Bell Media and other Canadian brands halt ads on X amid extremism concerns | Hacker News Reader

Bell Media and other Canadian brands halt ads on X amid extremism concerns

cbc.ca

28 pointshnuser000019 comments

When it's _Canadian ISPs_ that think you're unethical and abusive you should really take a step back and introspect a little

The thing you have to realize about Canada is that corporate power is concentrated in Toronto, especially for the oligopoly industries (i.e. most of Canadian business) and the oligopoly nature of the industries allows Canadian companies to go even more insane that the wokest coastal city based American companies. Since it's almost entirely concentrated in one spot it also allows the insanity to spread and multiply way faster than the multipolar corporate structure in America. So, if any Canadian ISP thinks you are unethical and abusive you may actually be doing it right.

I don't care how we get advertisers out of social media. I only care that we do - up to and including shutting down platforms like Twitter, TT, FB, IG, etc. At this point it's pretty clear that ad-subsidised social media is not aligned with the best interests of its users.

Apologies if that's a controversial take.

Without ads, how do they pay to keep the servers running?

Subscription fees. If a user is not willing to pay a nominal fee to use a service, that's an indicator that they are not drawing sufficient value from it. I would argue that most, if not all social media currently adds negative value to most people's lives - hence why they would stop using it if it were not free. The negative value stems from the fact that current social media business models are structured to service the interests of their advertisers (the true customers) above the interests of the users.

Like Twitter blue then?

I wonder how consistent that decision is with regard to the other platforms they advertise on. If you Google 'extremism on Facebook,' you'll find a flood of accusations from mainstream media outlets.

Most other platforms are still banning Alex Jones, for example, so I think it's consistent-ish.

Though, ultimately, who knows. It may be that Bell was seeing poor returns on their X advertising and used the excuse of extremism to get some brownie points with a portion of their customers while saving money.

Facebook more or less represent the market as a whole, so you got your neighbour's grandma showing her cookies and my cousin rambling about those "dawn xyz people".

On x-twitter, the grandma's gone and you know what's left.

I guess that spending 100k in advertising on Facebook has now a much higher ROI than on x-Twitter because if some friend of my cousin says that "bell is owned by xyz", you lose that market in an instant.

And now that marketplace has replaced many classified ads sites, it's more and more used by our neighbours' grandma's.

I wonder how this will play out when X start offering a payment service. If brands aren't willing to deal with them for ads why would they deal with them for payments?

I don't understand why this continues to be newsworthy.

An ad platform that can't deliver an acceptable level of brand safety does not have a Minimum Viable Product.

> I don't understand why this continues to be newsworthy.

It's not. It is a marketing opportunity.

X directly undermines a monopoly on a Western narrative legacy media companies and their activist employees have grown accustom to benefiting from.

Getting favorable access to powerful people corrupts them, preventing them from reporting on the misdeeds of the rich and powerful.

Putting aside all the childish "people say things I don't like" crap aside, these legacy media companies are directly competing with the likes of social media for the same ad revenue.

Some say it would be more democratic to simply leave unpopular content online, and let it naturally wither by virtue of being unpopular. But what if the people choose wrong? That is when the guiding hand of brands and advertisers must intervene.

After all, they also have free speech. That they're better organized and command more money doesn't change that. Like all accepted the Citizens United decision, this is likewise beyond question - not only is it obviously legal, it is also obviously moral and necessary.

I realize I'm going to get dumped on, flagged, and disallowed to speak. But I need to say it anyway. According to polling, the clear front runner who may win the next federal election here in Canada has a clear defund the CBC stance. When he says 'defund the CBC' he gets standing applauses.

I think this is a great example for why I think the CBC should be defunded.

I can't trust CBC News' reporting of anything having to do with this subject after the incident/controversy earlier this year where CBC itself halted its own use of Twitter.

This is CBC News' own article about that earlier situation:

"CBC pauses Twitter activity after being labelled 'government-funded media"

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/cbc-twitter-government-funded-...

We should keep in mind that CBC has been receiving well over a billion dollars of taxpayer money each year lately, so them being labeled "government-funded media" does seem quite reasonable to me.

That situation will always make me question CBC News' impartiality regarding topics like Twitter, X, and Musk.

You’re missing the intent behind these "government-funded media" flags. They are trying to devalue this content, as if it is somehow lesser than if it had come from the private sector which obviously Twitter values more.

The government isn’t some nefarious entity that acts on its own volition, it is US. And a handful of men sitting in a boardroom is exactly what it is not.

> The government isn’t some nefarious entity that acts on its own volition, it is US

Unless you are not, in this case, Canadian. In any case, despite your attempt to paint it as malicious, the distinction is very relevant when reporting on government policy.

CBC pauses Twitter activity after being accurately labelled propaganda.

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