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Leaked Snapchat emails: Anti-gun group told to pay or NRA ads may appear

• eikdi_efs 10y ago
  Sports Illustrated The Six Biggest Ripple Effects Of Kevin Durant's Injury http://blog.goo.ne.jp/visulsign/e/b675c55b000592daae91eb5d5b2f00d6 http://blog.goo.ne.jp/visulsign/e/b675c55b000592daae91eb5d5b...
  • bichiliad 10y ago
    ^ This is spam
• JKCalhoun 10y ago
  Disgusting.
• probablybanned 10y ago
  Good. Why is Snapchat doing political activism?
  • emn13 10y ago
    Why does any organisation? Why does the NRA? Perhaps it would be nifty to split the world into commercial entities without no permission to lobby, and political entities with no permission to deploy commercial activities, but that sure isn't this world. In any case, the issue isn't political activism, it's the tastelessness of the threat. It also doesn't help that it exposes how this particular employee apparently felt no compunction in undermining what others in his business were working for - it sure looks like he wasn't actually handling in the best interests of his employer, and I can't imagine he didn't know it.
    • ctdonath 10y ago
      Social media sites are generally perceived as "common carriers" whom we expect no political activism from (beyond refusing illegal activity & promotion thereof) - to wit commercial entities whom we expect will not lobby (legislators nor customers) re: non-sequitur topics.
      • emn13 10y ago
        Well, we expect social media sites to try and avoid blatantly taking sides. But they definitely thrive on human-interest stuff (such as this), especially if it's something with a social mobilisation aspect, and that's almost bound to skirt the political rather closely. As it does here. At best you might expect social media firms to give opposing sides equal opportunities (even more business!). But even openly biased media is common - e.g. Fox news, but really many other news outlets too - and I see no reason to think social media firms couldn't evolve in the same direction. I'm not saying we should applaud this development... In any case, I don't see no evidence that snapchat it being particularly biased based on one story they're pushing. It's pretty much impossible to make that conclusion based on one story, given that they push so many. It looks more like sheer incompetence to me than anything else.
    • probablybanned 10y ago
      The other employees in his business were donating the services of the business to their pet political causes. Saliterman was trying to make money for the shareholders. It's an advertising business: that means everyone pays. If Snapchat's board are all in agreement that that's where they want the money to go, fine --- but they should also realize that Snapchat is a social network, and the appearance of fairness is probably a reasonable thing to aim at. If the DNC or RNC launched a social network, they would find themselves somewhat hampered in their ability to grow, and with good reason.
  • ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    Hacker News can't avoid touching politics, why do you think Snapchat can? Alternatively, do you think "everything is normal, continue doing consumer culture stuff" somehow isn't a political message?
    • probablybanned 10y ago
      I'd expect Snapchat users to discuss politics on the platform. I wouldn't necessarily expect Snapchat to expend their own resources to explicitly push an issue-driven political agenda that is unrelated to their own line of business. Most people can decide whether to "continue doing consumer culture stuff" or to freak out about politics without the help of Snap or any other corporation. There's an odd sort of corporate worship/megalomania that makes people think they're morally obligated to "weigh in" on an issue. They're not, and their constituent individuals are more than capable of pursuing their own political activism and/or creating more appropriate vehicles for voluntary cooperation toward those ends.
• ctdonath 10y ago
  Social media sites really need to face the decision of whether they're "common carriers" or are liable for consequences of discrimination against common/normal views.
  • LyndsySimon 10y ago
    Political views aside, to which group are you referring?
    • ctdonath 10y ago
      Why do you exclude political views?
  • clubm8 10y ago
    They seem to want it both ways: when an ad causes serious consternation in the press, they pull it because "we've a private site and can regulate speech". But if there isn't sufficient controversy, they can hide behind the banner of free speech. Sites like Facebook need to either commit to allowing all lawful ads, or admit they exercise editorial judgement on what is "proper" speech, and start a larger conversation about what sort of speech should be restricted.
    • bertil 10y ago
      > admit they exercise editorial judgement on what is "proper" speech Facebook does exactly that, with slightly different rules for posts & comments and with ads. https://en-gb.facebook.com/communitystandards https://en-gb.facebook.com/communitystandards https://en-gb.facebook.com/policies/ads https://en-gb.facebook.com/policies/ads
• LyndsySimon 10y ago
  I realize it's the title of the article, but "Everytown" is not a charity. There are two legal entities: 1. Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, Inc; a 501(c)3 2. Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, Inc; a 501(c)4 The NRA is structured similarly with the NRA being the traditional non-profit and the NRA-ILA being the political lobbying entity. It's disingenuous to cast one group as a charity and not the other.
  • h4nkoslo 10y ago
    They also have nothing to do with "gun safety", unless you consider e.g. the National Right to Life Committee to be an "abortion safety" organization. Ironically the NRA actually does spend immense amounts of time on education on how to use guns safely and responsibly.
    • mozumder 10y ago
      I think we all agree that gun safety works best when there is no gun.
      • MrZongle2 10y ago
        Which is why gun-free zones are the safest places. /s
        • pikzen 10y ago
          A simple look at other countries would tend to say that, yes.
          • benjohnson 10y ago
            It really depends on the sample - if you look over the last 100 years the picture really changes. You'll find massive government killings of their own unarmed citizens.
            • 10y ago
• aresant 10y ago
  I remember in the Facebook pre-IPO days they invited a handful of notorious internet marketers / affiliates to sit down with senior executives to figure out how they could work together to drive higher CTRs for fare like ringtones, weight loss pills, etc with the goal of goosing revenues upwards. I'd guess these are similarly interesting times in the SnapChat ad sales department on the way to an IPO - they are under tremendous pressure to drive results.
  • mschrage 10y ago
    source?
• yalogin 10y ago
  Why do people expect ethics and morals from startups? Snapchat here and Uber all year. Is it because they are startups and someho the HN crowd assumes they will be good citizen? The same thing if done by some pharma company or may be some division inside Johnson and Johnson would go unnoticed and expected even. It looks to me that most people on here work for startups and new companies and some how want to work in a field that has higher morals and ethics. Why would a sales guy try to behave differently and not make a sale? We have seen this again and again with other sales teams from Yelp and others. I am not trying to explain the actions of sales people just to understand where the outrage is coming from.
  • 6d6b73 10y ago
    People should expect ethical behavior not only from startups but from any entity private or public. As a customer we have the right, or even an obligation, to say - If you're not ethical we don't want to do business with you. It's as simple as that.
  • lcfcjs 10y ago
    I think the question you should ask is why can we not expect humans to act ethically. We are all human after all.
    • aeorgnoieang 10y ago
      Empirically, do humans presently, and have humans in the past been observed to, "act ethically"? And, of course, there's a tremendous diversity about what exactly is ethical.
  • smsm42 10y ago
    > Why do people expect ethics and morals from startups? People expect ethics and morals from people. Startups are run by people.
    • bambax 10y ago
      Pharma companies are run by people; Monsanto is run by people. And yet nobody expects ethics and morals from those: that was the point of the parent. People don't expect ethics and morals from all people or organizations in the same amount.
• h4nkoslo 10y ago
  No one seems to be mentioning that doing so would presumably screw over the NRA harder than Everytown. The target viewer for gun control content would presumably not be interested in an NRA ad, but the NRA is nonetheless paying to run it. Oddly the "threat" is essentially that you might become ritually unclean by proximity to such content.
  • fixermark 10y ago
    Were I in charge of NRA advertising, I would consider my ad running along a gun-violence-awareness campaign to be a misfire, akin to running a smoking ad alongside a story about smoking-induced lung cancer or a Coke ad alongside a story about Crystal Pepsi coming back.
    • krapp 10y ago
      Gun violence is the best recruitment tool the NRA has. When someone shoots up a school in the US, NRA membership goes up (as do gun sales.)
      • jonnycoder 10y ago
        No, democrats using a shooting event to blame guns and call for bans and stricter gun control causes gun sales and membership to go up. Obama has been the best gun salesman for the United States ever.
        • krapp 10y ago
          You're just repeating my point, but applying a predictable anti-liberal bias. >Obama has been the best gun salesman for the United States ever. Because of all the extremist gun control legislation he passed? No, wait.. people just believed Obama was coming for their guns but he never actually did that. It's almost as if people have been trained to respond to gun violence by supporting the NRA and buying guns ... in some sort of Pavlovian response. But I can't imagine what organization or industry could possibly have spent decades and millions of dollars in political capital engineering such a virtuous cycle for themselves.
• marcrosoft 10y ago
  I only see this as a problem if Snapchat put NRA ads up for free just to extort money or vice versa.
  • deong 10y ago
    I don't think it would have to be free. If they specifically reached out to the NRA to initiate the process, I'd call that pretty gross, whether or not they gave them a break on pricing.
    • marcrosoft 10y ago
      > I'd call that pretty gross Just to be clear, if roles were reversed and the NRA advertised you would _not_ want Everytown to have ad placement as a rebuttal or do you just find it gross because you disagree at a political/personal level?
      • kenjackson 10y ago
        The issue I have is less the rebuttal, but rather the blackmail. They shouldn't reach out to one organization as an attempt to extort more money from another, especially when they are non profits. That goes both ways.
      • deong 10y ago
        If I'm your customer, I don't want to feel like you're going to devote time and resources to finding the optimal way to fuck me over if I don't cough up more money. That sentiment is completely independent of the editorial content we're talking about.
• jlewis7272 10y ago
  Too bad they didn't reach out to the NRA for comment.
  • daenney 10y ago
    What would that have added to the article? The issue seems to be between Snap and Everytown. NRA ads just happen to be the thing they're disagreeing over but it could've been pandas.
    • vanattab 10y ago
      I am pretty sure if the email had read "a panda petting zoo might advertise during the campaign" this article would never have been written. The only reason this is controversial at all is because it involves the NRA. The article repeatedly mentions the NRA and leaves it as an open question if the NR A was interested in running ads. Requesting comment from the NRA would be appropriate in my opinion.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • iaw 10y ago
    What do you expect that the NRA would say that would be of interest?
    • bmelton 10y ago
      "Yes, Snapchat reached out to us for a particularly good ad spot at a discounted price" would be highly interesting. "Snapchat? Do they accept advertising?" would be quite illuminating as to the situation at hand. The NRA is either a bogeyman posited by Snapchat as a hook for the hard sell, or they're an unwitting co-conspirator, or they're just a buzzword to grease the skids on this article. It would be informative to know which, and if the news is supposed to inform, then I can't see how there's any harm in reaching out.
• kbenson 10y ago
  I have to wonder how much this was intentional and how much was very poor communication. My initial response was that it's a horrible shakedown, but on reflection, I wonder if it really was just Saliterman acting in both Everytown's and his own best interest. If it's a common tactic for the NRA to advertise where possible during anti-gun media, and if it's something Snapchat does not involve itself in mediating for journalistic purposes, then it's entirely possible the team that offered Everytown the free media deal inadvertently set them up to have the NRA run messages during their event, and Saliterman was trying to come across as "hey, I would have advised you against this for this exact reason, as the NRA is trying to get in on your ad spots and that's not something we can really prevent." How you interpret it is probably highly dependent on your opinions of the companies involved as well as how it is presented here. I only wonder because it seems like it's in vogue to call out bad behavior of tech companies right now, and that undoubtedly leads to at least some articles that purposefully misinterpret events to convey that story. To be clear, this story certainly makes it sound like a shakedown, and it very well may be. I have no idea if that's what happened here, and I doubt at this point we'll ever know know that it's in the realm of PR spin for damage control, but given that both parties refused to comment, I think chances are high that we're getting the author's assumptions rather than something reasonably close to the truth, whatever that may be.
  • willvarfar 10y ago
    > as the NRA is trying to get in on your ad spots and that's not something we can really prevent. Eh, surely snapchat can prevent it?
    • kbenson 10y ago
      I mean division and policy wise. I'm sure most media organizations vet certain ads during certain broadcasts to prevent issues like this, but I also think that's something they may have learned the hard way. That there's a separation between divisions and one is prevented from interfering with the other in certain ways that are too rigid isn't super hard for me to believe, but neither is someone playing up that rigidity to their own benefit. Personally, I think the most likely scenario is a little of both. Policies existed, but management would obviously have stepped in if they were alerted, but someone used the policies for personal gain within the company by quoting them and figured they could fall back on them if called out on it by management. If that's the case, the bad PR this may result in may mean that protection is moot. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as Saliterman's actions may have been poorly thought out, and traded a small short-term company (and personal) gain for a much greater longer-term risk (which we might be seeing now).
• brilliantcode 10y ago
  Another reason why Snapchat might be so stingy-there long term prospect is severely limited. IPO will increases the exit valuation when Snapchat inevitably fizzles and gets bought out by a tech giant with actual positive net profit.
• smsm42 10y ago
  Looks like a combination of bad team communications (one team tries to sell service, another offers essentially the same for free) and even worse attempt to rescue the sale by FUDing the client ("if you go with free option, we might run competitor's ads inside your content!"). I hope that's not a routine way for them to work, because that would be rather stinky practice.
  • hluska 10y ago
    I don't think that you understand. Advertising and editorial cannot communicate in trustworthy media outlets.
    • smsm42 10y ago
      I think there's different ways of communicating. Trying to hard sell the same service other team offers for free looks stupid, and I don't think sales team being aware of the editing team's actions and behaving in a smarter way would not hurt the trustworthiness. It's not like this "if you don't pay us, we'll run your competitors ads inside your content" snafu did wonders to the trustworthiness.
      • hluska 10y ago
        Great response - that's one of the classic arguments against having a wall in between ad sales and editorial. And, for what it's worth, I agree with you. Editorial staff would reply, "Okay, in that situation, it might be okay. But what happens if we want to run a well researched/sourced story that is highly critical of one of our biggest advertisers?" Their fear would be that if there is too much communication between advertising and editorial, advertising would use its control over revenue to hurt editorial independence. And, then ad sales people tend to reply, "Well, if you won't give us the chance to kill a story, it is better if we don't even know about it. That way, when the person who I have sold ads to calls me up yelling, I can truthfully say that I didn't know because there is a wall between advertising and editorial." In other words, the wall between advertising and editorial mostly sucks for both sides, but it's better than any alternative. It preserves editorial independence while giving sales people the chance to save relationships (in anticipation of their next job).
• zeveb 10y ago
  I wonder if they also try to get the NRA to pay so that Everytown for Gun Safety ads don't appear. This actually seems like a decent way for social media companies to make money, although it sure does feel smarmy. (as an aside, Everytown for Gun Safety is not actually a gun-safety charity: it's an anti-gun organisation)
  • CodeWriter23 10y ago
    Actually, it seems they wanted the NRA to fund the editorial content being given freely to Everytown.
    • LyndsySimon 10y ago
      I didn't get that from the article, but it would make sense. The NRA has long-standing and well-funded firearms safety programs, ranging from training for adults to the "Eddie Eagle" program for kids. Everytown's budget for political contributions last year was about 1/3 of the NRAs, but the the overall organization budgets are vast different - Wikipedia shows the NRA having $348m in revenue in 2013, while Everytown brought in $4.9m in 2012. From a purely financial perspective, Snap should be prioritizing the NRA's business over Everytown's.
      • CodeWriter23 10y ago
        When an ad agent solicits an advertiser, they literally are asking the advertiser to pay for the production. That's how ads and productions work.
• whack 10y ago
  To be honest, this is standard operating practice for almost every advertising venue. If you work at Amazon and want to show Amazon ads at the top of the page, whenever a user searches for eBay, Google will happily let Amazon do that. If eBay wants to prevent it, they need to pay money go secure the advertising spot on "eBay" search results. Ditto for Windows/Mac, BMW/Mercedes, etc etc. At its foundation, advertising spots are content-agnostic. Anyone is able to buy advertising slots on any page, and as long as everyone follows the rules, whoever has the best bid*click-through-rate will win. And to be honest, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to run a business that's funded almost entirely by advertising revenues.
  • ma2rten 10y ago
    However, on Google bids are adjusted based on relevance to the search query. This means eBay has to pay less than Amazon for the same ad slot.
    • gravypod 10y ago
      Is an argument's counter argument not relevant subject matter?
      • ma2rten 10y ago
        Maybe, but if you search for Amazon you probably don't want to see the eBay site.
    • Brushfire 10y ago
      Not exactly. Google orders and displays advertisements based on expected value (to Google). Then the winner of the slot pays the lowest market-winning price. Overly simplistic example: eBay bids $1 max and Amazon bids $2 max. People searching for eBay have a 10% probability of clicking on an eBay ad and a 2% probability of clicking on an Amazon ad. Expected value to google: Ebay - $1 * 10% = $0.10 EV max Amazon - $2 * 2% = $0.04 EV max Ebay is displayed even with a lower bid because the expected value of the display is higher. The bid is never adjusted -- eBay is specific about its bid or its maximum bid and the market of expected value decides who is shown. Amazon could just as easily bid $5.01 and show up. And when the ad is clicked, if Amazon is the only bidder at $2, then Ebay would pay $.50 for that click because that is the lowest bid that wins the position using the EV. To apply this to the Snapchat Conversation -- One might expect if Snapchat operated this way, then its probably fair to assume that EveryTown would have had a much higher relevancy score than NRA, so should have been able to win the campaign for much lower $$. But in paid placement like this, everyone is paying for placement not for performance. It is not an EV market. Hence the dilemma.
• thinkloop 10y ago
  An additional nuance here is big guy vs. little guy. If this was Coke vs. Pepsi where either could afford buying up the ad spots, it wouldn't be a big deal.
  • wl 10y ago
    Everytown is bankrolled by Michael Bloomberg. I'd hardly call them the little guy.
    • thinkloop 10y ago
      They said they couldn't afford the $150k.
      • Alupis 10y ago
        > They said they couldn't afford the $150k. It's likely more accurate to say they didn't want to afford the $150k.
• audeyisaacs 10y ago
  I really don't see the issue here. There's no reason that Snapchat should voluntarily censor ads on that story at their own financial loss.
  • ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    Uhm, they should restrict the ads embedded in that story in order to convince that partner to contribute content? Like, if a LGBT organization wanted to give a television network the rights to air an Orlando Shooting documentary on the condition that they don't sell ads for conversion therapy in the middle, that's kind of their right to make that sort of offer. It's a very short distance from making those demands to the distribution side preemptively seeking out those sorts of deals.
  • astrodust 10y ago
    "I don't see the issue here. There's no reason that Twitter should voluntarily suspend abusive users from their system and reduce their advertising revenue." The bigger picture, that's why. Not tomorrow's quarterly results.
• mywittyname 10y ago
  Companies opt-out of advertising on shows or events that revolve around programming they don't feel aligns with their company values. So, when I see the NRA opting into advertising for this event, I see it as sponsorship and support of the message. If I saw an Exxon Mobile commercial during a climate change documentary, I would take that as tacit support of the subject. Now, obviously I'm wrong. So can someone explain why this advertising is so valuable to the NRA? I guess it's just trolling.
  • dave5104 10y ago
    It's probably valuable since they see it as a potential avenue to sway opinions of those who may be closer to the fence between anti-gun and for guns.
  • LyndsySimon 10y ago
    > So can someone explain why this advertising is so valuable to the NRA? As far as I can tell, the NRA isn't even involved here.
• lostphilosopher 10y ago
  Hmm, other than a communication blunder I don't see the foul here? I don't know how Snapchat advertising works internally, but if the NRA is a known purchaser of advertising, and can choose to target its ads in specific content segments it would seem like Everytown might want to be warned that leaving their ad segments unclaimed means the NRA claiming them is a possibility. Even if the ads get assigned randomly or through some sort of automated process you'd still think a good client relationship manager would want to give his or her (prospective) client a heads up that an NRA ad in their time slot is possible, no? Imagine if he had said nothing, and then the NRA _did_ run ads in the Everytown slot? Would that have been better? If I was Everytown I'd be angry at Snapchat for not warning me that this was a possibility. As far as I can tell, Saliterman did his job, his job just happens to have intersected with an emotional flash point, and is by nature manipulative. Now, how someone got to his professional level without knowing how to handle this conversation more tactfully is beyond me. And further if he was trying to convince them this was a possibility when it _wasn't_, or some other nefarious ploy then sure - let's jump on the outrage bandwagon, but from that article? Nothing to see here.
  • anigbrowl 10y ago
    Editorial is supposed never to communicate with advertising so that the latter can't influence the former.
• gizmo 10y ago
  According to their Form 990, Everytown for Gun Safety spends 5.5 million a year on lobbying, legal, and accounting fees. Their advertising budget is another 7 million. They spend 2 million a year on travel. Their top executive earns $350,000. Honestly, they seem to be a pretty well funded charity. I don't think SNAP was in the wrong here. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/208802884 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/208...
  • MrMember 10y ago
    They are extremely well funded, it's the personal pet project of Michael Bloomberg.
  • iaw 10y ago
    2.1% of your budget for a single campaign of that size does seem like a reasonable tradeoff.
    • hluska 10y ago
      What if it wasn't about the money? I wouldn't buy an ad alongside editorial content about my brand. Savvy media consumers tend to see that and think that the editorial content is actually paid content.
      • anonfunction 10y ago
        It is telling that they declined both the free editorial and any advertising.
        • hluska 10y ago
          Telling of what?? An intelligent brand manager has to weigh the positives and negatives of paid and earned media. In this case, in light of Saliterman's email, a brand manager would weigh the (seemingly high) possibility that the NRA would advertise alongside fearful messages from grieving families. Since Everytown knew that this was a possibility, the advertising alongside the editorial had the capacity to damage the brand and (perhaps more importantly) cost jobs.
• edw 10y ago
  The headline oversells the story in a way that makes its overselling of the story completely deniable. Reminds me of something… Oh yeah—of the actual behavior the story describes. Is this a postmodern meta-storytelling piece?
• sauronlord 10y ago
  What is the issue here? Seems perfectly reasonable to me. If I post an video on Youtube for my spaghetti event. And it has reach, then of course other spaghetti vendors may want to run ads on it if they pay up. Slow news day?
  • calibraxis 10y ago
    For one thing, the ad department threatened: "We are also talking to the NRA about running ads within the story."
• averagewall 10y ago
  Would people have the same complaints if it was the other way around? Snapchat reached out to the NRA and offered a free Live Story as partnership for Gun Appreciation Day. Another division then threatened the NRA that it could run anti-gun ads during the NRA's free Live Story. If the complaints would be different, then it's just your political bias. Some people think the NRA is important and its message is being harmed by groups like Everytown. In that case, why not focus on the heart of the issue which is "Snapchat allows NRA ads but I don't like guns".
  • inlined 10y ago
    I think there's a perceived difference with non profits. E.g. I enjoy alcohol but would still feel the same way if this happened with MADD vs Jonny Walker
    • imsofuture 10y ago
      The NRA doesn't sell guns. pre-emptive edit in case someone finds some place where this isn't true: I mean generally. They are not a gun manufacturer or seller generally.
      • komali2 10y ago
        Furthermore, the NRA is pro-gun safety. I can't speak for the NRA, but myself and other members will be wearing orange on June 2nd. It's not like the NRA is going to run a "BUY MORE GUNS!" advertisement... it'll likely be something tasteful. Then again, I have been disappointed by the NRA's taste in the past.
        • npunt 10y ago
          The NRA has lobbied to block federally funded scientific research on gun violence and safety[1], so I wouldn't say they're pro gun safety, at a macro level at least. [1] http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-gun-research-funding-20160614-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-gun-re...
• Jedd 10y ago
  Why is a company the size of Snapchat not using a CRM so that their various divisions can't step on each other's toes like this? Apart from the highly dubious ethics being exhibited, it suggests it's a surprisingly unsophisticated organisation.
  • throewai 10y ago
    So that's what CRM means.
• abalone 10y ago
  Saliterman was a former spokesperson for George W. Bush, by the way.[1] I'm shocked. This was absolutely an unprofessional move and not simple targeted selling. The story would not have been as attractive a target for the NRA without Everytown's cooperation in the first place. So now that Snapchat's roped them in, to maintain the integrity of their story they need to pay up? This guy put his division ahead of Snapchat's reputation as a company. [1] http://www.potomacflacks.com/pf/2011/09/former-bush-spokesman-saliterman-departs-bloomberg-lp-in-nyc-for-google-in-dc.html http://www.potomacflacks.com/pf/2011/09/former-bush-spokesma...
• elastic_church 10y ago
  The timing of this is more interesting than the fairly standard advertising practices itself. I would say this is pretty bullish for Snap since they have leverage over the organizations founded by movers and shakers!
• mcculley 10y ago
  This is a perfect example of why a firewall between editorial and advertising departments in a news organization is not sufficient. I would really like to see a subscription only news service exist that doesn't take any advertising dollars. It would make very clear that it serves the readership, not advertisers. Alas, I don't think enough people are willing to pay what it would take and media companies are too risk averse to even attempt it.
  • kolokolo 10y ago
    How would you ensure that the news service doesn't accept side-channel donations for the "right" news? How would you ensure that the news service doesn't keep telling the subscribers what they want to hear?
    • mcculley 10y ago
      The news service could have an independent accountant affirm that all revenue comes from subscribers. As for bias, this is not something I'm suggesting would be prevented. I'm only suggesting it would be a news organization incentivized to serve the readership and not advertisers.
  • fletchowns 10y ago
    What about organizations like NPR and PBS? It seems like that is as close as you can get to a subscription only news service that doesn't take advertising dollars. Their news reporting is really top notch. Technically it's not a subscription, it's a donation. And technically they do make money with underwriting but I think user contributions make up the vast majority of their funding.
    • mcculley 10y ago
      That's a good point. I was really only thinking of how for-profit news organizations could reorient themselves to serve their readership. There's no reason such organizations need to have be for-profit.
    • dredmorbius 10y ago
• tn13 10y ago
  What is wrong with this ? I love NRA and I think they are doing a wonderful job of protecting our rights. If anyone want s to compete with them they should obviously pay.
  • ClassyJacket 10y ago
    I'm consistently amazed by how often I see Americans brag about their "right" to shoot up a school. As someone from another country it's such an absurd thing to see that it still surprises me. Such a crazy cognitive dissonance. What about your right to have a bomb? Or a biological weapon? Such an actively harmful hill to die on.
    • paulajohnson 10y ago
      I've often wondered how "the right to keep and bear arms" can be abridged for, e.g. a shoulder-launched surface-air missile, but not for a hand gun or rifle. Surely both are "arms" within the meaning understood at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified. US courts have tried to get around this by finding a right to self defense, and finding that preventing someone from carrying a handgun infringes this right, but preventing them from carrying a missile does not. However this makes no sense: if someone points a gun at you then its already too late to pull your own gun out and shoot them, so guns are only useful for self defense against criminals who don't have guns. Its true that there are some extremely narrow circumstances in which a legal gun carried by a bystander can be used to stop a gun crime, but only in a tiny fraction of cases.
      • madengr 10y ago
        One should be able to own & buy a shoulder launched missile. In fact you can (at least a bazooka; non-guided). It's destructive device, and requires a $200 tax stamp. It's perfectly legal to own hand grenades too.
    • travisby 10y ago
      You should report whoever brags about _their right to shoot up a school._ to your local law enforcement. Unless that's disingenuous of what they actually "brag" about. Are they just bragging about having freedom to protect themselves? Freedom to own an inanimate object?
• anonfunction 10y ago
  As soon as the head of political sales found out about the editorial he stated: > We are also talking to the NRA about running ads within the story. Later in the article it says that the NRA advertised on Snapchat in 2015, have they since? Or was it that now we will contacting the NRA to tell them it's a good idea to advertise during your editorial. Seeing the comments it looks like the majority doesn't see a problem with this because the NRA is free to do advertising. To me it's just bad business to be featuring a good cause as a so-called partner and then extorting them like this. It certainly also seems like that would be a negative experience for the viewers and the partner. In the end Snapchat lost both an editorial partner with a group that resonates with their target demographics and any potential advertising revenue from the event.
• andrewclunn 10y ago
  Well I for one was bothered to find out that snapchat would give away ads through their news decision to such a political advocacy group.
• libeclipse 10y ago
  This title is very clickbaity, and the first half of the article does a very poor job of communicating what's really going on. Snapchat has no obligation to favour one side of the gun reform debate over the other. But the way this article frames it, they're actively blackmailing the gun-reform side.
• Girlang 10y ago
  I don't get it. Snapchat is a business. Why should one organization be favored over another? Neither one is a "charity", though their non-lobbying arms may be structured as a non-profit.
• ddingus 10y ago
  Click the shit out of them. Happy times.
• microcolonel 10y ago
  A corporation wants to use another corporation's services to distribute content, but does not want to compensate them in any way, expects that the facilitating corporation will prevent a charitable organization from paying them to reach out to the same audience. Everytown for Gun Safety is a private lobbying effort funded by Michael Bloomberg, and believes that they can use a company's service for free while censoring paid ads from a true community charitable organization which is funded primarily by membership dues. Mic deliberately characterizes Everytown for Gun Safety as a "gun safety charity", and avoids using similar language to describe NRA, a registered charitable organization with a considerable number of members. Are they trying to say that the NRA doesn't care about gun safety? I don't really see why Snap Inc. should have to promote Michael Bloomberg's fantasies for no pay, and prevent the voice of an established charitable institution from being included alongside it through the standard advertising process.
• apapli 10y ago
  It seems we are in the middle of an unfortunate trend when industry disruptors also seem to be conveniently "disrupting" (ie ignoring) established ethics at the same time.
• aurizon 10y ago
  How double dumb, gun people do not want ads targeted to those that will not buy and those that do not want to buy guns do not want the ads. A waste AND a shakedown. In fact the anti gun lobby should tell their members to click on all these ads (or get a 'clickbot to do it) since that will burn gun company cash for zero gains
• paulajohnson 10y ago
  I can't help thinking that the anti-gun group could exploit this by specifically running content that attacks NRA advertising tropes, thereby turning the NRA ads into an exercise in deconstructing NRA propaganda.
• valuearb 10y ago
  What a great salesman.