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YouTube Loses Major Advertisers Over Offensive Videos (rollingstone.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Rolling Stone: Verizon, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson and other major companies have pulled advertisements from YouTube after learning they were paired with videos promoting extremism, terrorism and other offensive topics, The New York Times reports. Among the other companies involved are pharmaceutical giant GSK, HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland and L'Oreal, amounting to a potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Google-owned company. The boycott began last week after a Times of London investigation spurred many major European companies to pull their ads from YouTube. American companies swiftly followed, even after Google promised Tuesday to work harder to block ads on "hateful, offensive and derogatory" videos. Like AT&T, most companies are only pulling their ads from YouTube and will continue to place ads on Google's search platforms, which remain the biggest source of revenue for Google's parent company, Alphabet. Still, the tech giant offered up a slew of promises to assuage marketers and ensure them that they were fixing the problems on YouTube. Due to the massive number of videos on YouTube -- about 400 hours of video is posted each minute -- the site primarily uses an automated system to place ads. While there are some failsafes in place to keep advertisements from appearing alongside offensive content, Google's Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler wrote in a blog post that the company would hire "significant numbers" of employees to review YouTube videos and mark them as inappropriate for ads. He also said Google's latest advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning will help the company review and flag large swaths of videos.
They can either honor the ethos that brought all the eyes to the videos or they can die slowly trying to suck the cock of Wall Street while losing viewers to other video channels. That whole market forces thing is a bitch.
So let me get this straight -- racists, misogynists, and terrorists are going to benefit from an ad-free experience, and yet my 6 year old daughter has to put up with ads for mortgages and makeup and other adult stuff when she wants to watch kids videos? WTF did we ever do to you Google that dirtbags get an out from Youtube ads, but the rest of us have to suffer?
Yaz
There was a time when I really enjoyed browsing youtube videos. And I didn't really mind a little advertisement break here and there.
But what killed youtube for me - was the now forced (unskippable) ads that often last well into 30 seconds or more, just for checking out a video. I like seeing if I want to watch this or not, now there's a forced ad on every second video I decide to check.
Now, before my dear Slashdotters say "well, you can use adblocker" etc, please keep in mind that a lot of us watch youtube on our "smart-tv" devices, Nintendos, Xbox's Youtube app etc.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
These companies have been putting so much effort into detecting "hate speech," but the number of times that my wife has had to hit the home button on the Roku to stop a horror movie trailer or something equally inappropriate on content appropriate for preschoolers is truly appalling. But we're not triggered, we just deal with it so we don't count.
Wow, look at HSBC withe their moral superiority. The same bank that launders money for drug lords and the Russian mafia.
Because if "offensive" is defined as "anyone who supports Donald Trump or refuses to accept the new SJW definition of 'equality'" then I have a bit of a problem with that.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Have gnu, will travel.
We are under a constant assault by a Snowflake jihad whose understanding of freedom of speech is limited to what they agree with. In America this is probably the darkest time in over 200 years with regards to the Bill of Rights. We are living in an age of the self-righteous perpetually offended punk, a punk without a hint of self-understanding or irony.
I don't understand why a potential advertiser would not want to promote their product in front of any audience.
It's not that the advertisers care who watches their adverts; the more the merrier no doubt. The issue here is that the producers of unsavoury content are being supported by income provided by the advertisers.
You were going to say that no matter whether it was relevant of not (which it isn't)
It's absolutely relevant if it's true. Youtube is being very cagey about exactly what videos it means here. The meaning of words like "derogatory" vary SIGNIFICANTLY depending on who you're asking.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Given Europe's attitude towards hate speech and how they enforce "right to be forgotten", I'm surprised that they haven't already erected a GFW at this point
...said the main living in the glorious country where the simple apparition of a nipple is considered a major mediatic catastrophe, where breast feeding is a public offense, and where anything remotely sexual is sure to traumatise the next few generations of youth. (and where nude bodies are probably terrorism-level material).
To each country and culture its own taboos.
For Germany, it might be hate speech, for France it might be "right to be forgotten", and for the USA it's anything which isn't missionary position with the sole purpose to procreate.
Beware of the nude-nipple-terrorists, America !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Why are you objecting to ISIS videos in terms of Trump?
Because the language Google is using sounds like this includes WAY more than just ISIS videos. Words like "derogatory" take on a whole new meaning in Silicon Valley on on college campuses today than they do in red state America. So it's very important to establish EXACTLY whose definitions we're using here and exactly what videos are going to be blacklisted.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The issue here is that the producers of unsavoury content are being supported by income provided by the advertisers.
They probably don't really care about that either. What they care about is not being associated in the public mind with such socially unacceptable content, and as a plus by pulling their advertising dollars they can gain free advertisement from the news stories about pulling their ads.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Trump (really Bannon, Trump's just the mouth piece) managed to make racism OK again. I'll Let that one sink in...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Words like "derogatory" take on a whole new meaning in Silicon Valley on on college campuses today than they do in red state America.
Why not set up your own video streaming site that caters to red state America? You could call it "RedTube."
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
What is "offensive" is defined by the companies who are paying Google to place their ads.
It's defined by the "progressives" that whine the loudest when somebody speaks out against one of their pet causes. The social justice warriors of today are the same breed as the religious right from 20-30 years ago. If these companies had any business sense or corporate responsibility, they would just ignore them instead of trying to appease them.
Yes, and the terms "sexist" (prejudice or stereotyping based on sex) and "bigot" (intolerance towards those holding different opinions) clearly apply to Sarkeesian, regardless of whether you agree with her politics.
I suspect she actually does, but since Google favors her political views, they are likely willing to pay a significant price in advertising revenue.
In any case, your sarcasm meter is broken.
Sarkeesian's problem isn't that she makes "mistakes", it's that her videos are hours upon hours of self-righteous indignation by a pampered privileged princess who has made a career out of appealing to sex-starved male nerds coming to her defense. It's so stupid, it's actually kind of funny.
That was my thought as well.
It would certainly never occur to me to associate an ad, or the company whose product is being advertised, with the content of a video in anything more than a marketing sense. I don't think other users make that connection either. Most people realize that Google is targeting ads toward the individual based on all the data they have accumulated about the person.
It was some social justice crusader working at a newspaper in the UK who started looking for videos containing "hate speech"(not sure exactly what it was) and then told the advertisers that their ads were appearing with these apparently "offensive" videos.
as a plus by pulling their advertising dollars they can gain free advertisement from the news stories about pulling their ads.
This sounds like a risky strategy. I don't think a headline “MacDonalds pulls funding from ISIS” would be in their interest.
Gosh, you finally figured out that judging something "offensive, sexist, and bigoted" is a matter of opinion? Good grief, took you long enough! I'm glad that my sarcastic comment led you to that; that was kind of the point. Now apply that newfound insight to FeministFrequency itself: "it's just like her opinion".