[swatcoder]

> I don't associate companies w with whatever random things their ads appear next to, I don't even remember it.

Of course you don't. You're watching things you're comfortable with and so you have no complaint about an advertiser's association with it.

> I'm pretty sure this is also true for 99.9% of other people. This brand safety stuff is just an excuse for woke marketing staffers to feel like they're "making a difference" by attacking people and companies they don't like.

Holding advertisers accountable for their placement, and distributors accountable for their catalog, predates "woke culture" by well over a century. Most "woke culture" activists in the US grew up seeing it aggressively deployed by "family oriented" activist groups in 1970's - 2000's era and they saw it be extremely effective at influencing what was available on TV, in print, in cinemas, and on music shelves because it threatened revenue and scared capitalists. And those "family groups" learned it from the anti-communists of the post-WWII era, etc, etc.

It's not new, it's not "woke", and history suggests that it does have material impact on media, culture, and business.