>Ahmed is now trying to drive away Elon Musk’s advertisers on X, this time based on dubious claims that the social media site is a playground for racists.
It's an interesting, well researched piece but I'm curious if HN readers will agree with the author that these claims are "dubious".
> As Stop Funding Fake News activists told a news site later that June, they convinced 40 brands—including Adobe, Chelsea FC, Harry’s, Experion, eBay, Moonpig, and Manchester United—to block some news outlets from running their ads, essentially starving the sites of revenue in a tactic called “demonetizing.” Stop Funding Fake News also announced that they were “educating” ad agencies, although this seems a euphemism for targeting people or messages that you don’t like.
If no-one visits an outlet, ads displayed in it are worthless, and the outlet will lose funding by losing its audience. If this Center for Countering Digital Hate valued democracy, they would have gone after the audiences of these outlets. Instead they prefer to control what people see (i.e. which news outlets are viable) by lobbying the corporate class, regardless of the public's wishes.
Over and over this piece puts together an (admittedly compelling) narrative that seems to be alluding to this man and the organizations he creates/leads are a state-sponsored action to shift public opinions on issues. However in each, just taking the first for example, the piece details that they identified these 12 accounts responsible for 65% of misinformation on COVID-19, but never confirms or denies this. Is/was that true?
Similarly, the piece makes vague references to Twitter being a cesspit of racism, and that a left-leaning magazine was killed off for being... I dunno, too left? Not left enough? It's kind of left in limbo. But again, no engagement with whether or not these were correct actions on the part of advertisers based on the known facts.
The assertion of the piece seems to be something like "This man heads organizations that influence advertisers to pull money from what they deem as 'hateful' sources" and okay... are they? Because whether they are or not is a big part of it. It's not controversial for major or even lesser known brands to not want to associate with things like COVID-19 denial/general anti-vax sentiments, nor is it strange that they wouldn't want their products advertised alongside white supremacist statements. One could make the argument that informing them of such so they can take action to mitigate that is universally good: it defunds hate, and it permits a company to present it's stated values better.
The fact that they won't engage with the actual content of all these users and groups they're claiming have been wronged, instead focusing entirely on the source of the claims is a bit strange and frankly undermines the entire work. I totally agree that if this is indeed someone in charge of public money being used to sway the opinions of the masses, even in a direction I might agree with, that's worth knowing and should be properly disclosed. But again, the shyness around the content of the accounts in question is somewhat damning.
I reckon the burden of proof lies with those making the accusations! How can the claims be disputed when their evidence isn't even put forward in the first place?
… except there is evidence from those making the accusation? You can see, for example, the Wikipedia article for RFK Jr., and it's well-sourced from there that he's a proponent of "vaccines cause autism".
Yet this article attempts to frame it as if that were incorrect, while carefully avoiding framing that directly and clearly; and we've seen this tactic time and again from people who want to push misinformation. The OP is replete with the red flags of disingenuous debate.
Take the other example the article gives: Musk has retweeted conspiracy theory and pushed misinformation on multiple occasions. Cf. the tweets about Sen. Pelosi's husband. The Texas mall shooter. Vaccination views. How many examples have to grab the media's attention when they happen for it to not need constant sourcing in every debate?
I'd entertain a debate on whether pressuring companies to pull ads on sleazy platforms for the purpose of killing the platform is a good thing or not … but the OP isn't it.
Brilliant article. It's concerning seeing the attack on free speech happening under the guise of combatting hate/misinformation. As if we can trust the citizenry with the power of electing its government, but not with forming its own opinions!
I agree with the general message that there are people pushing to censor opinions not aligning with their own, and that is a big problem. But honestly, I don't know what to say about this article where they are framing this issue around things like X is not full of troublesome contents and vaccine deniers aren't problematic...
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[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 28.3 ms ] threadIt's an interesting, well researched piece but I'm curious if HN readers will agree with the author that these claims are "dubious".
If no-one visits an outlet, ads displayed in it are worthless, and the outlet will lose funding by losing its audience. If this Center for Countering Digital Hate valued democracy, they would have gone after the audiences of these outlets. Instead they prefer to control what people see (i.e. which news outlets are viable) by lobbying the corporate class, regardless of the public's wishes.
Similarly, the piece makes vague references to Twitter being a cesspit of racism, and that a left-leaning magazine was killed off for being... I dunno, too left? Not left enough? It's kind of left in limbo. But again, no engagement with whether or not these were correct actions on the part of advertisers based on the known facts.
The assertion of the piece seems to be something like "This man heads organizations that influence advertisers to pull money from what they deem as 'hateful' sources" and okay... are they? Because whether they are or not is a big part of it. It's not controversial for major or even lesser known brands to not want to associate with things like COVID-19 denial/general anti-vax sentiments, nor is it strange that they wouldn't want their products advertised alongside white supremacist statements. One could make the argument that informing them of such so they can take action to mitigate that is universally good: it defunds hate, and it permits a company to present it's stated values better.
The fact that they won't engage with the actual content of all these users and groups they're claiming have been wronged, instead focusing entirely on the source of the claims is a bit strange and frankly undermines the entire work. I totally agree that if this is indeed someone in charge of public money being used to sway the opinions of the masses, even in a direction I might agree with, that's worth knowing and should be properly disclosed. But again, the shyness around the content of the accounts in question is somewhat damning.
Yet this article attempts to frame it as if that were incorrect, while carefully avoiding framing that directly and clearly; and we've seen this tactic time and again from people who want to push misinformation. The OP is replete with the red flags of disingenuous debate.
Take the other example the article gives: Musk has retweeted conspiracy theory and pushed misinformation on multiple occasions. Cf. the tweets about Sen. Pelosi's husband. The Texas mall shooter. Vaccination views. How many examples have to grab the media's attention when they happen for it to not need constant sourcing in every debate?
I'd entertain a debate on whether pressuring companies to pull ads on sleazy platforms for the purpose of killing the platform is a good thing or not … but the OP isn't it.