
‘Shooting,’ ‘Bomb,’ ‘Trump’: Advertisers Blacklist News Stories Online - rajivchicago
https://www.wsj.com/articles/advertisers-blacklist-hard-news-including-trump-fearing-backlash-11565879086?mod=rsswn
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toper-centage
This is the main reason why I always advocate for using ad blockers. It's not
just about annoying adds, not even just about trackers. Ad-supported content
is always, to some extent, ad-controlled content. Advertisers have
successfully taken control of YouTube by demonising anything that could be
controversial.

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moltensodium
I spent years browsing the web before it had any advertising on it at all. I
remember the first ads, they were called "banners" and everyone raged out
about how awful they were.

But we had no idea just how truly awful they could become, and that in fact
the entire infrastructure of the internet would bend so that tracking and
advertising became omniscient and pervasive. What a nightmare.

For a few years there though it kind of looked like the web was going to
remain free and open forever. Back when we were all so young.

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NikkiA
Hit the monkey to win!

~~~
bitwize
Congratulations! You've been chosen to win a free iPod!

~~~
qzx_pierri
Everyone fell for those at least once

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scohesc
It's really interesting how the advertising industry has been controlling
journalism/media (and therefore the majority of society) for at least the past
decade.

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reilly3000
How about since the dawn of mass media? It was always either ad supported,
investor supported, or both. Print, Radio, TV, have always been in bed with,
and at the behest of advertisers. Corporations sell with good feelings, not
reality. At first, the web seemed to dis-intermediate brands from products,
marketing from reality. In a couple decades we've gone from honest online
reviews to SEO spam and reputation management; publishing raw ideas to
Facebook's endorphin optimizer, maximizing revenue per session and usage at
all costs.

Adjacency is the core precept of advertising sponsored media. The advertiser
gets some of the juice of the media brand, and the media brand's decisions
about what ads to allow materializes an aspect of their brand. Digital
advertising at scale takes away the relationship between publishers and
advertisers, and instead rely on brokers who define what is an 'ad safe
environment'. Having worked in programmatic ads on the buy and sell side, I
can say with confidence the system sucks for all. Publishers are constantly
having to police which ads appear on their pages, advertisers wind up spending
money on Eastern European spam domains without their knowledge. I think life
even sucks for the ad exchanges, which have to try to balance the interests of
all parties with profit.

A new model is certainly needed. Its shape has yet to be determined, but I
can't imagine we'll be doing header bidding in 10 years.

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mcv
Sometimes I feel like independent journalism is inherently contradictory:
journalists need to get paid somehow. Even without ads, someone needs to pay
their salaries, and that means someone has control over them.

If subscription-based, you write what your subscribers are willing to pay for.
If ad-funded, you write what your advertisers think is good for their ads.
When paid by the government, there's the risk that the government may decide
what you can write.

I fear truly independent journalism can only be amateur journalism, but you
don't get deep investigative journalism that way.

