
Conde Nast refuses to run Prop 19 ads on reddit - holman
http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/d67uj/reddits_official_statement_on_prop_19_ads/
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auxbuss
For those who have no idea what Prop 19 is:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_19>

Basically, a marijuana legalisation proposal.

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pstuart
More of a "tax and regulate", which is a step towards legalization.

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philwelch
Well, it does legalize marijuana on the state level, and additionally taxes
and regulates it. It may or may not be a de facto first step to federal
deregulation.

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tzs
Does running the ads for free count as a donation to the prop 19 campaign, and
possibly trigger reporting obligations on the part of Conde Nast?

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ahi
I don't think so.
[http://www.sos.ca.gov/prd/campaign_info/forms_instructions/c...](http://www.sos.ca.gov/prd/campaign_info/forms_instructions/compend_camp_forms.htm)

From what I can tell you only have to report expenditures greater than $1000.
Maybe

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pbhjpbhj
>This was a decision made at the highest levels of Conde Nast.

Doesn't this put the lie to their "we're our own business and don't have
anything to do with Conde Nast, that's why we need your charity" line?

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michael_dorfman
Nope; it confirms that the Reddit guys and their Conde Nast overlords don't
see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, and that Reddit is not given the freedom
(or resources, apparently) to run itself as it sees fit.

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pbhjpbhj
That's kinda my point - if reddit _can_ not be allowed the freedom then CN (or
AP or the Newhouse Family) have control over reddit and not reddit themselves.
The donations requested are thus donations to the billionaire Newhouse cause
and not to an independently run reddit.

That's just how it appears to me.

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bluelu
CN bought reddit so they can do whatever they want to do with reddit. Either
you take the cash or you leave it.

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kleevr
True, but there's also the massive anarchistic user base. /r/all is/was
yelling censorship top to bottom. Starting to look a lot like the Digg
Revolt[1] circa '07 regarding the 09 F9 .. censorship.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy#DMCA_notices_and_Digg)

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kingkilr
Not really, during the aacs thing digg literally stopped to function under the
weight of 09 f9 subissions. In comparison I've seen more pro-Ron Paul
sentimennt on the front page at any given time than I have prop 19 stuff
today.

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Saavedro
Reddit responded to the prop 19 issue far more quickly than digg responded to
the 09 f9 issue, mind.

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kingkilr
Definitely true, I distinctly recall the first few submissions on 09 f9 in the
evening, then the next day they started doing bans arround midday, and then
finally the site came crashing down about 24 hours after it originally
started.

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malbiniak
_Since we're not allowed to benefit financially, reddit is now running the ads
for free._

Nice hack, reddit.

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points
It's farcical. It's just circlejerking. The idea that advertising pro-prop19
to Reddit would have made any sense in the first place is just ridiculous
given that they're _all_ pretty much uniformly in favor of it.

It's fun to watch them run around being outraged boycotting and generally
wasting their own time though.

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dailyrorschach
Actually it makes a lot of sense to advertise to this group to ensure they do
actually vote. You can't take your public for granted.

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dasil003
Especially this particular constituency ;)

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jawher
Because it doesn't want their money, so reddit is now running them for free:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/ads/comments/d68xv/reddit_is_now_run...](http://www.reddit.com/r/ads/comments/d68xv/reddit_is_now_running_free_ads_in_support_of_prop/)

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starnix17
I wonder why Conde Nast even bought reddit in the first place.

It's cool that they let them run the web site as an independent entity more or
less, but it really seems like they don't like supporting them (see Reddit
Gold).

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points
They probably thought they were buying a broad general "What news will look
like in the future" website.

In fact they ended up with a liberal pro drug, pro gay, pro adblock, anti
capitalism, anti consumerism, anti advertising, athiest website.

As time has gone on Reddits userbase _seems_ to have become narrower and
narrower even though it's obviously grown massively. Maybe it's groupthink at
work, or maybe it's just come to be known as a hangout for liberals being
outraged by stuff.

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drivebyacct2
I can't believe that comments like this are upmodded but yet HN has the
audacity to tout some air of supremacy while laughing at the notion of a "digg
vs reddit" flame war.

The community remains remarkably split on adblock use (especially on sites
they like, etc). There are people that oppose plenty of drug use (calling pot
a drug is disingenuous for shock factor of "calling out" reddit) and being
antigay is yes, unpopular on a social voting news site, shocking.

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points
The more surprising thing IMHO is the air of superiority that Reddit users
have over religion, and especially over people who watch Fox News etc.

Now I'm not for one minute defending people who only watch Fox News, but there
are people who _only_ get their news from Reddit. So instead of a blinkered,
biased, inaccurate kneejerkist feed of stories from Fox, they get a blinkered,
biased, inaccurate kneejerkist feed of stories from Reddit.

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est
> but there are people who only get their news from Reddit.

Can you suggest an alternative to reddit? I really want a less politic,
religion or cat pics more tech, coding and critical thinking community.

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eavc
Customize your Reddit--you can unsub from politics, atheism, and humor/pics
and subscribe to other good sub-reddits in their place.

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est
Already done that a while ago, but still find them narrow and sometimes
boring. There are tons of repost and common media hype I really want to get
rid of.

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famousactress
The fact that they're running them for free is kinda interesting. Going from
corporate censoring the ads, to reddit essentially giving the campaign a huge
contribution. It'll be interesting to see what the fall-out from this is.

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ars
If I were Conde Nast, the fallout would be firing them, and yes I'm aware this
may kill reddit.

You were bought. Reddit does not belong to you, and you don't get to decide
what to do with it.

If you can't handle that then you should never have sold, or in this case you
should quit.

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ojbyrne
Well the higher-ups could actually have been honest when they said they just
didn't want to benefit financially, and might have approved the free ads.

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CamperBob
There might be some really severe legal consequences to running those free
ads. I'm not familiar with campaign finance but it's possible that the law
considers Reddit's action to be a "donation" with a large equivalent cash
value.

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famousactress
I was thinking the exact same thing. At the very least I think there are
disclosure and tax issues, and the fact that the 'donation' came from Conde
Nast has pretty significant implications.

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jsz0
I'm not familiar with Conde Nast's publications. Do they traditionally avoid
political issue ads? If so I don't see any good reason why Reddit would be an
exception. It sounds like they want to avoid the issue entirely and won't run
anti Prob 19 ads either. I don't think that's unreasonable. I also have to
question the value of any pro Prob 19 group spending money to advertise on
Reddit. They'd be better off targeting the mainstream voter.

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lreeves
There's actually quite a few ads on Reddit that I've seen about "Avoiding the
Obama Homesexual Agenda" (not to mention Scientology), so it seems more like
Conde Nast is protecting their specific interests. Or at least, not allowing
ads that oppose their views.

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mrkurt
To be fair, those are all served by Google, they're not direct sales (like the
Prop 19 ones seemed to be). We (not reddit) spent lots of time blocking
Scientology and other moronic adwords ads back when we were running adsense.
They sprout up like weeds.

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sliverstorm
_"As a corporation, Conde Nast does not want to benefit financially from this
particular issue"_

I think that's fair. I can't fault them for that.

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huntero
Am I the only one who has no problem with a parent company not wanting pro-
marijuana ads running on their sites? They legitimately own Reddit, it seems
rather childish that Reddit is "rebelling" by running the ads for free.

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gbhn
Why do you think they're rebelling? Isn't the most natural interpretation that
the corporate statement ("we don't want to profit from this issue") is
accurate, and that Conde Nast doesn't mind if Reddit runs the ads?

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huntero
I guess the question is: Would Reddit have offered to run the Prop 19 ads for
free even if Conde Nast hadn't told them not to run the ads at all?

I would say no, so it seems that the reason that the ads are running for free
is because of the difference in opinion with the parent company. That's how I
reasoned out "rebelling", although it's obviously a bit of hyperbole.

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markkat
Well, this will have the opposite effect. It seems Conde Nast doesn't
understand their product very well.

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ribsnchicken
Your basic Streisand effect.

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riffic
Title isn't true, Conde Naste has no problem running Prop. 19 ads, as long as
your viewpoints align with theirs.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/prop19/duplicates/cx665/no_on_19_ad_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/prop19/duplicates/cx665/no_on_19_ad_on_reddit/)

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cilantro
After all these years, it looks like the publishing industry is still
threatened by marijuana.

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scelerat
Could be they're not threatened by marijuana so much as their other
advertisers.

It's not difficult to imagine an account with much deeper pockets and an
opposing agenda making it clear that if CN takes money from "pro-drug"
advertisers, then they'll pull their own.

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cilantro
I was mostly pointing out the irony that Conde Nast is continuing the legacy
of William Randolph Hearst. My assertion isn't completely implausible though.

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thought_alarm
Gentlemen, if you disable you ad blockers and visit Reddit you will see that
the Prop 19 advert is now visible.

Ahh, green; the color of money.

