•  Max_Power   ( @MaxPower@feddit.de ) 
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    1 year ago

    Free speech is good and must be protected, that’s clear. But it should not be virtually limitless. The US played a major role sorting out the negative consequences of the Weimar republic, which did not contain fascist ideology, which then (edit: among other things ofc) lead to WW2.

    It still baffles my mind how the US cannot see that tolerating the intolerant must inevitably lead to an intolerant and possibly facist society.

    •  lasagna   ( @lasagna@programming.dev ) 
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      1 year ago

      I have thought about it for a while but the US is basically in a cold civil war, with a significant chance of it becoming hot. And it looks very similar to their previous one. Neither side seem to have a charismatic enough leader.

      It’s easy to look over the pond and think it’s none of our problem. But if the US falls to chaos a lot of other countries will follow suit. We can already see this influence in the UK and I’d argue many other EU countries. Russia probably saw this weakness, bet on it worsening much quicker than it did, but lost that bet (so far).

      With that said, addressing the US as a whole no longer makes sense. I’m sure plenty, plenty of Americans see what is happening.

      It’s unfortunate that one of the wealthiest people on this planet has taken the anti-democratic side, but it’s not the first or the last time in history a powerful man, rich beyond measure has done so.

      • Very much so, the Bavarian Conservative Party literally has gone to have talks with republicans to use their election strategies, the German-wide AgD has ramped up their Anti-LGBT campaigning and started to use similar messaging to far-right propaganda networks, e.g. “protect our children”, “pedophiles”, photoshopped images of CSAM at pride events, etc.

      • My country (Australia) has tied itself to you guys so if you go down we definitely go down with you. I’m 100% hoping the US doesn’t fall into chaos. We also birthed Rupert Murdoch and he’s played a huge part in heating up this civil war.

              • They are but things are definitely getting hot with China. There’s also been some issues with trade and diplomacy since our ex PM publicly called for an investigation into the origins of covid. China did not respond well to that and our previous government’s approach to diplomacy didn’t help. At one point China actually wasn’t answering calls from us.

                We are walking a very fine line because we absolutely depend on trade with China but we’ve also entered in an alliance for the explicit purpose of preparing for a potential conflict with China. There’s absolutely no reality where we side with China over America. We would destroy our economy before we back out of our alliance with the US. We have followed them into every war since ww2.

                •  liv   ( @liv@beehaw.org ) 
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                  1 year ago

                  Oh, yeah I know you wouldn’t. You’re in kind of a tricky situation but I think that spat over covid sort of tested boundaries for you.

                  I’m in Aotearoa, obviously we have a similar problem. Culturally we would go where you go, but on the other hand we didn’t follow the US into Iraq. China are by far our biggest trading partner, and also those of us with a long memory were disillusioned by how our allies treated us over the Rainbow Warrior terrorist attack so there’s probably not the same level of confidence.

      • It’s safe to say Russia and China have actually helped contribute to a lot of the issues in the last decade by holding a lot of soft power online. The US government can’t stop an enemy that blends in with their sovereign users, advertisers, and content creators.

    • Free speech is good and must be protected

      I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech. Period. It’s not like the government is going around throwing people in prison for being racist fucks on Twitter. Twitter can moderate content if they want to. If they don’t want to moderate content they don’t have to as long as the material isn’t illegal.

      I don’t know why people keep thinking this has anything to do with the first amendment at all. Twitter is not public, not even close.

      • I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech.

        Twitter positions itself as the Internet’s public square, and free speech certainly does apply in an old-fashioned offline public square, so yeah, Twitter kinda does have something to do with free speech. Don’t seek power if you don’t want the responsibility it comes with.

        • That’s not how it works, what you are talking about is often called freeze peach.

          Until Twitter can fine you or lock you up for saying the wrong thing or exercise prior restraint over all your expression, it’s not a free speech issue.

        • I think you’re mostly right but there’s a host of nuance and legalese that muddies this up. Social media is always in a conflicted relationship with speech, wanting to have no culpability over what’s posted while also making decisions over what to feature/restrict/etc. They’re actually really cautious to not position themselves as the “town square” for that reason since it does channel a sort of legal definition of such.

    • You’re partly right. But it’s the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state. We can’t keep our heads down and hope it goes away on its own. We shouldn’t allow the state, with its monopoly on violence, to fight our social battles for us.

      I dislike the idea of the state getting to start making decisions on what is “hateful”. And I’m disgusted we don’t have more people standing up and loudly declaring how wrong the hateful viewpoints are. It is our responsibility and we are failing.

      It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don’t have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power and starts redefining what is “hateful”.

      •  liv   ( @liv@beehaw.org ) 
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        1 year ago

        It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don’t have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power

        You seem to be suggesting that separating hate speech prevention from legislation will protect you from a “tyranny of the majority” situation.

        But if the populace has a bigoted plurality, won’t that also create a tyranny of the majority?

        • If the populace has a bigoted plurality, then they get to declare what is officially hateful. So yes, you’re right.

          I put the onus on the collective citizenry, but there is no perfect solution in reality. There is a role for the state to play in protecting people, I just don’t think they should dip much into what speech is or isn’t allowed. The majority should rule in my opinion, but we have the job of maintaining a majority that isn’t regressive bigoted shitheads. It’s an eternal struggle, unfortunately.

          • Defamation, intellectual property, stalking/threats, harmful digital communications, false advertising, accurate declarations of food contents, protected names, conspiracy to commit serious crimes: all these forms of speech are regulated by law and the judiciary where I live, so I have no problem with hate speech laws as long as they are clear and reasonable.

            Personally I am in favour of proportionally representative democracy with a lot of checks and balances to enshrine human rights in law, so that if a populace wavers toward the hateful there are still protections for minorities and the non-hateful.

            • Fair, but the more people you have, with more diverse viewpoints, the harder it will be to get people to agree on what is hateful. And the more nuanced your laws, the harder it will be to agree on what is reasonable or even clear.

              • That’s a fair point.

                But we have got people to agree on everything from what is a fair defense against defamation, right through to the percentage of meat a product such as a meat pie has to contain in order for it to be able to be labelled “meat”.

                Democratic consensus is something that gets built up and refined over time. We don’t try to invent it all in a single day.

    • AFAIU this is a result of the wording in the US constitution. The freedom of speech in the US has a stronger legal implication than in other countries, even stronger than western democracies like the UK.

      And, then in the civilian level, as you say, US netizens tend to write “you are entitled to your opinion” to basically anybody with any horrible belief as if they were government officials.

      • The US has limits on free speech in the name of public health and safety. There’s no assumption of limitless free speech in the US. People who cry “free speech” typically have no understanding of its actual legal definition in the country and just want an excuse to be a bigoted asshole without consequences.

        Twitter, not being part of the government, gets to decide what content they allow and doesn’t need to worry too much about the legal definition of free speech. But, despite Musk’s claims, Twitter is not actually a space of limitless free speech. They’ve taken plenty of actions since he took over that limit the speech of individuals he disagrees with. Twitter is just interesting in giving a platform to hate. There’s certainly money to be made in monetizing hate (see Trump), but hopefully it doesn’t work out well in the end for Twitter or Musk.

        •  liv   ( @liv@beehaw.org ) 
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          1 year ago

          Prince changed his name to an unprinteable character so they had no choice.

          As I recall, some of the media used the short form TAFKAP (the artist formerly known as Prince).

          As for xtwitter, I vote for FKT. Pronounced as a word.

    • X is really dumb, and I’m not a fan of Twitter personally… But twitters reputation shouldn’t be completely obliterated because of who now owns it. Not that it matters, I guess, because there’s no way people don’t know X was once Twitter.

      So I don’t know, guess I don’t care either way. But X is dumb.

  • Spokespeople for NCTA and pharmaceutical company Gilead said that they immediately paused their ad spending on X after CNN flagged their ads on the pro-Nazi account.

    Alt-speak: we only care if the media report that our ad placements were next to questionable contents.

  •  Fizz   ( @Fizz@lemmy.nz ) 
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    1 year ago

    Is there a link to the picture of this ad next to nazi content. I couldnt find it in the article.

    Edit: I found the sources of the tweets thanks to a comment below. Here is the tweets the ads appeared next to.

        • Whether it was fascist or not matter because the word has lost its meaning. Could be something fairly innocuous really.

          neither should be permitted.

          lol yeah sounds totally righteous to dictate which opinions others should have

          • Whether it was fascist or not matter because the word has lost its meaning. Could be something fairly innocuous really.

            CNN sources a Media Matters report which goes into detail as to the content of the twitter account. Tl;dr, it’s an explicitly neo-nazi account which regularly posted memes and content praising Hitler and the Nazi party and pushing neo-nazi talking points.

            I’m not sure what it accomplishes playing semantic games about whether something fits the technical definition of fascism (Nazi Germany absolutely does, btw) when the commonly understood definition of far-right, ultra-nationalist, authoritarianism is abundantly clear.

            lol yeah sounds totally righteous to dictate which opinions others should have

            I don’t think anyone is proposing that we dictate others’ opinions. But companies, advertisers, and platforms are under no obligation to be associated with the expression of those opinions, and I have no issue stating that Nazis, Fascists, and their ideological descendants are very unwelcome on Beehaw.

  • Why do people assume that brands explicitly endorse everything their ads run next to? Do they think companies are purposely seeking out these bad people to run their ads next to? I never got the whole not wanting your ads next to questionable content thing.

    • I’m no expert but I think it’s the same reason ads are full of hot people: association. If you see an ad for a Baconator enough times next to a neo-Nazi spewing hate speech you’re going to start to link the two in your mind.

      • Yep it’s the association for sure

        But also a factor (for those that know) is that companies will pay for their ads to run to specific demographics of people based on the data that a advertising platform (Twitter, YouTube, Tinder, Facebook, etc) has gathered to determine specific things about you as a person.

        It’s the whole concept behind targeted ads. You pay for eyes that will see it and are more likely to purchase your products due to that demographic data. Or at the very least, view your website for traffic that can be used to harvest more data about you so that it can be sold to other companies.

      • It’s gotta be this one. Marketing works partially with the subconscious and association. They want you to get a fuzzy feeling when you see their logo or a product of theirs in a (web) store. If you don’t get a fuzzy feeling, but you are reminded of the vile fascist shit you read while you saw their ad, you will avoid buying their product, even if you can’t quite put the finger on it.

    •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) 
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      1 year ago

      Why do people assume that brands explicitly endorse everything their ads run next to?

      Where by “people”, we mean “individuals with so little critical thinking, that they might get influenced by an ad”.

      Well, that’s why. Companies don’t want easily influenciable people to associate their brand with something they’re likely to view as negative.

      • Everyone is influenced by ads but the tines you re you view as your choice. Immediate purchases aren’t the goal of most ads, it’s mainly uncaughous influence for the next time you have to choose between a few products!

              • The goal of ads isn’t obviouse because it’s subconscious influence on you that often shows up ages after you actually watched the ad. It’s not a “buy now” but rather produce E.g. good feelings around a brand or product by showing you feelgood content and the less you care about the actual ad the more likely you are to ultimately fall for it. The by far biggest issue is that you won’t notice once you fall for it tho because you just made a choice between multiple products and the influence only showed up subconsciously rather than “I noticed that in a ad” which is why they still work, everybody likes to think they are the exception it doesn’t work on but that’s not how exceptions work!

                • you just made a choice between multiple products and the influence only showed up subconsciously

                  If you think you have the money to afford buying things on a whim, sure.

                  everybody likes to think they are the exception it doesn’t work on but that’s not how exceptions work

                  I don’t think I’m an exception, I think there are plenty of people who think about how they spend their money. I also think there are a lot of people who don’t. Y’know, with 8 billion people out there, if the split was 50:50, there would still be 4 billion that could be swayed by ads… and I wouldn’t be an exception in not being one of them.

        • That’s easy: never make unconscious purchase decisions. Consciously set a list of what you want, and follow it. If you know what you want, there is very rarely more than one product that comes closer to meeting the requirements, whether they be objectively measurable, more abstract like quality and trust, or as simple as price. Generally sellers try to find a distinguishing niche, and stick to it.

          Of course this requires knowing and caring about what you’re purchasing. If you have enough money to just go by “ooh, shiny!”, then sure, ads can have an influence.

          •  Wiz   ( @Wiz@midwest.social ) 
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            51 year ago

            never make unconscious purchase decisions. Consciously set a list of what you want, and follow it.

            Yes, but how do you become aware of product you consciously want?

            •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) 
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              11 year ago

              By concatenating words describing concepts I’d like to have together. For example:

              • Foldable rechargeable lightweight flying exoskeleton
              • Cheap quiet fan that fits in my window while moving as much air as possible
              • Waterproof lightweight summer footwear
              • Non-addictive method to instantly fall asleep
              • Low sugar cheesecake
              • Small and cheap dynamometric drill adapter adjustable for 0 to 500Nm

              …and so on. Just use your imagination.

          • That’s not the issue, the less you care about the ad itself the more likely you are to process it’s message subcaughously and we simply don’t have the energy actively observe all the ads we are bombarded with…

            • Subconscious messages are irrelevant if you make your purchase decisions consciously.

              “Do you like to drive?”… they can show me beautiful landscapes with nice music and end it with the car maker’s logo all they want, I’m not going to buy a car because I saw the ad, it smells nice, or “has USB”; those are irrelevant parameters that get cut off by my conscious list.

              How about those fun fun sweets, foods, whatever, kids like so much these days? I was a kid once, I know I didn’t like all the stuff advertised on TV.

              Want to sell me some insurance, telephony, banking, or any other kind of subscription? Good luck showing me people having fun, vacationing or scoring a date, I’m still going to get an online comparator, tick off the things I don’t like, and then compare it to the results of another one or two. Even better luck trying to robocall me; “No, thank you, I’m not interested”, talk to the hand ✋, number blocked.

              Same for food (what’s the nutritional list, expiry date, and price/quantity?), hardware (is it the cheapest option meeting my requirements? how easy is it to repair?), clothing (no, I don’t care about being a billboard for your brand), and so on.

              If you don’t think you have the bandwidth to watch ads consciously, there are ad blockers for that. For all the rest, there is spending some more time the first time you are about to buy a product you haven’t before.

              • I copy pasted that because I have two basically identical arguments rn, just wanted to add that I do have a ad blocker but that doesn’t work everywhere ads are shown, especially IRL…

                It’s not about smart or stupid, ads use various mechanisms to manipulate you and noone is completely immune to them, when you spend your money it’s too late already because you have bias no matter how slight it is and once you are presented with two idendically good products that bias starts to show. Here is a great German video on the topic, I don’t know if the subtitles are usable but it’s far too big and complex to explain in a single comment and I don’t care to try rn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etkeGVNRVYA

    • People will presure companies not to allow it. “I will not purchase your product because it is helping fund hate speech”

      It doesn’t matter that the company did not choose to place the ad there. The ad being there gives money to platform that they are recieving because of hate speech.

    • I believe it’s a matter of being in the same platform as controversial content.

      In the end they’re paying Twitter to display their ads, and if Twitter allows questionable content to be in their platform, the companies are indirectly supporting it.

    • A lot of advertising still works on association and suggestion. That industry was heavily influenced by Freuds son in law.

      Juxtaposition is a type of association.

    • I mean, I’m sure there’s people’s jobs it is to monitor marketing at these companies? Unlikely they’d go thru the trouble of setting up an ad campaign just to cancel it and claim nazis if it wasn’t true?

      I don’t know though, I stay off twitter - especially now.

        • Sure but then they’d also need to calculate the risk of Musk or X exposing the lie that X is allowing pro-nazi content. If it’s such an obvious lie for the exposure in the media then there’s a massive risk of being called out and exposed. The bottom line is X loses revenue and credibility due to this article and now has a huge incentive to blow the lid off this supposed conspiracy to paint X as a bastion of hate. I don’t think two big companies would roll the dice on that at the same time as losing their investment by ending this ad campaign early.

  • 🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

    Click here to see the summary

    The issue came less than a week after X CEO Linda Yaccarino publicly affirmed the company’s commitment to brand safety for advertisers.

    The nonprofit news watchdog Media Matters for America documented in a report published Wednesday that ads for a host of mainstream brands have been run on the account, which has shared content celebrating Hitler and the Nazi Party.

    Ads for brands including Adobe, Gilead Sciences, the University of Maryland’s football team, New York University Langone Hospital and NCTA-The Internet and Television Association were run alongside tweets from the account that had garnered hundreds of thousands of views, CNN observed.

    But Wednesday’s report suggests that the company still has work to do if it wants to avoid monetizing, and placing ads alongside, objectionable content.

    “Media Matters and other observers have documented how X has remained a dangerous cesspool of content, especially for advertisers,” Wednesday’s report states.

    Media Matters says it has also documented instances of brands’ ads being placed next to content from Holocaust denial and white nationalist accounts.