[Amezarak]

Who gets to decide what 'hate' is?

Breitbart claims it isn't: Breitbart responded saying it "has always and continues to condemn racism and bigotry in any form".

The exchange refuses to say what triggered their action: "We use a number of third-party standards to determine what is and isn't hate speech, and if we detect a pattern of speech that could incite violence or discrimination against a minority group, we determine that to be non-compliant and we simply won't serve ads against it," AppNexus's spokesman Joshua Zeitz told the BBC.

"I'm not going to put the examples out there because I'm not going to engage in a tit-for-tat on what is compliant."

The article lists some headlines that they consider somewhat questionable, but you can easily google similar headlines focused on other groups from sites like the Huffington Post; e.g. "White People Are Too Dumb to Know They're Racist". Do you think we will see similar action taken against those such sites?

Breitbart got its big start, I believe, from the atrocious hoaxes itperpetrated on ACORN, NPR, and other organizations to destroy their reputations unfairly. It has come a long way; it's now simply a very biased news organization that sometimes does decent reporting on undercovered topics.

Yes, it is every ad network's right to refuse to associate with Breitbart or anyone else for that matter. But is this really the direction we, as a society, want to move in? Do we want ad networks taking activist stances about news websites? Do we want everyone to have to pick a side? Do we want people's careers destroyed for holding relatively mainstream opinions that happen to contradict the majority opinion?

[Bud]

>Yes, it is every ad network's right to refuse to associate with Breitbart or anyone else for that matter. But is this really the direction we, as a society, want to move in?

Yes, this is the direction we as a society want to move in. The opposite direction from hate speech. A direction in which large commercial ad enterprises do not support neo-Nazi content and do not support neo-Nazis making a lot of money off said content; at least not on AppNexus' dime.

This is precisely the direction we want to move in.

[tomp]

Can you cite any articles on Breitbart that are "hate speech"?

[Amezarak]

So all we have to do to silence someone is say they're a neo-nazi? Breitbart has strongly and repeatedly denied any association with hate, bigotry, neo-nazis, etc.

Incidentally, Breitbart himself was Jewish, as is the CEO. Neo-nazi seems a particularly bizarre term to apply especially given for a site that was specifically started by Breitbart and Solov to be pro-Israel.

[tomp]

In addition, Milo, one of Breitbart's most famous journalists, is Jewish by ethnicity, gay, and self-reportedly loves "black dudes".

[DasIch]

Of course Breitbart claims that. Go to a prison and you'll see all the inmates claiming innocence. If this is the best argument you can up with I'd advice to not bring it up at all.

[striking]

You're sure about that? 95% of federal convictions in 2004 were via guilty pleas. https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=qa&iid=405

[DasIch]

How many of those involved plea deals? If you can't afford legal representation, you won't get anything that deserves to be called that in the US. If you're then also faced with the ridiculously high sentences you can get in the US, you'll no doubt find yourself pleading guilty to a lot of things to get a deal.

[lucozade]

> is this really the direction we ... want to move in?

It's been like this since at least the 18th century. People/organisations should absolutely have the right of association and I'm glad that they exercise it.

> Do we want people's careers destroyed

I'm not sure what you're referring to. I definitely have no particular issue about a news organisation going to the wall if it can't find readership or funding. If you mean people losing their jobs due to it then that's personally unfortunate but doesn't strike me as a societal problem necessarily.

If you mean someone being persecuted by the state or a powerful actor because they have a moderate view that is disagreed with then, yes, that's a very bad thing. Not sure it applies here though.

[hackuser]

> Breitbart claims it isn't

Sophisticated purveyors of hate say have always said the same. It doesn't mean much one way or another.

> Who gets to decide what 'hate' is?

This is refuge of evil people - who is to say what is evil? By that argument nothing is ever concluded to be good or bad.

There is no science to it, but like many things in life we can make reliable judgments. Breitbart isn't a difficult one.

[matthewmacleod]

But is this really the direction we, as a society, want to move in?

Isn't is exactly the direction we want society to move in? What could be more free and fair than allowing anybody to publish their views, and allowing the public/advertisers to decide who receives their money?

[Amezarak]

We want people to be free to publish their views, and free to decide who gets their money - absolutely. But we also want to be careful how we exercise those rights.

I think the idea that the only time censorship matters is when it is done by the government is a little silly. Free speech is something we work toward as a society. The First Amendment does not ensure free speech; it ensures the preconditions exist for free speech to be possible, i.e., the government cannot itself restrict free speech.

If every single person in the United States of America refuses to speak, associate with, or do business with someone who believes the world is flat, and consequently such believers cannot find a place to live, can't buy food, can't live a normal life, free speech does not exist, whether or not the government does anything.

Yes, there has to be a balance between the two extremes of total shunning and total acceptance. It has to be OK sometimes, for some people to refuse to associate with people solely on their views. The extremity of said views should probably be a factor. So, maybe, should be the relationship and power of the entities involved. But the absolutist position that there is no problem whatsoever with things like this happening is extremely dangerous: a self-censoring society is in practice no different from a tyrannical government - a democratic government is, after all, no more than one of many enforcement mechanisms of the people - and the principle of free speech and the spread of ideas is dead.

I don't agree with Breitbart's positions - which again, are fairly mainstream - but I don't want these tactics normalized and used against you and me, and end up in a world where everyone has to pick sides or face immediate financial consequences. And I think this is a people-problem, not necessarily an ad-network problem: I'm pretty sure they're only doing this because of pressure being put on them directly or indirectly by interested consumers.