)

How we treat advertising on social media is a matter of convention, a social negotiation. If we agree that it's just targeting demographics and not endorsing the actual content, then that is what it means, and advertising dollars wouldn't care about the content. The effectiveness of social media advertising doesn't need to be sensitive to content.

And maybe it isn't totally different from newspapers and TV news programs. Just like we don't associate advertising on news media with the often violent and disturbing content of the news itself, we don't need to treat social media advertising as endorsing its user-generated content. And in fact, we haven't been doing that until the recent YouTube controversy.

You're a german company. You sell cars. A community of gun enthusiasts hosts your ad. You deny it on moral means.

This has nothing to do with cars. People who buy guns can, and often do, buy cars. No relation. Was your buy going to be wasted?

I don't see why it's not an endorsement. Money changed hands. The content of reddit's many forums is well known. No one is blind to this.

"I didn't give the killer money for a knife, I bought him lunch!"

It’s an endorsement of content on TV (see Sean Hannity). It’s an endorsement of content on radio (Dr. Laura lost her show because of it).

Why would anyone think the internet is different? Complaining to advertisers has been very effective for a long time.

In a free country you can sell a pair of sneakers to someone with different set of political beliefs if you want to. Thats what you do in a civil society.

I’m sorry but if you’re advertising on a platform for hate groups, you’re financially supporting them, and I can choose not to do business with you because of it.

I'm a creator, and your logic impacts me financially, although I don't depend on this money, here's why: Advertisers don't even know my channel exists. The only thing an advertiser knows about my channel is that my viewers tend to watch tech-related videos, and can be associated with other related metadata produced by deductive reasoning alone. When it comes time for XYZBlenderCorp to invest in advertising, they don't get presented with a list and short bio of all the channels their ad will be displayed in conjunction with, they get presented with a friendly demographic filter with sliders for age, and combo boxes for geographic location and other classifiers.

If an advertisement for a video tutorial series teaching people how to use the 3d software Blender should happen to show up along a "Will It Blend" video, nobody should lose their job (or your money) over it. This mentality is ignorant of everything we know as technology professionals about how this business is run; so much of this process is automated and there is no conceivable way for it to not be. There are not enough humans needing jobs on this planet to manually sort video for prospective advertisers in the way you expect.

I would argue that not moderating content is what would make you lose advertising money: There was a huge push back from YouTube ads after it was revealed big advertisers were shown on violent/extremist content, or videos about catastrophes ("Buy Kellogg's cereals!"... 400 killed in ____) ;

YouTube has since improved their detection algorithm (even if it has more false positive, likely) to keep advertisers on the platform. It they didn't do this, the only alternative would be to WHITELIST advertisers, which would mean that nobody would pick you and only the big names would get revenue.

The filters are only as good as they have to be. If the filters didn't work at all, nobody would pay for them. If the filters showed adult content intermixed with children's content, that would be a problem. Intermixing Blender with "Will it Blend" videos likely isn't a problem, but if it was integral to the platform and really bad, it could drive the Blender community away.

"This might be the case for traditional media, but social media is different. "

Please explain. Unlike "traditional social media" Reddit is organized into "like-minded" or themed mini-communities. Advertisers certainly know the type of content posted to these communities.

I'm thinking of the bigger picture here, especially taking into account the way YouTube was unfairly attacked.

The whole point of social media is for users to generate the content and to decide for themselves what makes content good or bad. In the past, advertising would fund the service, targeting specific demographics. It was never seen as endorsement of specific content.

Now advertisers want to start dictating the terms, to decide what specific content they approve of. Social media starts to look like traditional, sponsored, top-down media. This defeats the whole purpose.

Social media is selling out, and we are mistakenly cheering this on as a good thing.

Why should GM or Ford or Sony advertise on a site that allows literal Nazis to congregate and discuss Nazi things and talk about how they hate non-Nazi? And maybe even organize rallies?

“But it’s only 0.002% of the content!”

It doesn’t matter. As soon as a news report says ‘Ford advertises with a site that supports Nazis’ those ads are gone.

So Ford won’t buy ads there in the first place.

And it doesn’t matter that the amount of content is quite small. Or that ‘supports Nazis’ means ‘doesn’t kick them off’.

Ford doesn’t want that story or any anything like it. And if it does happen you can bet every other big brand is Goni for to quickly figure out if they’re doing the same and pull their ads.

This is business. And VERY few companies of any size want to be associated with violence against women, Nazis, beastiality, or a lot of the other really seedy stuff that exists in the depths of Reddit.

Bad meme? Sure. But the advertising thing isn't really relevant IMO.

reddit is smart to rid themselves of subreddits where the top front page posts are often threats or even just fantasies of raping people, even if advertisers aren't part of the equation.

The "good guys" can make a new subreddit but do it right this time.

Advertising is an endorsement of content. You have literally paid money to be associated with the people consuming a specific kind of content. Just because there's a middle man doesn't change that. If you want a platform for your incendiary content you're welcome to pay for it yourself; don't expect companies to foot the bill for you.

Why do you expect companies ignore the content their ads are shown next to?

The same companies that kept swear words off of basic cable for decades...

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