Advertisers Are Still Boycotting YouTube Over Offensive Videos (go.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:The fallout from the YouTube boycott is likely to be felt through the rest of this year. Skittish advertisers have curtailed their spending until they are convinced Google can prevent their brands from appearing next to extremist clips promoting hate and violence... At one point, about 250 advertisers were boycotting YouTube... The list included big-spending marketers such as PepsiCo, Wal-Mart Stores, Starbucks, AT&T, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, and Volkswagen.

It's unclear how many, if any, of those have returned to YouTube since Google promised to hire more human reviewers and upgrade its technology to keep ads away from repugnant videos. Both Verizon and AT&T, two companies that are trying to expand their own digital ad networks to compete with Google, told The Associated Press that they are still boycotting YouTube. FX Networks confirmed that it isn't advertising on YouTube either. Several other boycotting marketers contacted by AP didn't respond.
Thursday CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts that responding to the boycott, Google held "thousands and thousands" of conversations with advertisers, and one analyst now estimates reduced ad spending on YouTube and Google could cost the company $300 million this year alone.

Comments

I didn't notice

[johanw]

Who watches Youtube (and ther rest of the internet) without an adblocker anyway?

Children and bathwaters

[Opportunist]

Advertisers were successfully bullshitted into believing that their brands would be tarnished by appearing next to "offensive" videos. The problem is that YouTube went overboard and now considers everything "offensive" that's not basically cute kittens playing with yarn, not just extremists videos demanding the execution of everything who follows the wrong delusion.

The problem here is that the reason people went from traditional media and to YouTube is exactly that they're fed up with having "family friendly" bullshit shoved down their throats. If that's all that remains on YouTube, people will simply move on.

And then nobody sees your pretty ads either.

Re: Children and bathwaters

[MightyMartian]

So we have this measure which is iffy at best, and in most cases hopelessly biased towards certain socioeconomic groups, but hey, it's a great meme "Blacks are dumber than whites, and it's not racist because this groovy Intelligence Quotient test says so!"

In general, psychology and neurological sciences have long past moved away from IQ, simply because it's absurd to imagine that something as complex as human cognition can be fit into one number, considering cognition itself seems to be the product of multiple processing and memory systems in the brain.

So promoting "whites have higher IQs than blacks" *MAY* be true for some kinds of intelligence tests, that kind of testing is so flawed that it's hard to see how proponents of the claim aren't just racists once again using the cloak of pseudoscience to try to bolster their hatred.

Re: Children and bathwaters

[MightyMartian]

Because public schools are run by morons who are still stuck in 1950s in regards to assessing students. As it is, even with standardized IQ tests, the numbers have been rising in many populations, including African-Americans for decades, suggesting that what IQ measures isn't really raw cognitive capacity at all (ie. the Flynn Effect).

One of the biggest reasons for lower cognitive ability isn't genetic at all, but poor nutrition during the developmental years, and that's one of the reasons that socio-economic status has been viewed as a significant player in general and specific cognitive abilities. There's no doubt there's a genetic component, but like anything, genetics sets general parameters, and it is environment that takes over after conception. Considering that many ethno-racial groups in the Americas have not been equal beneficiaries of over all socio-economic improvements, that would strike me as a good reason for why we see phenomena like the Flynn Effect. But that's a rather dull explanation, and not one that allows some Neo-nazi to declare he's superior to African-Americans.

Re: Children and bathwaters

[epyT-R]

That post didn't say these tests were complete indicators of ability. In fact, it said otherwise. The truly 'problematic' thing is the constant drenching of science in political correctness to make it impossible for the public (and possibly many researchers) to tell what's factually correct.

But hey, I get it, it's the age of the alt-right, where saying "Blacks are dumber than whites" is now apparently some sort of unassailable dogma, and where a previous generation's debunked or at least heavily questioned claims are brought back and again asserted to be absolute truth.

Actually, no. The current trend hasn't changed much. It's just that these snowflakes didn't get their way with one specific election, and being the snowflakes they are, they bitch and whine that this is the end of the world.

The reality is that the left still controls the majority of the media and public discussion on these topics. It's nearly impossible to debate them openly, and even when it does happen, it's impossible to point out logical or factual errors in their viewpoints without being labeled as some form of bigot. This is coupled with a real risk of getting kicked out of school/work (there's an example of systemic oppression) by their local socjus fifth column, whether it's the campus 'diversity' office or HR.

Oddly Enough...

[cirby]

YouTube seems to be putting almost no effort into finding ways to limit offensive ads placed over entertaining YouTube videos.

Let's see...

[rmdingler]

There's a show I really want to see. A GoT episode, a Firefly all-nighter, furry porn... doesn't matter.

But. In order to watch the show, I have to let this neighbor family into the house to watch with me who has a track record of stealing stuff from my yard.

Nah. Chances are I can watch the show another way, and if I can't, I'd still rather not pay some unknown, upfront cost for the pleasure.

Re: youtube has adds?

[TheRaven64]

I'm pretty sure it has adds. And multiplies, and divides, and function calls, and object construction. Unless you use NoScript, of course.

Re:Ineffective and wrong.

[Attila Dimedici]

But the people running this protest don't want there to be free speech. They want only speech they approve of to be allowed.