By Enabling Disinformation, Advertisers put Democracy in Danger

[CousinIT]

https://medium.com/dukeuniversity/by-enabling-disinformation-advertisers-put-democracy-in-danger-f62224596605

Disinformation and calls to violence clearly helped fuel the recent assault on our nation’s capitol, and an ongoing flood of disinformation now continues to subvert the reality of what happened. Yet as we assign blame for that destructive stream of disinformation, a deeply complicit stakeholder has largely been ignored — advertisers.

Obviously, President Trump has received a substantial amount of the blame for inciting the D.C. insurrection, as have select members of Congress, social media platforms, and partisan “news” networks. Cable and satellite systems that distribute these networks have also been called into question.

Advertisers, however, help keep this dangerous current of disinformation flowing. Advertisers provide the lifeblood for a media ecosystem that has become a well-oiled lie machine. Advertisers today have an unprecedented array of options for where and how to allocate their advertising dollars, yet many continue to support outlets that are systematic disseminators of falsity. This needs to stop.

The journalism watchdog organization NewsGuard released a report earlier this month showing that over 1,600 brands placed online ads on sites that NewsGuard has documented as disinformation purveyors. Procter & Gamble, Disney and Walmart are some of the most high-profile companies whose ad dollars have helped to keep these sites afloat. Even nonprofit organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the AARP and Planned Parenthood have run ads on these sites.

The problem is worsened online by “programmatic media buying,” which is the automated process of placing ads on individual sites. Media buyers engage with intermediaries known as ad networks, which algorithmically place ads across the multitude of sites in their networks, leaving advertisers unaware of where these ads actually end up. In the wake of the 2016 election, some ad networks dropped known disinformation purveyors, but as the NewsGuard report shows, there clearly has not been enough progress on that front.

[Towlie]

1. But advertisers themselves deal in disinformation! What would you expect from them?

 
?

I'm more disappointed in media I trust that air deceptive ads, for example, the Prevagen snake oil pills that prey on older folks who worry about losing their memory. There's no scientific evidence that those pills do anything at all, and individual testimonies in those ads are anecdotal and meaningless, yet MSNBC airs the ads anyway.

And "people who switched to our insurance saved an average of $xxx." (Of course they saved, that's why they switched! Every insurance company can make that claim.)

[crickets]

2. Definitely worth reading the whole thing. K&R for visibility.