Advertising Company AppNexus Bans Breitbart News Over Hate Speech (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson quotes a report from BetaNews: Right-wing website Breitbart -- the darling of the so-called alt-right movement (which it defines as being "younger people who are anti-globalists, very nationalist [and] terribly anti-establishment") -- has been blocked by a leading ad exchange. The site, home to Milo Yiannopoulos (also known as @Nero and banned from Twitter) will no longer be permitted to sell ad space via AppNexus. The move comes after an audit by AppNexus found that Breitbart was in violation of its policies on hate speech and incitement to violence. AppNexus's spokesperson Joshua Zeitz told the BBC: "We use a number of third-party standards to determine what is and isn't hate speech, and if we detect a pattern of speech that could incite violence or discrimination against a minority group, we determine that to be non-compliant and we simply won't serve ads against it. I'm not going to put the examples out there because I'm not going to engage in a tit-for-tat on what is compliant." Bloomberg, which was the first publication to report on the news, noted that AppNexus' investors included Microsoft, News Corp and Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP.

Comments

Should add HuffOp and Slate to the banned list.

[Anonymous Coward]

So much hate everywhere on the internet. This isn't what the founders thought open communication would lead to. Very sad.

Of Course

[Kunedog]

Restricting free speech is what the "hate speech" designation is all about.

Re:Of Course

[K. S. Kyosuke]

This is not a free speech restriction. According to right-wingers, companies should have great freedom in deciding what commercial transactions they would engage in. This is nothing more than one company deciding not to engage in a commercial transaction with another company.

Re: Of Course

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's pretty much been 100% about suppressing dissenting political speech in every single instance, in every single culture since humans started writing. But go ahead, and believe that suppressing political speech is good, because only the opposition has "hate speech".

Re:Of Course

[RobinH]

The only argument that can support a hate speech law is one that blocks "incitement of violence" similar to the idea that shouting fire in a crowded theater is an action you took to harm people, not expressing an idea. If the law blocks someone from saying "I hate Christian/Muslim people" then the law is wrong and over-reaching - that should be covered under freedom of speech and freedom of expression. If the law stops you from saying, "Join with me! Let's go round up Christians/Muslims and string them up!" then the law is reasonable and justified.

The fact is that an ad company isn't a government organization and can make whatever rules about content that they want. It doesn't make or enforce laws. If they want to use a "3rd party" blah blah blah, then that's their choice.

Re:Of Course

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. There is no equivalence here.

A business has no more right to deny service to a gay person any more than they do for someone of color. It's not an "ideology" issue, it's an issue of hate.

A business does have the right not to do business with organizations who peddle hate speech. That is an ideology issue.

The right wingers today have such a persecution complex and cry about "hypocrisy" when you really simply have no clue.

Re:Of Course

[hey!]

Well, I don't disagree that there are false narratives all around, which is why I often find myself in the role of wet blanket among my fellow left-wingers. The truth is bad enough.

But if you only see the falsehoods perpetrated against *your* side, then it's a fair bet that the falsehoods perpetrated *by your side are doing their job.

Re: Of Course

[MightyMartian]

Is Breitbart a protected class? By what definition? If I refuse to sell advertising in Breitbart I'm violating Breitbart's civil liberties, is that what you're trying to say?

The scope of civil rights legislation is pretty narrow; it deals with traditionally disadvantaged or persecuted groups of people based on identifiable characteristics like skin color, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation. How could it ever include one business deciding to terminate a business relationship with another business?

Again and again, we see how the Alt-right seem to believe that the intent of civil liberties is to remove consequences, not in fact to assure equality. The alt-right wants to argue that the Bill of Rights, and in particular the First Amendment, not only confer freedom of speech, but freedom from the consequences of speech.

As to businesses being forced by statute not to discriminate, the Supreme Court upheld both Civil Rights Acts a long time ago, so whether you agree with it or not, it has well over half of a century of jurisprudence behind it. Yes, governments can make certain groups protected where that group can be demonstrated to have been historically disadvantaged. I guess you can try to argue that your Nazi buddies are a disadvantaged group, but the notion of unfair disadvantage isn't just that people hate your fucking guts and don't want to be in the same room with you, but also that they hate your fucking guts unfairly. There's not unfair about being biased against Nazis.

Re: Hate Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

remember a decade ago when the anti-American progressives were chanting "dissent is patriotic"? Funny now that they're in panic mode and desperate to suppress dissent.

Narrative Pushing

[Kunedog]

Can't admit that HIllary lost because of real news (like her rigging the primary) reported by Wikileaks, and that CNN/etc exposed themselves as fake news outlets by trying to bury that story (and a hundred others).

Re:Narrative Pushing

[klingens]

While I agree strongly with your sentiment in the rigging part, keep in mind that wikileaks obtained the info illegally, which is in general an advantage over running a legal news service (wikileaks hasn't leaked for a good intention in years and this wasn't done because they thought the world should kmow, it's pretty much a political tool at this point).

Wrong. Whoever hacked the democrats, did so illegally. Wikileaks itself didn't do anything illegal by receiving the resulting data. Otherwise. Otherwise all the News Services like CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, etc. would all be criminally liable as well when they released the Snowden Papers, the files from Manning, even back to the Pentagon papers etc.
When it helped the media and served their political narrative, they welcomed wikileaks. Now that they don't like what is leaked they, and you condemn it. Hypocrites.

Wikileaks didn't change, the media did, even when Assange has an obvious agenda: he always did.

Re:Narrative Pushing

[EmeraldBot]

While I agree strongly with your sentiment in the rigging part, keep in mind that wikileaks obtained the info illegally, which is in general an advantage over running a legal news service (wikileaks hasn't leaked for a good intention in years and this wasn't done because they thought the world should kmow, it's pretty much a political tool at this point).

Wrong. Whoever hacked the democrats, did so illegally. Wikileaks itself didn't do anything illegal by receiving the resulting data. Otherwise. Otherwise all the News Services like CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, etc. would all be criminally liable as well when they released the Snowden Papers, the files from Manning, even back to the Pentagon papers etc. When it helped the media and served their political narrative, they welcomed wikileaks. Now that they don't like what is leaked they, and you condemn it. Hypocrites.

Wikileaks didn't change, the media did, even when Assange has an obvious agenda: he always did.

The problem with Wikileaks is the line between editor and submitter is extremely blurred. Wikileaks doesn't just report news, they often encourage and even participate in these very same hacks - it's the difference between CNN receiving an anonymous leak and actually hacking someone themselves and then claiming it was anonymous. If CNN actively worked with and helped to coordinate said hack, I'd hold them the same way I hold wikileaks.

As to wikileaks, no, not really. Early on, they did some really good work, especially with Snowdan's leaks in particular. They kicked off a massive debate about an issue of genuine importance, and they took a risk that no one else would. They took careful steps to ensure no one unnecessarily got hurt, including retracting unimportant info and keeping out the actually strategically important docs. Now, however, they clearly held onto this story for a long time, and they didn't release it because they thought he world needed to know - they did it because they wanted Clinton's ratings to drop. They didn't take info from a leaker and vet it, they dumped documents from shady people tied to a foreign government that were either of no importance or blatant propaganda, with only one major exception. I lost my respect for them because of shady journaling and no interest in their core mission goal, not because I disagree (or even agree) with their political views.

Re:Narrative Pushing

[peragrin]

The hate against hillary is strong. she is unlikable,and not a nice person either. I think most of the stories againist her are false and misleading, but I still don't like her. haven't liked since 1996. Still would rather have her and 4 more years as things are then Trump who will be building concentration work camps to house illegals and trashing the us government so hard financially it will take 2 generations to repair it.

Think about it this way. Hillary won the popular vote by 2 million people but soundly lost the electoral vote. Trump is a racist hateful bigot Who waited until after the election to try and pretend to denouce the alt-right hateful bigot. You know the ones are now running around the country going hail trump hail victory? (by denouce only his campaign denouced those people he himself never did before the election)

So many people would rather have Hitler than Hillary. that Hillary could only win the popular vote by 2 million. Hell I can't stand hillary but she is at least a politician.

Hopefully she finally realizes the only people who like her are her family and stops trying to be a policitian.

Re:Narrative Pushing

[johanw]

Trump is grateful the democrats pushed very hard the only candidate that he would be able to defeat.

Re:Narrative Pushing

[guruevi]

Most sources for true journalists are "illegal", pretty much every company and government agency has policies against talking about anything going on internally.

Watergate-Deepthroat: Illegal to own in the US
Information on the Iraq war: Illegal to own in the US
Information on Guantanamo Bay: Illegal to own in the US

If you only want information available through official government channels, we wouldn't need news, we'd just wait for the next government approved message.

Re: Narrative Pushing

[Anonymous Coward]

You bought the fake news. Point me towards a racist thing trump has said in the last 20'years. You can't, because it's fake news. When you look at his actual statements, you will see a populist platform, not racism. He said deport illegals. That's not racism. He said to vet Muslim immigrants for terrorism ties before letting them into the country. That's not racism. The bowl of skittles? He said a few, not a large fraction. Keep digging through what he said, vice what's been reported, and you'll see who the consumers of fake news are.

Re:Narrative Pushing

[mi]

Wikileaks doesn't just report news, they often encourage and even participate in these very same hacks

Are you going to sincerely claim, Mark Felt (a.k.a. Deep Throat) would've continued his leaking details of an ongoing investigation to the media, had New York Times and Washington Post told him, sorry, we can not publish illegally-obtained information?

Simple TOS Violations

[Jzanu]

Early internet had these often, this is just the company enforcing policy that all customers and all distributors agreed on when registering. Breitbart violated their agreement.

Violence or discrimination?

[Feyshtey]

AppNexus's spokesperson Joshua Zeitz told the BBC: "We use a number of third-party standards to determine what is and isn't hate speech, and if we detect a pattern of speech that could incite violence or discrimination against a minority group, we determine that to be non-compliant and we simply won't serve ads against it.

But they're not concerned with speech that could incite violence or discrimination against non-minority groups? Interesting.

Third party standards

[swb]

Third party standards for hate speech? Are any of the "third parties" remotely neutral in their designation of hate speech? It seems like most of the groups invested in the idea of hate speech have strong political agendas themselves and often draw the line on hate speech well into grey areas that may not be hate speech.

Re:Third party standards

[PopeRatzo]

It seems like most of the groups invested in the idea of hate speech have strong political agendas themselves

What is the SPLC's political agenda? They list the New Black Panthers as a hate group right along with the alt-Right neo-Nazis. They've got muslims on the list, christians on the list and jews on the list.

Re:Third party standards

[hairyfeet]

To answer your question the political agenda of the SPLC is simple,it is to promote themselves so they can get more money.

After all if they don't have a new "bogeyman of the day" to shill for the press, why the press won't write about them anymore, and gasp! They might not be able to get those big fat donation checks anymore! You see the flaw in your logic is assuming its automatically a black/white issue and that one has to be beholden to a single political party, when looking at your typical SPLC list its pretty obvious they hate all religions and religious groups equally but their biggest goal is to label damned near every assembly of more than 4 people as a "hate group" so they have someone new to shill to the press because in the end? Their biggest desire isn't the favor of a political party, its good old fashioned money money money.

SJW overdrive

[mojo-raisin]

It sure is nice for the entire Left to reveal themselves for the intolerant bigots they are.

Can I block all cookies from AppNexus? Maybe uOrigin has that feature.

Re: Should add HuffOp and Slate to the banned list

[Anonymous Coward]

Add Alternet and Upworthy to the list (aka the Alt-Left) HuffPo and their ilk spew so much hate.

alt-white

[PopeRatzo]

Stop calling it the "alt-right". "Neo-nazi" is one character shorter and is more accurate.

Re:alt-white

[Orgasmatron]

Good work. An argument straight out of the manual

Re: Should add HuffOp and Slate to the banned list

[Anonymous Coward]

This has more to do with Trump than Breitbart. If we just believe enough and validate our claim that "they're bad people" then we can all feel vindicated.

But remember, no examples. We're not engaging in a tit-for-tat here. Even though this is tit-for-tat. Also, they use a lot of 3rd party indicators for hate speech. Read: Any indicator that validates their personal beliefs or desires.

I remember when the web wasn't a political correctness platform, but I'm also not convinced this is "correctness" per se.

Re:Some things never change

[reboot246]

In other words, people like you label anything you disagree with as "hate speech". Disagreement IS NOT hate. Are you able to understand that, or are you too thoroughly brainwashed?

There's more than one way of looking at the world, and yours is mighty narrow and spiteful.

Re: Should add HuffOp and Slate to the banned list

[stinkyjak]

It only considers it as hate if the target object is a minority. IE... it is ok to hate white people(though we really are a minority).