8 ms·

The next fleet of Breitbarts is already raking in ad dollars

30 points by niviachanta 6y ago

PixyMisa 6y ago
They need to understand that to anyone right of center, this comes across as a conspiracy to silence all dissent. No matter what you think of Steve Bannon (and even most conservatives don't think highly of him), that's a very bad look.
- newacct583 6y ago
  How do we square that, then. You want it to be OK to call for a public servant to be beheaded? (The Bannon case). You want it to be OK to just print lies (c.f. most of Newsmax and a lot of Breitbart)? You need to understand that to anyone left of center, your demand seems to be a conspiracy to be wrong at will. Isn't that likewise a "bad look"? What's your solution?
  - amadeuspagel 6y ago
    > You want it to be OK What the fuck does this mean? I want people to be free to express themselves, and yes, that includes being free to earn money. I do not want a few corporations deciding what people are allowed to say on the internet, or even who is able to earn a living on the internet.
    - mbgerring 6y ago
      Just to be clear here: You're saying you don't personally have a problem with people making money from publishing specific and credible threats of violence (which is the case discussed in the original post), or from publishing intentional misinformation with real-world partisan political goals. It also sounds like you don't support the ability of people who purchase ads to have any control over whether their money funds publishers of the type described above. Do I have that right?
      - amadeuspagel 6y ago
        If a threat of violence really is specific and credible, clearly the FBI should get involved, and the person responsible should get arrested. If anyone really thought of a threat of violence as specific and credible, that's what they would call for, not for advertisers to demonetize the person making the threat.
      - PixyMisa 6y ago
        It was not specific, not credible, and not a threat. The United Sates has never once beheaded anyone.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - Devils-Avocado 6y ago
    Meanwhile there is literal beheading going on in France - but mainstream media is completely silent on topics like immigration. The general dissatisfaction with mass immigration in the USA and Europe, and the failure of the mainstream media to acknowledge this, is what is fueling the rise of Breitbarts.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      Bannon didn't call for Fauci to be beheaded becuase of immigration... Fauci does disease response for the NIH.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    So elimination of free speech? Russia used to have a joke department to ensure all jokes were politically correct. Worked with some Russians who kept going on about how serious a matter it was.
  - PixyMisa 6y ago
    Bannon was talking of "heads on pikes", which is obviously metaphorical. So, yes, that's OK. Even if he's completely wrong in his claims of fact, we shouldn't be expelling people from society over their choice of historical allusion.
    - krapp 6y ago
      No one is being expelled from society.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      The quote itself was literally not a metaphor: “Now I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone – time to stop playing games.” Now, you can argue that this was irony, sure. In the real world, if Bannon isn't delusional, we don't do that and it won't happen. But it's not a metaphor. The word "actually" tells you that right at the start. He is saying, literally, what he would like to do. And that's awful, and shameful, and if anyone who wasn't on your team said it you'd be screaming (c.f. Kathy Griffin and the severed head -- which was a metaphor!).
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Maybe we should stop caring. We’re in “boy who cried wolf” territory here, where Gmail’s spam filters are even part of the liberal conspiracy because a Congressman’s email went to the junk folder. https://mashable.com/article/steube-gmail-spam-question/ https://mashable.com/article/steube-gmail-spam-question/
  - thelastwave 6y ago
    You don't have to call it a conspiracy to see that things are broken. The defense of broken things that "they could be even more broken" somehow isn't working. Also, the Internet seems to have made a lot of people more thin skinned, and angry at thought provoking statements. (Did Cerf, Kleinrock et al. foresee they were laying the ground work for a reactive "venting" machine?) The real question for hn (IMO) is whether these are problems that can be solved with technology.
- vkou 6y ago
  Prominent conservatives frequently criticize parts of the left for its constant claims of persecution, and its intense competition in 'victimhood olympics'. Perhaps we should throw that same playbook at organizations like Breitbart.
- majormajor 6y ago
  The American right - and especially the religious wing of it - has been trying to silence those who disagree for generations, so their dislike at receiving some of the same treatment is not particularly compelling. Consider the origins of the term "heresy"... Their problem here is that it worked, and they won. So now people are trying to fight back by borrowing parts of the playbook. Victim of their own success by dirty tricks.
newacct583 6y ago
The article is about how ad vendors are allowing for people monentize disinformation, but that seems to me to be entirely the wrong take. Breitbart et. al. are grifters. The disinformation economy is real and vibrant, and they're just catching some of the extra cash. For every Breitbart or Newsmax link shared, there are seven or whatever to a blog or PAC or campaign that is not monetized. At this point I think the game is lost. I mean... we just had an election which came out (absent higher turnout) more or less exactly like the last one, to within a percent or two. And half the country genuinely believes it was stolen by fraud to the tune of hundreds of thousands of ballots across at least four states. How do you come back from that? I don't think we do. I just don't know what the endpoint is going to be yet. But disinformation is no longer just competing with real facts, it's won the war.
- nickff 6y ago
  I agree with your take, but I think you understated the case. Before the 2016 election, the Republican partisans insisted that fraud and malfeasance were likely, and the Democratic ones said it was impossible. From 2016-2020, the Democratic partisans insisted that there had been some sort of fraud or malfeasance, and the Republicans insisted that it was impossible. By the end of 2020, we're back where we were in the middle of 2016, where the Republican partisans insist that fraud and malfeasance were likely, and the Democratic ones say it was impossible. And those are the so-called 'mainstreams' of the respective parties! The situation is part Orwellian, and part real-life satire.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    One side wants a photo Id to vote. A basic fraud prevention technique. Other side opposes it strongly. Can’t argue about fraud if one won’t even take a basic precaution.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Photo ID at the poll is not a "basic precaution" it is an intentional vote suppression tactic. Many people lack government IDs and a significant number of those lack them because the racist regimes into which they were born did not bother documenting their birth.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
shitgoose 6y ago
And what will be the basis for the payment processors to censor the content? Their revolutionary conscience? Shall we have Left payment processors and Right payment processors? Each with its own definition of "hate" and "misinformation"? Does anybody see how retarded things became? This is the direct attack on free speech, and people are cheering?!
- thelastwave 6y ago
  Enjoy your downvotes, we don't need that kind of "perspective" around here.
- dwd 6y ago
  I think the bar should be what it is. When published content could result in a credible threat to someone's safety or life then there's an issue. In Bannon's case while he didn't directly call for beheading Fauci his comments certainly rose to the level of "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" Lauding Tudor England and the King's ability to call for the beheading of anyone who crosses him (which should be anathema to any patriotic American), basically says the above. And according to history Thomas Becket was murdered by four knights who crossed the English channel to rid the King of his meddlesome priest. As far as monetising fear and anxiety, individuals have been doing that for years whether fire & brimstone preachers or the Alex Jones of the world who have a product to help you avoid some conspiracy he's promoted.
- klyrs 6y ago
  > And what will be the basis for the payment processors to censor the content? The first amendment. Specifically, the freedom of association. > Shall we have Left payment processors and Right payment processors? Sounds possible. What about Leftcoin and Rightcoin?
grezql 6y ago
This article spreads misinformation about Bannon. He said «heads should be on spike» which means people should be sacked. This article excaggerates it as «beheading». What a nasty trick to fool the readers
- altdatathrow 6y ago
  > This article spreads misinformation about Bannon. He said «heads should be on spike» which means people should be sacked. This article excaggerates it as «beheading». What a nasty trick to fool the readers I know HN looks down on this but I want to you to know you're a fucking piece of shit for defending that sort of rhetoric and trying to downplay it so "oh he was just kidding" Fuck you man.
  - dang 6y ago
    You can't attack another user like this, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. We ban accounts that do it, so please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Edit: Similar things have popped up in your other comments (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24954162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24954162) – that's not what we're going for here. If you'd lease review the guidelines and take their spirit to heart, we'd appreciate it.
- grezql 6y ago
  Why am I getting abused?? Im even a «liberal» voter, but i stand up against misinformation against my worst enemy
  - MrZongle2 6y ago
    Because you are likely a classic liberal. We live in a time where those who claim to be conservative or liberal are anything but.
    - stouset 6y ago
Pils 6y ago
> They don’t want to make difficult decisions. One inventory manager told us that the only research they did before approving conspiracy theory website The Epoch Times for their inventory was to check out the All Sides media bias chart. This changes my view from "media bias websites are dumb and shouldn't be taken seriously" to "media bias websites are dumb and shouldn't be taken seriously, but are also potentially useful for reputation laundering." I have played around with the idea of the "minimum viable journalism," given what private equity has done with Sports Illustrated. Generate 1000 word pieces via MTurk or GPT-3, host on Netlify, cheap DNS name, buy traffic on Fiverr. Would $50/mo be enough to be rated on one of these sites? Get on publisher ad exchanges?
deft 6y ago
I think its well past time to investigate why people are so drawn to this content, why they believe it wholeheartedly and where the money funding it comes from. I think it goes much deeper than internet ad dollars personally. The more important questions are why people are consuming what amounts to fake news and conspiratorial worldviews. Trust in institutions is at an all-time low, censorship and surveillance are at all time highs leading people to seek the outsiders and outlets that agree and tell them "They are lying. They hate your guts and want to destroy everything you love". This basic message resonates as true for so many because everything around them is being destroyed and no one (else) is even offering to fix it. This has nothing to do with being right-wing IMO, in fact I think right wing outlets are the only ones doing this because the American government crushed the far left so thoroughly its impossible for them to seek funding to build any such movement.
originalvichy 6y ago
This was the original ”fake news”. News mills in places like North Macedonia creating clickbait fake news for ad clicks. Breitbart’s are more sophisticated. They are whitewashing lies by having a look of authenticity. Doesn’t help that your president regularly links to it. He might have lost the election but he took a big win in the information war. American journalism is fighting for its dear life because you elected a person who is immune to facts. Now it’s a party that’s immune to it. Soon it’s the voters.
- PixyMisa 6y ago
  Trump isn't the cause of the problem with American journalism; at most he's a symptom. They American news media has been eating its own tail for decades.
  - mam2 6y ago
    Yes and they are not exactly objective either.. when democrats say theres russian collusion there is full media coverage of rumours and gossip. When trump say there is fraud or bidens son has stuff in ukraine its "fake news" and its tweet are censored. There is a so high level of despising the people who voted for trump... You guys in america got what you deserved..
    - dang 6y ago
      If you can't or won't stop posting political flamebait to HN, we are going to have to ban your account. It's not what this site is for, and we've asked you more than once already. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - mam2 6y ago
        How on earth is this flamebait ? The truth is that the double standards of the american media is an insult to the entire trump vote base and thats why they vote for him. This is 100% objective from a french guy, i would vote bernie sanders if I was american. The extreme right in my country goes up for the exact same reason and people who think they are so smart by hating trump are arrogant and unable to see it's just tribalism from both side. How can twitter think they have the right to hide some claims from one camp and not from the other when at the end of the day no one really has any fact at hand ? I support the left ideas but they have no way to win if they dont have the regular people on their side or worse, despise them.
onecommentman 6y ago
Why is this conversation on HN? Just because there were postings on election results doesn’t mean HN needs to be open to this sort of babble on a regular basis. HN has been getting more postings on the political side of media, and that just lets in the shills, trolls, pundits, and the like. A posting with a title like “the next fleet of Breitbarts” is only going to lead to comments that are a waste of good photons and too much work for moderators. For their own sanity, the moderators need to triage more ruthlessly on political matters.

30 points by niviachanta 6y ago

They need to understand that to anyone right of center, this comes across as a conspiracy to silence all dissent. No matter what you think of Steve Bannon (and even most conservatives don't think highly of him), that's a very bad look.

newacct583 6y ago
How do we square that, then. You want it to be OK to call for a public servant to be beheaded? (The Bannon case). You want it to be OK to just print lies (c.f. most of Newsmax and a lot of Breitbart)? You need to understand that to anyone left of center, your demand seems to be a conspiracy to be wrong at will. Isn't that likewise a "bad look"? What's your solution?
- amadeuspagel 6y ago
  > You want it to be OK What the fuck does this mean? I want people to be free to express themselves, and yes, that includes being free to earn money. I do not want a few corporations deciding what people are allowed to say on the internet, or even who is able to earn a living on the internet.
  - mbgerring 6y ago
    Just to be clear here: You're saying you don't personally have a problem with people making money from publishing specific and credible threats of violence (which is the case discussed in the original post), or from publishing intentional misinformation with real-world partisan political goals. It also sounds like you don't support the ability of people who purchase ads to have any control over whether their money funds publishers of the type described above. Do I have that right?
    - amadeuspagel 6y ago
      If a threat of violence really is specific and credible, clearly the FBI should get involved, and the person responsible should get arrested. If anyone really thought of a threat of violence as specific and credible, that's what they would call for, not for advertisers to demonetize the person making the threat.
    - PixyMisa 6y ago
      It was not specific, not credible, and not a threat. The United Sates has never once beheaded anyone.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- Devils-Avocado 6y ago
  Meanwhile there is literal beheading going on in France - but mainstream media is completely silent on topics like immigration. The general dissatisfaction with mass immigration in the USA and Europe, and the failure of the mainstream media to acknowledge this, is what is fueling the rise of Breitbarts.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    Bannon didn't call for Fauci to be beheaded becuase of immigration... Fauci does disease response for the NIH.
- treeman79 6y ago
  So elimination of free speech? Russia used to have a joke department to ensure all jokes were politically correct. Worked with some Russians who kept going on about how serious a matter it was.
- PixyMisa 6y ago
  Bannon was talking of "heads on pikes", which is obviously metaphorical. So, yes, that's OK. Even if he's completely wrong in his claims of fact, we shouldn't be expelling people from society over their choice of historical allusion.
  - krapp 6y ago
    No one is being expelled from society.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    The quote itself was literally not a metaphor: “Now I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone – time to stop playing games.” Now, you can argue that this was irony, sure. In the real world, if Bannon isn't delusional, we don't do that and it won't happen. But it's not a metaphor. The word "actually" tells you that right at the start. He is saying, literally, what he would like to do. And that's awful, and shameful, and if anyone who wasn't on your team said it you'd be screaming (c.f. Kathy Griffin and the severed head -- which was a metaphor!).
ceejayoz 6y ago
Maybe we should stop caring. We’re in “boy who cried wolf” territory here, where Gmail’s spam filters are even part of the liberal conspiracy because a Congressman’s email went to the junk folder. https://mashable.com/article/steube-gmail-spam-question/ https://mashable.com/article/steube-gmail-spam-question/
- thelastwave 6y ago
  You don't have to call it a conspiracy to see that things are broken. The defense of broken things that "they could be even more broken" somehow isn't working. Also, the Internet seems to have made a lot of people more thin skinned, and angry at thought provoking statements. (Did Cerf, Kleinrock et al. foresee they were laying the ground work for a reactive "venting" machine?) The real question for hn (IMO) is whether these are problems that can be solved with technology.
vkou 6y ago
Prominent conservatives frequently criticize parts of the left for its constant claims of persecution, and its intense competition in 'victimhood olympics'. Perhaps we should throw that same playbook at organizations like Breitbart.
majormajor 6y ago
The American right - and especially the religious wing of it - has been trying to silence those who disagree for generations, so their dislike at receiving some of the same treatment is not particularly compelling. Consider the origins of the term "heresy"... Their problem here is that it worked, and they won. So now people are trying to fight back by borrowing parts of the playbook. Victim of their own success by dirty tricks.

newacct583 6y ago

The article is about how ad vendors are allowing for people monentize disinformation, but that seems to me to be entirely the wrong take. Breitbart et. al. are grifters. The disinformation economy is real and vibrant, and they're just catching some of the extra cash. For every Breitbart or Newsmax link shared, there are seven or whatever to a blog or PAC or campaign that is not monetized. At this point I think the game is lost. I mean... we just had an election which came out (absent higher turnout) more or less exactly like the last one, to within a percent or two. And half the country genuinely believes it was stolen by fraud to the tune of hundreds of thousands of ballots across at least four states. How do you come back from that? I don't think we do. I just don't know what the endpoint is going to be yet. But disinformation is no longer just competing with real facts, it's won the war.

nickff 6y ago
I agree with your take, but I think you understated the case. Before the 2016 election, the Republican partisans insisted that fraud and malfeasance were likely, and the Democratic ones said it was impossible. From 2016-2020, the Democratic partisans insisted that there had been some sort of fraud or malfeasance, and the Republicans insisted that it was impossible. By the end of 2020, we're back where we were in the middle of 2016, where the Republican partisans insist that fraud and malfeasance were likely, and the Democratic ones say it was impossible. And those are the so-called 'mainstreams' of the respective parties! The situation is part Orwellian, and part real-life satire.
- treeman79 6y ago
  One side wants a photo Id to vote. A basic fraud prevention technique. Other side opposes it strongly. Can’t argue about fraud if one won’t even take a basic precaution.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Photo ID at the poll is not a "basic precaution" it is an intentional vote suppression tactic. Many people lack government IDs and a significant number of those lack them because the racist regimes into which they were born did not bother documenting their birth.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

shitgoose 6y ago

And what will be the basis for the payment processors to censor the content? Their revolutionary conscience? Shall we have Left payment processors and Right payment processors? Each with its own definition of "hate" and "misinformation"? Does anybody see how retarded things became? This is the direct attack on free speech, and people are cheering?!

thelastwave 6y ago
Enjoy your downvotes, we don't need that kind of "perspective" around here.
dwd 6y ago
I think the bar should be what it is. When published content could result in a credible threat to someone's safety or life then there's an issue. In Bannon's case while he didn't directly call for beheading Fauci his comments certainly rose to the level of "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" Lauding Tudor England and the King's ability to call for the beheading of anyone who crosses him (which should be anathema to any patriotic American), basically says the above. And according to history Thomas Becket was murdered by four knights who crossed the English channel to rid the King of his meddlesome priest. As far as monetising fear and anxiety, individuals have been doing that for years whether fire & brimstone preachers or the Alex Jones of the world who have a product to help you avoid some conspiracy he's promoted.
klyrs 6y ago
> And what will be the basis for the payment processors to censor the content? The first amendment. Specifically, the freedom of association. > Shall we have Left payment processors and Right payment processors? Sounds possible. What about Leftcoin and Rightcoin?

grezql 6y ago

This article spreads misinformation about Bannon. He said «heads should be on spike» which means people should be sacked. This article excaggerates it as «beheading». What a nasty trick to fool the readers

altdatathrow 6y ago
> This article spreads misinformation about Bannon. He said «heads should be on spike» which means people should be sacked. This article excaggerates it as «beheading». What a nasty trick to fool the readers I know HN looks down on this but I want to you to know you're a fucking piece of shit for defending that sort of rhetoric and trying to downplay it so "oh he was just kidding" Fuck you man.
- dang 6y ago
  You can't attack another user like this, no matter how wrong they are or you feel they are. We ban accounts that do it, so please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Edit: Similar things have popped up in your other comments (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24954162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24954162) – that's not what we're going for here. If you'd lease review the guidelines and take their spirit to heart, we'd appreciate it.
grezql 6y ago
Why am I getting abused?? Im even a «liberal» voter, but i stand up against misinformation against my worst enemy
- MrZongle2 6y ago
  Because you are likely a classic liberal. We live in a time where those who claim to be conservative or liberal are anything but.
  - stouset 6y ago

Pils 6y ago

> They don’t want to make difficult decisions. One inventory manager told us that the only research they did before approving conspiracy theory website The Epoch Times for their inventory was to check out the All Sides media bias chart. This changes my view from "media bias websites are dumb and shouldn't be taken seriously" to "media bias websites are dumb and shouldn't be taken seriously, but are also potentially useful for reputation laundering." I have played around with the idea of the "minimum viable journalism," given what private equity has done with Sports Illustrated. Generate 1000 word pieces via MTurk or GPT-3, host on Netlify, cheap DNS name, buy traffic on Fiverr. Would $50/mo be enough to be rated on one of these sites? Get on publisher ad exchanges?

deft 6y ago

I think its well past time to investigate why people are so drawn to this content, why they believe it wholeheartedly and where the money funding it comes from. I think it goes much deeper than internet ad dollars personally. The more important questions are why people are consuming what amounts to fake news and conspiratorial worldviews. Trust in institutions is at an all-time low, censorship and surveillance are at all time highs leading people to seek the outsiders and outlets that agree and tell them "They are lying. They hate your guts and want to destroy everything you love". This basic message resonates as true for so many because everything around them is being destroyed and no one (else) is even offering to fix it. This has nothing to do with being right-wing IMO, in fact I think right wing outlets are the only ones doing this because the American government crushed the far left so thoroughly its impossible for them to seek funding to build any such movement.

originalvichy 6y ago

This was the original ”fake news”. News mills in places like North Macedonia creating clickbait fake news for ad clicks. Breitbart’s are more sophisticated. They are whitewashing lies by having a look of authenticity. Doesn’t help that your president regularly links to it. He might have lost the election but he took a big win in the information war. American journalism is fighting for its dear life because you elected a person who is immune to facts. Now it’s a party that’s immune to it. Soon it’s the voters.

PixyMisa 6y ago
Trump isn't the cause of the problem with American journalism; at most he's a symptom. They American news media has been eating its own tail for decades.
- mam2 6y ago
  Yes and they are not exactly objective either.. when democrats say theres russian collusion there is full media coverage of rumours and gossip. When trump say there is fraud or bidens son has stuff in ukraine its "fake news" and its tweet are censored. There is a so high level of despising the people who voted for trump... You guys in america got what you deserved..
  - dang 6y ago
    If you can't or won't stop posting political flamebait to HN, we are going to have to ban your account. It's not what this site is for, and we've asked you more than once already. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - mam2 6y ago
      How on earth is this flamebait ? The truth is that the double standards of the american media is an insult to the entire trump vote base and thats why they vote for him. This is 100% objective from a french guy, i would vote bernie sanders if I was american. The extreme right in my country goes up for the exact same reason and people who think they are so smart by hating trump are arrogant and unable to see it's just tribalism from both side. How can twitter think they have the right to hide some claims from one camp and not from the other when at the end of the day no one really has any fact at hand ? I support the left ideas but they have no way to win if they dont have the regular people on their side or worse, despise them.

onecommentman 6y ago

Why is this conversation on HN? Just because there were postings on election results doesn’t mean HN needs to be open to this sort of babble on a regular basis. HN has been getting more postings on the political side of media, and that just lets in the shills, trolls, pundits, and the like. A posting with a title like “the next fleet of Breitbarts” is only going to lead to comments that are a waste of good photons and too much work for moderators. For their own sanity, the moderators need to triage more ruthlessly on political matters.