The mysterious group thats picking Breitbart apart, one tweet at a time

[applegrove]

By Paul Farhi at the Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-mysterious-group-thats-picking-breitbart-apart-one-tweet-at-a-time/2017/09/22/df1ee0c0-9d5c-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html?tid=pm_pop&utm_term=.168a6570d28b

"SNIP...........


Hardly anyone paid attention last November when a strangely named Twitter account, Sleeping Giants, sent its first tweet into the digisphere. “Are you aware that you’re advertising on Breitbart, the alt-right’s biggest champion, today?” read the tweet, aimed at a consumer lending outfit called Social Finance. “Are you supporting them publicly?”

Within 30 minutes, Social Finance replied, tweeting that it would stop running ads on Breitbart.

It was, it turns out, the start of an odd, and oddly effective, social media campaign against Breitbart, the influential conservative news site headed by Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former campaign chairman and ex-chief White House strategist.

Sleeping Giants is a mysterious group that has no address, no organizational structure and no officers. At least none that are publicly known. All of its leaders are anonymous, and much of what it claims is difficult to independently verify. A spokesman for the group wouldn’t identify himself in interviews for this article.

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[Me.]

1. What Goes Around Comes Around

[Hortensis]

2. "We are trying to defund bigotry." Excellent. Who knew many of Breitbart's

advertisers had no idea they were? Another serious problem with how Facebook is making its money, and Google.

Sleeping Giants’ basic approach is to make Breitbart’s advertisers aware that they are, in fact, Breitbart advertisers. Many apparently don’t know this, given that Web ads are often bought through third-party brokers, such as Google and Facebook. The brokers then distribute them to a network of websites according to algorithms that seek a specific target audience (say, young men) or a set number of impressions.

As a result of such “programmatic” buying, advertisers often are in the dark about where their ads end up. Advertisers can opt out of certain sites, of course, but only if they affirmatively place them on a blacklist of sites.

So when an ad appears on Breitbart, Sleeping Giants or one of its 109,000 Twitter followers and 35,000 Facebook followers flag the advertiser, often accompanied by an image of the sponsors’ ad next to a Breitbart story.

[cyclonefence]

3. Many months ago,

I engaged in the same campaign, visiting Breitbart daily and emailing advertisers. I don't tweet, and I'm sure a twitter campaign is more effective than emails. Anyway, most of the companies I contacted had no idea their ads were appearing on Breitbart. A few of them were upset and said they would stop advertising there. But most of them told me that they bought packages from an Israeli advertising consulting company (sorry I can't recall its name) who were in charge of placing the ads, that the companies themselves had nothing to do with where the ads appeared.

[benld74]

4. I follow Sleeping Giants and have

Sent some Breitbart advertisers SG suggested format, and BOOM!!
It works!
One advertiser at a time

Went after rUsh back in the days in similar manner

[Princess Turandot]

5. They posted their thoughts on this to their twitter feed..

Link to tweet

(Just click on the tweet and read down their chain of remarks/observations.)

According to their count, 2,822 entities have confirmed that they were taking action to prevent their ad buys (mostly third-party-managed) from going to breitbart. Here's their spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i9o8CR_kjJ6mBd44k6CRZEhlXuZqq-XCCOoj-e8RJ7Q/edit#gid=0

AFAIK this is primarily a crowd-sourced project. Unlike some other efforts, they are not organizing boycotts of the entities involved. Rather, they suggest their twitter followers screen cap ads appearing alongside an offensive breitbart article, then send the image to the entity informing them of where their $$ is going. e.g. A college's recruitment department is usually not going to be thrilled with seeing their ad appear next to an article declaring that women can't do STEM.