X suspends pro-Nazi account after two brands halt advertising | Hacker News Reader

X suspends pro-Nazi account after two brands halt advertising

arstechnica.com

19 pointsbarbazoo11 comments

> With sensitivity settings, brands can mark their accounts as "conservative"—avoiding ad placements next to "targeted hate speech, explicit sexual content, gratuitous gore, excessive profanity, obscenity, spam, drugs"—or "standard"—only avoiding placements next to "targeted hate speech, explicit sexual content, gratuitous gore, excessive profanity." Soon there will be a third tier, "relaxed," where brands can "show ads alongside some sensitive content to maximize reach" but still cannot monetize targeted hate speech or explicit sexual content.

Interesting, it sounds like they're able to reliably detect "targeted hate speech, explicit sexual content, gratuitous gore, excessive profanity, obscenity, spam, drugs"

Not sure it logically follows that they're able to reliably detect something simply because they have it categorized in a service level offering. Their model could still be reactive, relying on reports from users or even from those same brands.

I don't know what the situation actually is. Just throwing that out there.

Whatever they do, they must have a false negative rate that they think is low enough to make the gods, eh the advertisers feel good.

Playing devil's advocate here, there's a major difference between not placing an ad and censoring the post or even ban the account.

Their hate speech detector might have a 2% false-positive rate. No big deal if you just skip ads on those posts, but a massive deal if you censor those posts or ban their authors.

> not placing an ad and censoring the post or even ban the account.

I didn't even remotely suggest any of that

Making advertisers police content for them surely won't go well for 𝕏.

You may not be up to date with the latest thinking, but it is widely accepted that advertising agencies are the best, most benevolent arbiters of speech. That is why their judgment is never questioned, but presented as immutable fact, like the weather.

> advertising agencies are the best, most benevolent arbiters of speech.

Needs an /s

You get what you pay for. You're free to start a subscription twitter that hosts all the hate content you want. Platforms that sustain themselves on advertising are going to do what is popular with the public. Turns out most people, despite what some may think, are not hateful violent lunatics. There are plenty of services that host that content if you want it. Google is at your fingertips. Just don't expect people to like you or demand it be mainstream.

> You get what you pay for.

Free markets when you agree with them, civil-rights and anti-discrimination laws when you don't.

> Platforms that sustain themselves on advertising are going to do what is popular with the public.

You mean what is popular with advertisers, not public, right?

Sure it will. It’s always been the case. Do you think reasonable advertisers have always been placing their brand next to content they don’t like? I think it’s more than acceptable that an advertiser demands their content not be next to neo-Nazi content. It’s the free market.

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