Comment by pjkundert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjkundert | Hacker News Reader

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Using a third-party organization to establish common selling prices amongst independent sellers appears to be suspect. Even if the sellers don't actively "collude" to set the price.

This is what is happening in the San Francisco rental marketplace, right now.

As for buyers (advertisement buyers) belonging to a group that evidently was colluding with various buyers to induce their wider membership to exclude a subset of sellers (websites) because of their political leanings?

Maybe this is just activist "boycotting". If every ad buying company in the organization, and every agency was aware that they were all trying to penalize websites that held certain opinions, that should be fine: It's just the "Anti-Conservative Ad Buying Club". No harm, no foul -- Just baddies like X, Daily Wire, Zero Hedge, etc. get hurt.

But, it doesn't appear that everyone involved knew that was the game being played. They were just members of an ad industry organization that recommended good behaviour.

If so, then everyone should be OK if some companies join an "Anti Leftist Ad Buyers Club", and boycotts CNN, WaPo, etc.? Right??

First off yes I (and I think 99% of people) would be totally fine with your closing hypothetical. Why would I care about CNN’s ad revenue? Never even enters my mind.

But more fundamentally your frame totally omits brand safety, which is kind of the whole ball game. A group that exists to evaluate brands safety thought that changes to Twitter made it less brand safe and said so. It’s like suing a bond rating agency for downgrading your rating

The evidence presented thus far doesn't have any discussion of brand safety, and appears focussed on retribution for wrongthink against specific ad platforms.

Which may or may not be fine. IANAL.

Personally, I am shocked and appalled by the (few) ads I've seen lately, and arrange my affairs to avoid using any vendors I see advertising on the mainstream channels touted by the defendant in this case as being "safe" for their represented brands.

My young daughter sees none of these ads, as they are IMHO generally sex-cultish religious indoctrination... (specifically: the ads / programming revolves around glorifying whatever sexual identities or behaviours are embraced by that religion, instead of on the relevant topic or event at hand).

Once again, that's fine -- and I don't think there's a legal foundation preventing individuals (or the companies they own) from avoiding ad sellers that appear to be ideologically / religiously motivated to proselytize for (or avoid) sex-cultish religions.

It is probably even fine for an advertising industry organization to proclaim publicly that it rejects ad platforms based on ideological grounds -- I would certainly join such an organization, if it resulting in my company's advertising never appearing on a channel that contains sex-cultish religious programming or advertising!

Would that be ... illegal? I hope not!

So, in that light -- what is wrong with this industry organization avoiding ad channels that reject sex-cultish religious programming or advertising?

If everyone involved knew exactly that this was the goal of the defendant's organization (and they all felt that their product's ads belonged on channels containing such IMHO questionable programming), why wouldn't that be just fine?

HN is, unfortunately, now sadly inhabited by many un-inquisitive cowards.

Why is collusion of buyers (group influence over supply) not fundamentally different than collusion of sellers (restriction of supply)? I don't agree with pretty much anything being done, by either side, but it's interesting.

It used to be much more interesting, here; filled with people who asked "why" things occur, and if things form coherent patterns, what this could mean?

Now, it is evidently a boring leftist DEI soy-boy echo chamber. If one engages in wrongthink, one gets silently downvoted, evidently by people who hold opinions they cannot robustly support...

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