Technology
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
You laugh but that’s literally what goes on in some meetings. There are entire “tiger teams” that focus on monetization of different demographics.
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.
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 🤪
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.
On top of what everyone else said, this is why big brands screen ads to make sure they're acceptable.