this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't understand why journalists continue to call users with the blue check-mark "verified". There's no verification of anything but a credit card. Verification is a relic of the past and they need to shift their language to match reality. Maybe call them "paid" users.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah verified actually had some weight in the past.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Past habits

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Someone should take screenshots and put them on the internet. It will scare Microsoft and others into not running ads on Twitter.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Exactly. I don’t get the mentality of not running ads in a YouTube video where someone said „fuck“ but being completely fine with running your ads on twitter.

I mean just checking the feed these days is incredibly toxic. Seems like only people of a certain mindset kept sticking around.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I mean, Walt Disney might not have actually minded this.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Twitter must be held responsible for the kind of Nazi content its allowing on their site.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They are. People are leaving in droves. Advertisers are abandoning the site.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Would be great if the consequences were greater, but as you imply, they are on a track toward certain death it seems like (just gonna take a few more years idk)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Advertisers need to see more articles like this. Pulling the ad dollars away from Twitter is the last lever anyone has to try to change it, and it should have happened long ago at this point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

When it comes to corps the size that the article talks about, they know and they don't care.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That was clear to me when Musk unbanned the Neo-Nazis and there was many articles about it like: https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/02/elon-musk-nazis-kanye-twitter-andrew-anglin/?guccounter=1

So, seeing as even I could predict that 6 months ago, why the fuck are these companies still running ads there? Do they want this?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do they want this?

Apparently they have no issues with nazis, but the moment you mention a minor slur in a youtube video you will be demonetized into oblivion, and don't even try showing some skin or they will call the FBI.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@xevizero @LostCause its a matter of how you define "free speech". Its better to filter out than ban.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They demonetize the slightest thing because that way they don't need to pay anyone for the money they make...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I guess ads are more effective on easily brainwashed people, so it's good for business. they want business not feel-good morals...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If Musk ban neo nazis and taliban in current Twitter, then it would run out of users

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Except the Taliban was allowed on Twitter long before Musk took it over.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Don't the ads just run automatically on content? It's not like they're hand picking these as targeted ads for people who enjoy neo-nazi propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most ads are targeted these days. You tell which user profiles to run ads to.

Also appearing next to controversial content is brand damage for these companies. They try to avoid it as much as possible.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

With how the Overton window is shifting far to the right, I’m not sure companies really care anymore if their content is placed next to hateful shit. As long as it generates money it is acceptable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The only way big brands keep expanding is by finding new audiences to appeal to. Groups who were socially excluded in the past become the next big target demographic as companies reach saturation in other markets.

Having their business be publicly associated with groups who are openly attacking these new frontiers of sales is absolutely something they want to avoid.

Not, you know, because they believe Nazis are bad - they may or may not hold that view - but because Nazis are unpopular.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While that’s how things used to be, the heavy rebranding of white supremacy into this new alt right “anti woke” has made Nazi views a lot more mainstream. One of the most popular “news” networks in North America normalize white supremacist ideology daily to hundreds of millions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's still very much the case. The companies that are big enough to need new markets to expand into already have the white supremacists' dollars, and they're not afraid of losing them - their boycotts have not proven to actually involve not buying the products.

White supremacy has been normalized in the US and Canada since their inceptions. These countries are built on a foundation of it. It's not like companies actually care about the white supremacy.

They care about losing black and pink dollars.

They don't care about losing white supremacists' dollars because they're not convinced they will.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lol I can just imagine them sitting in some dystopian marketing brand meeting analysing target demographics… "It seems one of the biggest growing demographics is young Nazis who now call themselves "alt-right", so Jenny, any ideas on how we can tailor our content to appeal to even more Nazis, while also not upsetting our main demographic of centrist customers who prefer to ignore all politics?"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is pretty much what already happens, with the main difference that the target group would have a codename or a number. Algorithms don't care.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You laugh but that’s literally what goes on in some meetings. There are entire “tiger teams” that focus on monetization of different demographics.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do laugh cause I got a strong gallows humour, but you are right and I know that.

I used to work in marketing and now am in IT precisely because I couldn‘t take the dystopian nature of it, and I didn‘t even make it far up or long at all, so I only saw the tip of the iceberg.

For example LGBT in a global company the companies only do that sort of marketing in places where the general culture is friendly towards them and avoid it in those where it isn‘t. Specifically the US came up just a while ago a friend told me in his company they decided on not running pro-LGBT ads there anymore, because the Bud Light thing signals to them a shift in the US culture becoming more hostile towards it and they have to go with that flow.

Yeah, their own ethics may not agree, but also do not matter, just what the company and shareholders demand and that is: more profit at any cost.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I guess we all need to appreciate dark humour with what’s going on 🤪

In UX design this is especially bad as there are hundreds of studies that have been done that work out exactly how to pull the strings of human psychology to induce micropathologies (like depression, fomo, anxiety, PTSD, etc).

Couldn’t stay at my previous job for the same reason. No job should force you to intentionally create systems that hurt other people because it hasn’t been made illegal and it makes money the quickest.

I’m not salty at all wtf u talking about 🤪

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It used to not reflect on the advertiser, but ever since advertisers started demanding more control over where their ads were displayed, the expectation is now that they all do it. So allowing your ads to be displayed in those places is now interpreted as an endorsement of that content.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Just like Reddit is trying to do. Monetizing hate is profitable apparently.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Imagine contacting a company as a journalist for comment and getting a poop emoji as a response

Twitter is almost as big of a shitshow as Reddit is

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

At this point, still using Twitter is like being on Reddit, I can’t say which one is worse.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Much as I hate jailbait hufflepuffman, twitter's worse.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I mean Reddit isn't a predominantly right wing platform (yet)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They are democratic decisions adjusted to the majority of the current remaining users of Twitter.