
Breitbart news site blocked by ad exchange - throwaway-hn123
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38076579
======
cloakandswagger
Headlines like this along with the MSM's latest push to define "fake news" is
pretty worrisome.

Even if you don't agree with Breitbart or other outlets, it's frightening to
think we could soon be in a world where entire stories are categorically
dismissed or accepted based on their source, rather than their individual
content.

~~~
justinlaster
How is this frightening? Why should we turn a blind eye to a source that
continually posts provably fake and completely contrived news stories? This
particular source also targets an audience that is demonstrably not capable of
discerning what is probably true and what is absurdly false. It's not worth
the price and risk of reading such a source, when the content they provide
that is true can easily be consumed from other sources that are far more
reliable.

Let's call this for what it is and always has been: yellow journalism. It's
fake, it's damaging, and with the internet it gets spread far too quickly. And
then, when enough momentum around the fake story is able to clearly paint it
as false gets noticed by the majority of people, this particular source never
issues a correction. They just silently let their mistake fall to the wayside,
never bothering to inform their audience of their calculated mistake and what
is actually true.

When you fail to acknowledge your mistakes, and when you do those mistakes
repeatedly to the point where it can only be assumed to be purposefully done,
you lose credence. Or at least you should. I'm not sure what's going on with
this fetishization of false equivalency in American journalism. Not all
journalistic entities are on the same platform; some of them clearly don't
mind hiring people that have no principles as a citizen of their respective
country or even principles as a decent human being, nor do they have respect
for their fellow countrymen and maybe not even themselves.

~~~
seabass
You're advocating for censoring a source with a better track record than, say,
buzzfeed which should by your standard also be censored.

Rather than taking your opinion of Breitbart from the companies who stand to
profit from the destruction of their competition, take a look at their front
page right now and find just one example of fake news. Feel free to post your
findings here.

The argument that "these words are too dangerous to be in the hands of the
masses" is the same one used to justify the book burnings in WWII and similar
thought policing throughout history.

~~~
Mithaldu
Better track record?

On what axis? This stuff isn't single-dimensional.

Yeah, Buzzfeed may produce a lot more stuff, and maybe also a lot of fake
stuff. However how much of that is harmless fluff versus hate speech and
incitement to violence?

Also, frankly, looking at buzzfeed, i question that even on the dimension of
truth/lie they fare worse than breitbart, particularly when normalizing
against the total post count.

~~~
hackuser
I rarely if ever have seen outright lies and propaganda on Buzzfeed, and I do
see those things from Breitbart regularly. And now they also provide serious,
top-notch coverage of a lot of serious news. There is no comparison between
them and Breitbart.

------
javery
The world we are moving to is one where ad exchanges, google, and facebook get
to decide what can survive on the web. This doesn't seem like a good thing.

~~~
Pfhreak
White nationalism can still create and post content to the web. But there's no
responsibility for other companies to financially support them.

If a company like Breitbart cannot survive without Google's ad network, the
onus is on them to figure out they can support themselves. Especially if
supporting white nationalism undermines Google/Facebook's ability to hire and
retain their own employees or impacts their reputation in a negative way.

~~~
ng12
Breitbart isn't a white nationalist news source. Bannon might be an asshole
but I urge you to judge it by the content on the site. I don't agree with most
of it but I support their right to post truthful content and editorials as
they wish.

~~~
vorotato
A quick search on the site for racial slurs will prooobably change your mind
on that first point.

~~~
tomp
I checked a few articles, the word "nigger" is either in the comments or in
quotes. It's true, however, that they don't abbreviate it as "n-word" like
most MSM. But we all know what "n-word" means, so I find that practice kind-of
pointless anyways.

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zelon88
With authors like Milo Yiannopoulos posting articles like "Why There Ought to
Be a Cap on Women Studying Science and Maths" I would say they dug their own
grave. If we really have to explain or justify why this is bad journalism
maybe it shouldn't be considered journalism at all. I'm ok with that, but
there should be open discussion and some methodology behind the future of
journalistic classification.

~~~
idetectit
Hi, I find your comment problematic for two reasons. 1) If you replaced
"women" with "men" in that title, I'm sure you'd have no problem with it. In
fact, no doubt you'd probably gleefully Facebook it to all your tweet
snapchatters on Instagram. and 2) Milo is a homosexual. You speak from a
position of straight white male privilege and as such you are in no position
to judge his journalistic skills or even question if it should be considered
journalism at all. It sounds like what you really want is to only classify
"journalism" as "stuff written by privileged straight white athiestic males
and females with a liberal bent".

~~~
zelon88
I don't believe there should be a cap on anyone's education; male, female, or
otherwise. I also don't think that Milo is qualified to define what the word
"journalism" means any more than I am. I can write opinions on a blog or onto
a piece of paper. That doesn't make my work "journalism." Neither does
declaring that I'm a journalist or declaring that my work is journalism. Also,
sexual orientation doesn't give Milo a free pass to write click-bait and pass
it off as journalism. It also doesn't excuse him from saying misogynistic
things. I will respect Milo's right to say what he wants. That's it.

------
aggronn
Worth noting this is Appnexus, not Google AdExchange. Appnexus is still a very
large ad exchange, but Breitbart's business shouldn't necessarily be affected.
Its not unlikely that Appnexus and Breitbart don't even have a direct
relationship, and Appnexus is just going to block bids on that domain.

------
yladiz
I see little wrong with this. I understand the idea that it's not necessarily
right that ad companies stop supporting something based on ill-defined
criteria, and I do support the idea that the criteria should be well defined.
In this case, I think the criteria is pretty well defined: "pattern of speech
that could incite violence or discrimination against a minority group."
Although the site says that they, "have always and continue to condemn racism
and bigotry in any form," their actions, in this case articles like, "Why
There Ought to Be a Cap on Women Studying Science and Maths"[1], doesn't
reflect that message and this in particular is discriminatory against women.
There are other examples in the BBC article as well. The BBC article also
mentions that the articles in question were written by a guest author, not a
staff member, but the onus on posting something on the website falls on the
staff, so that argument falls flat.

The other and simpler reality is that they are a private company that can do
what they want when it comes to how they utilize their resources. If they
don't want to serve ads on Breitbart then it's their choice. Even if they just
arbitrarily chose to disallow Breitbart on their platform, it might be unjust
but it's their right and choice.

On a more philosophical note, consider that all these issues of "fake news
losing ad revenue" and the one mentioned here are generally only possible
because the media is very free to post whatever they want and get paid for it,
thanks to the USA's extremely free media laws. It isn't ideal for sure, but in
some respects I'd rather have this reality where we worry about a specific
news organization losing ad revenue than the reality where the only news that
I can read is state sponsored.

1: [http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/15/heres-
why...](http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/15/heres-why-there-
ought-to-be-a-cap-on-women-studying-science-and-maths/)

------
spoiledtechie
This is quite frankly bad. Even the spokesman said he wasn't going to get into
it (because it might hurt the PC police). It truly seems like there is a
political backlash war going on. It seems so childish, but they are only
trying to hurt Breitbarts bottom line.

We are becoming even more divided.

~~~
vorotato
Demographically speaking the major "divide", is by age. All we have to do it
wait 30 years and the divide will be over.

~~~
tropo
In those 30 years, many young liberals will turn into old conservatives. New
liberals will be born to replace the ones who became conservatives.

This divide isn't going anywhere.

~~~
internaut
That isn't a universal pattern.

The generation after millennials is more conservative.

You should look up the statistics for political affiliation of Israeli youth.

With my generation I am far right. Among the younger generation I'm the
moderate.

------
btilly
As long as Breitbart has a large audience that advertisers wish to sell things
to, economic pressure will lead them to advertise there. If this particular ad
network won't, then they will find one that will.

Therefore this will not hurt Breitbart.

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datenheini
Facebook wants no nipples, AppNexus wants no alt-right. Their house, their
rules.

------
venantius
I see a lot of concerns about censorship here.

One of the things that isn't really being talked about is the fact that
Facebook, Google etc. are directly responsible for these organizations being
promoted in the first place. Absent these content aggregators, Breitbart might
never have had a significant following in the first place. In that context,
them taking actions to lower its priority in various ways bothers me a lot
less.

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tenpies
> AppNexus has not given examples.

> But a spokesman said a "human audit" of Breitbart had flagged several
> articles that had caused it concern because of the language they had
> featured.

I'm not even a Breitbart reader but this strikes me as a ridiculously
dangerous standard to use. "Human audit" is also my new favourite term for
forming an opinion.

~~~
Bud
This is not dangerous in any way. This is not a free speech issue. Commercial
enterprises are _entirely free_ to support business activity that they agree
with, and refuse to support activity that they do not agree with. For those
who are improperly conflating this issue with free speech or First Amendment
rights in any way, you probably need a reminder:

[https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

~~~
striking
History suggests otherwise, and so does the SCOTUS and ACLU.

[http://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-
speech/](http://sealedabstract.com/rants/re-xkcd-1357-free-speech/)

------
smsm42
Well, AppNexus is certainly free to act out their ideological biases. I'm
pretty sure there are more than one ad networks, including ones which don't
make agreeing with network's management on political matters a prerequisite
for doing business with them, and Breibart would be completely fine.

------
wcummings
>"Breitbart is the most pro-Israel site in the United States of America," he
added.

If you define "pro-Israel" as "anti-Arab", maybe.

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mzw_mzw
Boycotting, ostracizing and shaming them didn't work the last fifty times, but
it's bound to work this time!

~~~
tobltobs
It hasn't anything to do with Boycotting. It is just that some advertisers
don't wanna pay to have their adverts shown next to those gross discussions.

~~~
geekamongus
This is probably the most important point to consider about this situation.

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Kenji
When will the liberals learn? Silencing only fuels this movement. Silencing is
the path of least intellectual integrity. Don't they realize that every time
they ban or block the alt-right, instead of refuting their arguments, the alt-
right wins? People aren't that stupid, you can't just block the alt-right
talking points out of their sight and thus out of their mind. Same thing with
'fake news'. The notion of 'hate speech' has been used so broadly that it is
now inflated to complete meaninglessness.

~~~
michaelmrose
Studies have shown that arguing with extremists makes them more resolute.

Also not doing business with them isn't silencing them they are just as free
to pursue their mission tomorrow as today.

~~~
CydeWeys
The embargo on South Africa in protest of apartheid worked. I don't see why
something similar wouldn't work here. Breitbart is first and foremost a
business, and they have lots of employees on staff pushing these messages of
hate that need to be paid. If their income stream dries up it makes it much
harder to continue doing what they're doing.

~~~
gspetr
Small sample might be at fault here.

For a counterexample: has the embargo on Iran worked?

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MandieD
Market forces at work...

