Elon Musk's X just sued a nonprofit advertising group out of existence
cnn.com
cnn.com
Admittedly my comment is a bit trite - purity contests are just as despicable.
Why shouldn't a group be able to boycott a site owned by someone who is using it for obvious political purposes?
However, I'm also not convinced that advertisers are afraid of showing their ads close to "questionable" contents. Users won't really notice unless they're the consumers of that content anyway; plus, customers boycotting a brand is not something that happens by itself, it's usually a coordinated action.
I'm more of the idea that advertisers are afraid to be victim of coordinated attacks from various groups that describe themselves as concerned with fundamental ethical principles (e.g. anti-racism, minority rights) but have in fact a very clear political leaning. In essence, it is easy for a medium-sized media like Twitter to be blackmailed into falling in rank with what these groups want, under threat of having their source of income destroyed by scaring off their clients.
Really? How many large corporations ran ads next to content like 4chan has hosted long before more modern boycott ideas took hold? How many CEOs personally want their content running and supporting verified Nazi accounts [1] on Twitter?
It could well be that companies join such add non-profits for the same reason they join open-source non-profits or non-profits that assist the the company in any of a legion of choices: so the company doesn't have to spend as much in house money to keep informed of what is going on. Do you think all companies that subscribe the Wall Street Journal, or Nature, or MIT Tech Review, make zero decisions utilizing information they find?
My guess is this, like pretty much all Musk lawsuits, amount to more embarrassment for Musk (recall how he was forced to buy Twitter in the first place...)
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-mus...
Ah but there's more. The article, obviously still drawing from SLPC's report (again without saying so explicitly), proceeds detailing the names of some of the brands that have advertised alongside said contents:
"NBC News found ads running on 74 of the 150 premium accounts, either on their profile pages or in the replies below their posts. The advertisers included SiriusXM, The Hollywood Reporter and Cisco subsidiary Splunk. SiriusXM declined to comment. Penske Media, the owner of The Hollywood Reporter, declined to comment. Splunk did not respond to requests for comment sent by email."
So these brands have been warned.
So reporting news that the recipients are interested in is not "stirring up controversy"? Do you not see which of you vs NBC is being dishonest?
>I'm also quite confident that NBC News didn't dare to question the data
It's good that you are quite confident about things you have no knowledge about. News organizations generally follow principles that carry far more weight for accuracy than unfounded internet opinions.
>Wikipedia reports such criticism of the SPLC
Selective reading much? If you're listing a Wikipedia article to garner trust in your argument, at least don't selectively read the part you like and ignore the parts you don't.
Some parts you ignored: "the SPLC's classification and listings of hate groups (organizations that "attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics") and anti-government extremists are widely relied upon by academic and media sources"
Why would academia rely on them, given that the prime currency in academia is intellectual honesty? Oh yeah, because SLPC is well-respected in the assessment of Nazi and other hate speech.
"As of 2023, SPLC has earned the GuideStar Gold Seal of Transparency, which is given to organizations that voluntarily share their financials and "highlight their commitment to inclusivity to gain funders' trust and support." This is stark contrast to Musk hiding and lying about Twitter finances, blocking access to data to make it harder for researchers to more clearly detail the rise in hate speech (yet they do it anyway - simply use Google scholar and look for twitter nazi hate speech for thousands of papers on the topic, with all the data you can possibly desire).
I guess you ignored the list of a dozen+ large cases they won against groups including the KKK (many times), the White Aryan Resistance, Aryan Nation, The Daily Stormer, and others.
So are you cherry picking the one point you like ad ignoring the rest because you support all these other groups? Or do you love Musk+Twitter so much that you'll go to this length to defend him from the truth in this case, even if you have to make claims you have no proof for?
It's clear how intellectual dishonesty has led to you have beliefs that are not accrued from honest assessment the evidence before you. If you want some honest evidence, spend some time on Google Scholar reading the ample peer reviewed work on what Musk had brought to Twitter. My guess is you'll either not put in the work to improve your understanding, or you'll simply ignore proper evidence that doesn't fit your beliefs. Good luck.
To start you off here's two articles (dig on scihub if you actually want to read them) that are highly cited (and if you check citing articles, they're cited because they're accurate) [1],[2]. From the abstracts (data in papers)
[1] "We examine the levels of hate speech and prevalence of bots before and after Musk's acquisition of the platform. We find that hate speech rose dramatically upon Musk purchasing Twitter and the prevalence of most types of bots increased, while the prevalence of astroturf bots decreased."
[2] "Utilizing the configuration model to generate random retweet networks, we successfully found a direct link between Twitter users who retweet Musk and users who retweet several SPLC-defined hate groups. Results show that Musk’s Tweets and general rhetoric have a potential appeal to hateful users on Twitter."
When the platform leader appeals to hate groups, as this paper demonstrated, it's clear how we got here. You might want to read the science (and how to replicate it) before you make more unchecked claims.
I have no further interest in such dishonesty. Have a good day.
[1] https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/22222
[2] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-53503-1_...
This is outright wrong. That is the ideal of academia, yes. The practice of academia is rather different: They're very politically partisan, and especially in the humanities (where the SPLC's input is most relevant) academia is very prone to doing things like citing shoddier studies that cater to the academics' own (liberal-left) biases and ignoring ideologically inconvenient ones:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201906...
Academics are not selected for bravery, they're selected for conformity.
Hell, the whole peer review and working off of grant money things mean you have to please your (left-lib or Marxian) colleagues to get the money to do research at all, and then to get your results incorporated into the wider body of work.
Oh good. I'm glad internet rando has straightened that out.
>Academics are not selected for bravery, they're selected for conformity.
Haha, this is laughable. You know which academics are held in highest regard? Those that moved the field from a previous belief to a new belief based on better evidence.
> They're very politically partisan
That's demonstrably false; like the population at large, they are not exceptionally politically partisian - this is how a certain US political party projects it to account for appealing to the uneducated or to ignore evidence.
The majority of academics are the same as regular populace, except they try to follow accurate evidence. That one US party actively tried to downplay and ignore evidence makes the causality go the other direction, in the same manner that when the same party embraced evidence a few decades back that they claimed academia was more in their camp.
Heck, even JD Vance writes on this - he realizes the right lost academia, not by academia moving left or right, but from the right moving away from evidence.
> or Marxian
Anyone thinking some large percentage of academics are "Marxian" is a sure sign of not understanding either term.
Basically you are saying that brand safety, something ad-supported social media assiduously protects, is a misplaced concern?
I guess a lot of people, including a few that run a few social media sites, don't understand why all their ads are for freeze dried food in buckets and overpriced gold coins.
Amusing fact: When Linda Yaccarino ran all of NBCUniversal's ad sales, NBCUniversal was a member of GARM.
So what is it? A small non-profit run by an association that represents 150 of the world's biggest brands and more than 60 national advertisers associations?