Brands suspend advertising on X after ads appear alongside Nazi content

All these news about X going to shit feels like that gif of the truck driving towards the pole but constantly cutting before the impact

This one?
- I watched two ads just to get rickrolled.
- How dare you. No, this one. (Really, though. It's been a while and I wanted to see it again, happy to be of service.)
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Exactly! That's exactly how it feels!

Musk has continued to place his personal proclivity for right-wing content and influencers over brand – and really overall user – safety. For example, last month, Musk personally intervened to restore a right-wing influencer's account after they were suspended for posting photos of child exploitation.

Tells you everything you need to know.

Buy unprofitable application
Make a series of incredibly shit business decisions
It's now less profitable than before.
???
???
Profit

Hold on, maybe I've figured it out. Endless magical profits, here I come!

Step 4. Be ultra-wealthy. (Bonus for not paying taxes.) Step 5. Do anything. (Bonus for pretending it's profitable.)
I've one the steps is, "use the letter X SOMEHOW, so people won't laugh at you and will realize you are so cool finally"
Last step is selling it to yahoo!
- Nah, it's selling to Yahoo, then getting your parent company acquired by Verizon, then having Verizon spin your parent company off again.

wow everything is a nazi now including hitler

They never give Adolf Hitler credit- he killed Adolf Hitler.
- "Everything that I don't like (that is or openly supports a nazi) is now a nazi!"
These days mate, if you're a Nazi, they'll call you a Nazi! Oh no, when did this come in?
- woke mind wizards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvgZtdmyKlI (English subtitles available, 2 funny minutes worth your time)
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=zvgZtdmyKlI
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

I got curious about just how bad said Nazi content is, and managed to find an article with some screenshots: https://nypost.com/2023/08/17/x-suspends-pro-hitler-account-after-brands-paused-ads/

Spoiler: very Nazi.

So it's not just Nazi-compatible ideas. It's straight out Nazi symbolism.

I really don't get these people - even if you believe the Nazis were right, you know they are the most hated historical faction in the world. Wouldn't it be better to advocate their ideas without explicitly associating yourself with them, just to avoid the (completely justified) knee-jerk reaction?

You're suggesting that Nazi's use their famous critical thinking skills to understand that 99% of the world hates them and their ideology?
- Being evil is one thing, but there is no excuse for being stupid.
They want the negative reaction. They thrive on being hated. Similar with some of the worst Internet trolls. The hatred validates them.
Your link just shows the blinking X and "someone 'paused' (e.g stopped) doing business" with "x".

Or am I missing something?
- The photos are there — you might have to scroll a bit
- Ignore the video, scroll down through the article.
Wouldn’t it be better to advocate their ideas without explicitly associating yourself with them, just to avoid the (completely justified) knee-jerk reaction?

That's why they invented the term "alt-right".
- I don't think raising swastika flags counts as "without explicitly associating yourself with them".

Lunatics always show up in my For You feed on Twitter. I always tag the company with a screenshot of the offending content with the advertisement. Lately it’s been weird advertisements. Shitty gambling apps, religious and personal accounts promoting their personal brand. So they likely don’t care.

Also I’ll never call Twitter anything but Twitter.

I exclusively am subscribed to porn accounts, so I find it super weird when right ring idiots show up in my feed.
- That's what I use Twitter for too but what intrudes my feed is mostly memes and cat videos. While it may be true my experience however isn't that they're pushing right wing content to everyone because I'm not seeing it.
Also I’ll never call Twitter anything but Twitter.

I don't know, I think there's room for appropriate change here;

Twater

Twit'er

Twixlers

I admit, my suggestions could use more help, but surely we must admit they've devolved from Twitter!?
- You just accidentally named 3 mastodon instances.
  
  Slap a .moe or .xyz or a .social and you’re federatin baby
- Xittter with the x using 'sh' pronunciation

Just love how we all refer to it as "the company formerly known as Twitter"

Feels like "the artist formerly known as Prince"
- It may have been implied.
- Huh? That's quite a leap, don't you think? /s
Just keep calling it Twitter without acknowledging the name change. It'll piss him off even more.
- It's still hosted on twitter.com, so idk what the deal is.

How to kill a company in 3 easy steps

Feels more like a 300 cuts
- How to kill a company in 300 easy cuts
Let Elon buy it

???

Company destroyed

It’s amazing there are still so many brands and social media strategists who seem in denial about what’s happening even as they watch their customer engagement on Twitter/X evaporate before their very eyes.

shouldn't have fired the brand safety team

I mean, in all reality, this could be why he fired the brand safety team. He's had aspirations of burying himself with X for decades.

Turns out, money is very much anti-free speech.

I don't think hate speech necessarily falls into the domain of free speech. It falls into the domain of people don't like it so we don't want to be associated with it.

Anyway yet again, free speech only exists between you and the government. If corporations want to disassociate themselves with the business or individual because they allow people to say things they don't like, that's not violation of free speech.
If I have the right of free speech then surely I have the right to decide when, where, and with who my speech is delivered at

Furthermore, one organization that had ads placed on this content claimed that it wasn't an X advertiser at all. In a statement provided to CNN, University of Maryland’s associate athletic director told the outlet that Maryland Football hasn't run a paid ad campaign on X since 2021.

Interesting snippet. It would be very interesting to know how and why that happened.

If a small portion of ads keep repeating, it'd show the shallow pool of advertisers left on the website.

That or there's no one at the helm for advertising.

Either way, looks incredibly shabby.
Are there legal implications for this? Is X guilty of misrepresentation or any such related case.
- No idea. It is a kind of defamation but I think you'd struggle to prove it. You could, however, get shedloads of free publicity by banging on about it for clickbait.

That's what happens when you hang out at a Nazi bar...

Is this news to anyone? Elon Musk is a literal Nazi. Every dollar going there supports fascism. I don't get how you can have such a high profile person who is like "Hey, I'm a Nazi, and I sell Nazi shit!" and still be surprised.

I mean, I get that he's a dick, but a nazi? Seriously?
- Yes. The Nazis are back
- He's not a Nazi, just someone who allows Nazis on his website, reposts and agrees with their beliefs.

Any company still advertising on Twitter deserves to be associated with Nazis.

Yea see... they (corporations) prefer their money is made next to white supremacy less loudly. That's all.

That's why they just suspended ads, not terminated ad buying.

Can't even block nazis.

Couldn't block them in real life in the 30s and 40s, so he's just being true to history.

I'm surprised it took this long.

If you're advertising on Twitter in 2023 and your target audience isn't Nazis, what are you doing? 😅

This comes as no surprise really. I noticed a marked increase in right wing insanity after Elon took over.

That was always the point. He tried to shame Twitter into giving the far-right a credible platform and in the process, accidentally comitted to buying the site.

Everything else has just been him awkwardly trying to minimise his financial losses and hide that he's actually a dumbfuck.

Wrestle with pigs, get covered in shit, or something like that.

And no one but Musk is the least bit surprised by the catastrophic failure of Twitter.

But but but there were good people on both sides Disney!

It's about damn time!

Does anybody else have a feeling like it’s a New Coke situation?

Drive it into the ground, then a year later come back with a shadow CEO and say “We’re back and better than ever”…profit.

He's already installed the shadow CEO.
- They seriously need to put her face as the last image on the Wikipedia page for sycophant. The pattern is her lagging response with hollow corporate, "girlboss" speak to frame a random 2am gut response from elon as a considered business decision. Her statements to justify his BS are BURSTING with double speak and circular nothingness.
How is that supposed to work?
Nope. I think it's a "billionaire who isn't half as smart as he thinks" situation. It's his shoddily built submarine, ready to fail catastrophically at any moment.

After all, has "New Coke" ever worked for a website? Once those users have found somewhere else, they're never coming back.
Get people to start missing it like Twinkies.

He wanted free speech with no censorship. I get it, but he also wants to make a profit. So this is was happens, I hope him and the almighty shareholders are ok with it.

It seems very charitable to say he sincerly cares about free speech given his hindering and sliencing of others.
- I am still entirely convinced that the only reason he bought Twitter in the first place is because of this: https://www.businessinsider.com/student-who-tracks-elon-musk-jet-launching-own-website-2023-2
He never cared about free speech, he only cared about HIS free speech
Well - 79% of 'the almighty shareholders' is Elon Musk, and I somehow get the impression that as long as he is convinced that he's doing exactly the right things nothing will change. The next biggest stakeholders are Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal (5.7%), Oracle founder Larry Ellison (3.0%), Jack Dorsey (3.0%), Sequoia Capital (2.4%), and Vy Capital (2.1%) - and they've all been publicly silent on the topic of twitter self destruction - I think they've transitioned into train-wreck mode where they are in such disbelief about what they are witnessing that they aren't able to articulate opinions about it.
- Dorsey agrees with Musk on this stuff. He has said before that he didn't want to ban Trump after J6 and that he was against banning Nazi accounts, but did it because it was a public company, and they kinda had to.
  
  Now he and his buddies are trying to roll out their own social media protocol, bluesky, which is built specifically to not allow Nazis to be banned.
- Maybe they are all shorting it big in their alt accounts because they know that the SEC fines will be trivial next to the money they will make. Also, that not a single one of them would see the inside of a court room.
He didn't want any of that.
He wants free speech only if he agrees with it.

Bwahahaha between x and trump I’m entertained.

chef’s kiss

Why do brands care so much what their ads appear next to? Its not like people associate the ads with the content.

Years ago I worked for a company that had ads appear on Breitbart. Retargeted display, not a direct buy on the site. People would screenshot the ads and light up our Twitter complaining we were directly supporting hate speech etc, so we asked our demand partner to stop buying there to avoid negative engagement on our social. If your site gets a critical mass of negative attention brands can shut down your ability to be commercially viable, and effectively censor the content in a way.
- that's still not "censoring", not even "effectively".

Geez, that's pretty fucking intense.