[JohnTClark]

Can someone explain to me or point to some studies or books that explain why brands, advertisers etc. think that having small problematic groups on a platform affects the brand? You are making an ad for group A and put the ad on subreddits visited by group A, is the "dirt" produce by group B that bad for you that you need to get rid of group B?

[buboard]

There's activist groups that target advertisers to "let them know" about a platform. They often work as mobs that basically blackmail both the advertisers and the platforms with bad publicity. Advertisers are all about publicity, and so far all of them have caved in (Not sure if they 've ever tried the alternative). Like everything in advertising, i doubt you can find a single decent study about performance.

[tgtweak]

It's much more that these brands' marketing budgets and campaigns are managed by companies that lose contracts like this when a shareholder, partner, customer or press article brings it to their attention.

At the ecosystem level this works - groups generating content that is undesirable (perspective being from the advertisers and their stakeholders) are demonetized and -in cases where policing doesn't happen - entire networks.

No publisher or network is immune to this, even Google.

It's the macro digital equivalent to boycotting and lobbying and it's effective. Advertisers have a say in where they put their money, and their money indirectly and in some cases directly enables that content.

Best you can hope for is transparency and consistency in how the policy is governed.

[jbob2000]

Have you ever worked for a large company that is recognized by everyone?

You didn’t update your terms and conditions to meet the regulation date as of 12:01 AM? Lawsuit. You aren’t following accessibility standards? Reported to the human rights tribunal. You gave a perk to some clients but not others? 4,000 calls to the call center. Your ad was pictured next to a post about the nazis? Your brand made the evening news.

We have two rules at my company that guide EVERYTHING we do: don’t cause calls to the call center, and don’t make the evening news. Things get crazy when you have customers that number in the millions, it changes everything about how you operate.