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Comment by randyrand | Hacker News Reader

He says its not for virtue signaling but literally the 2nd point is virtue signaling.*

The only point that really matters as far as ads are concerned is the first one, but without numbers it’s not much to go on.

In other words, it’s not a very useful article for how non-virtue signaling companies will respond.

* Ad purchasers having little tolerance for being placed next to racists posts made by the user’s own subscribers and the user’s own content choices is a recent phenomenon, and is literally the definition of virtue signaling

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> He says it not for virtue signaling but literally the 2nd point is virtue signaling.

I think it means not for virtue signaling [about musk/twitter].

Avoiding brand damage and other “common” virtue signaling (like sticking American flags on things for July 4th, sticking rainbows on things for pride, etc) are just called “marketing”. It’s standard operating procedure for someone looking to make money.

As a business owner, I advertise what my product can do, never once my personal beliefs.

My political brand image is not important to my product, and could only hurt me.

That said, I am more fortunate in the space I am in (no competitors, clear utility).

(edit: I agree that he may have been referring to virtue signaling about Musk specifically, hard to say.)

It's not virtue signaling to not want your brand displayed next to hateful content. Brand safety isn't just avoiding "things you personally don't like" it's avoiding "things your customers have negative associations with that could transfer to your brand"...

I don't care what political party death threats are directed at, I don't want my ad displayed next to a death threat. It's not a moral objection, it's a business decision.

They would do their best to distance themself from encouraging the threat itself, but if ads next to death threats lead to a lot of views and purchases most advertisers would undoubtedly jump at the opportunity.

Case in point: Any news company. 95% of their content is about objectionable actions taken by objectionable people. But ad money rolls in despite being placed next to crime, rape, murder, racism, war, and yes, even death threats. They’re literally monetizing crime.

Being advertised next to something is not necessarily an endorsement of that thing. They’re orthogonal

Advertisers care DEEPLY about the things that surround their brand when it comes up in an ad.

Your case in point... advertisers regularly try to get news companies to not run certain stories. Advertisers are rarely successful, but it does happen!

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20460787

Advertisers have a lot more say about the morals we have in modern times than you think.

"female presenting nipples"

There's a big difference between reporting about something (people choosing to read the news, getting ads on the side), and advertising the threats (people see that advert they didn't expect next to your advert they didn't expect).

Your initial assertion doesn't hold either. For example you can advertise through TrafficJunky way cheaper than on social media. Yet most companies don't.

I agree there is a difference.

But the assertion was the advertisers don’t want to be next to crime, racism, etc.

I’m just giving a simple example that, largely, it is not true. You can be next to unsavory things and still get tons of ads, if you do it right.

Maybe you don't notice the effects that your brand being next to stuff like porn has because you're not operating at the scale where that sort of thing matters?

You're probably not running national or global ad campaigns.

Regardless I think the point of the original post on blind was “I don’t care about musk or twitters acquisition drama, but for other reasons we are cutting twitter ad spend”

I think this is supposed to be in contrast to the ubiquitous posts about “I can’t trust twitter because Elon is a bad man that’s why I’m cutting my ad spend”

> Ad purchasers having little tolerance for being placed next to racists posts made by the user’s own subscribers and the user’s own content choices is a recent phenomenon

... Eh? Someone should go back in time and tell DoubleClick and Google that they didn't need all those content rules for their ad networks. Traditional web ad platforms have _never_ allowed their ads to be placed amongst "hardcore antisemitism and adult spam".

On the

> user’s own subscribers

point... Have you used Twitter in the last decade? What you see on Twitter isn't who you subscribe to, it is what the vaunted algorithm chooses to foist on you, with a little bit of who you actually subscribe to as a treat.

> * Ad purchasers having little tolerance for being placed next to racists posts made by the users own subscribers and the users own content choices is a recent phenomenon, and is literally the definition of virtue signaling

"Adult" posts means __pornography__.

I don't think pornography is necessarily virtue signaling. We all understand that some brands don't want to associate with it though.

I don't think "Antiemetic" is necessarily political. But if it is to you, then... focus on the other word in that sentence. I've heard that more-and-more pornographic material has been appearing on Twitter recently (even before the Elon takeover), and people / advertisers were feeling more and more uncomfortable about it.

Your asterisk is in no way a recent phenomenon. Advertisers have directed changes to television shows and magazines to prevent being placed near something with content they worry will impact their brand.

> Serious brand safety issues. Our organic social and CS teams got dozens of screenshots of our ads next to awful content. Replies to our posts with hardcore antisemitism and adult spam remained up for days even when flagged

Not wanting your advertisements displayed right next to objectionable content is not 'virtue signalling' lol.

It is the definition of virtue signaling.

The definition of virtue signaling is:

"the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue."

Thinking that it might be bad for brand reputation to have engagement with your posts to be filled with antisemitism and porn isn't exactly virtue signaling.

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