General Mills latest to halt Twitter ads as Musk takeover sparks brand exodus | Hacker News Reader

General Mills latest to halt Twitter ads as Musk takeover sparks brand exodus

theguardian.com

10 pointselorant24 comments

General Mills strives to give you the impression that you'll be healthy if you eat their products. If they fail at maintaining this impression, you won't go Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. You won't crave those crazy Cinnamon Toast Crunch squares. You won't want Cookie Crisp cookies for breakfast. Oh those Golden Grahams — you won't want those either. Maybe you'll say that Trix is not for kids, or that Kix shouldn't be tested on kids. And when you get sad about all of it, you can pour your tears into a pint of Häagen-Dazs.

See for yourself: https://www.generalmills.com/food-we-make/brands, and take special note of the dark pattern. When you load the page, they show only twenty of their fifty brands. You have to click a button to see most of the cash cows that wreck your body.

What are you on, the list is in alphabetical order, Cheerios, Cocoa Puff and Cookie Crisp are all on the first page. Nothing this company sells is especially healthy, not even their healthy selection. Even Wheaties has like 5g sugar per 36g.

Shouldn't they list them by revenue? That way, the brands most likely to be familiar to any given consumer would be easiest to spot. General Mills has many reasons to prefer that people don't form their own independent associations and opinions on their overall business, but these also boil down to growth, revenue and profit. The design of their website reflects this perfectly.

There are many ways to be dishonest and there is great value in studying them. Humanity's progress depends on learning from the evil that is done. This is essentially like building a muscle; strain is required.

Remember this the next time you vote. Without progressive governments we wouldn't even know what's in that box of Cheerios. It's called consumer rights. In Europe we have many other rights too, such as worker rights.

There is the unsolved problem of the governments themselves being co-opted. The situation in Europe is obviously changing, but it still is very much under the thumb of the United States. We have all been living in a fairy tale and we are all about to find out where the bottom line really is.

It seems like you're saying them stopping advertising to kids is a good thing?

Yes.

So "nothing has changed" in how content moderation happens on Twitter. All these companies are leaving to make Progressive activists happy? That's the only reason right now.

Not because the advertising doesn't work (it may never have).

Not because there's a surge of new propaganda campaigns (anything that is there was already permitted).

Only politics?

Nothing has changed, says the man with a terrible track record of keeping his word.

> Only politics?

When the owner becomes super political then it alienates 50% of the country.

Companies don’t care one iota about politics, they want their publisher to be a partner and a force to propel their commercial product.

Of course they will pull out as soon as they notice that ideology becomes more important than pushing commerce. Which is why what is happening at Twitter. It’s also the reason why advertisers snub Trump’s Truth, whereas they flock to Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok…

Given that Musk has previously said that he wanted less moderation on Twitter, and that this sort of giant conglomerate brand advertising is notoriously risk-averse, it's surely not surprising that they're pulling back for a bit to see if what he previously said was true?

I'd assume that, if in a few months, Musk has gone back on his previous claims and Twitter moderation remains much as it was before, they'll return. If not, not.

That's just it, moderation hasn't changed yet. Musk has just spouted off generalities about what he claims he can and will do. No specifics on how, and no policy changes yet.

If he'd announced new policy, and then they headed for the hills, that's different than jumping the moment he owns it. One is about policy, and the other is about politics. They're leaving him, not Twitter.

More likely than anything all these companies will realise not advertising makes no difference anyway.

I've felt for a while we have an adpocalypse coming - that social media orgs are overselling the ROI of ads on their platforms, and that with consumer spending tightening a lot of ad revenue will dry up.

This, and using the web has trained me to just not see ads. While I don’t run an ad blocker, ads have to be subliminally effective as I’m idling waiting for them to complete (usually looking for the skip button). Maybe the younger, marketing-relevant groups watch them, but they’re just the crap one puts up with to see what I want.

The ai fails in at least two ways, showing me all sorts of stuff that’s irrelevant and then spending days or weeks sending me ads for X after I bought X on line. LensCrafters is particularly good at the latter.

“ In announcing her resignation Tuesday, she said she still believes Twitter’s new administration understands the importance of upholding the “brand safety” standards she sought to champion.”

I guess I get that execs have to say things like this but does anyone really put her words over her actions?

No one cares who they are cancel culturing today.

FYI, culture is a noun: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture

I don’t think you can make it a verb by adding ‘ing’. I think that may be why I don’t understand your point, can you clairify?

In conversational English, you can turn nouns into verbs by adding "ing", similar to a contraction.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/the-basics-of-verbing-nouns/

"Cancel culture"-ing means "engaging in cancel culture". (Which, to be clear, optimizing ad spend is not).

Would it mean “engaging in cancel culture” rather than “applying one’s culture to another person”(as in encouraging them to cancel). I think “engaging in cancel culture” would just be “cancelling (or engaging in cancel culture as you said)

I guess there’s also enculturatibg, but to take another example, what would it mean to “American Culturing” someone, I think it’s just nonsensical

In the context of what that person was saying, they certainly just mean "cancelling" and misused "verbing" to make their communication more difficult and less succinct, defeating the entire purpose, yes. When you use "verbing" the actual verb is assumed, not explicit, so it's not specifically "engaging in cancel culture" so much as it is "the existence of cancel culture in the context of someone doing something".

maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding

Totally verbing that noun

Seriously, why should we care what General Mills does? Are they some kind of paragon of virtue and ethics? No, they are a globocorp just like Twitter is. General Mills' products are disgusting anyway.

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