The group, Global Alliance for Responsible Media, also known as GARM, is a voluntary ad-industry initiative run by the World Federation of Advertisers that aims to help brands avoid having their advertisements appear alongside illegal or harmful content. GARM confirmed it is still planning to defend itself in court.
The end of GARM marks a temporary victory for Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino, even though a judge hasn’t made a ruling yet.
The org’s mission was to tell advertisers when they’re advertising next to hate crimes. You really don’t want advertisers to make money from ads next to hate crimes, because that incentivizes people posting nazi shit on social media. And this org would prevent that. It’s not a bad thing.
Its disappearance won’t really matter much because it’s a paper fiction anyway, and there’ll be another one.
And Musk has even managed to do a couple of worthwhile things in his life as well. I don’t see why that means I should disregard every other terrible thing he has done, and will do.
Because that is your argument. That these gigantic advertising entities, who would destroy the world if it meant an extra 0.5% in their net revenue, are doing the world of service and we should be grateful for it.
I am not, fuck them. I hope all their key decision makers and Musk gather for settlement talks, and a meteor strikes square in the middle of the conference table.
Ok, fuck them. But shutting down this nonprofit organization doesn’t directly affect their bottom line. It may eventually have an indirect effect.
My point is that by shutting down, the only obvious direct effect is that advertisements are now more likely to appear adjacent to bullshit hate propaganda. This doesn’t substantially hurt the advertisers in a large way - it hurts people more because it elevates the visibility of hate speech. Why would you think that’s good? This does absolutely fuck all to stop advertising or advertisers.
No, you don’t understand.
The advertising entities, who definitely suck ass, would be MUCH WORSE and so would EVERYTHING ELSE if there wasn’t someone telling them “don’t put ads next to nazis”. It’s called harm reduction dude.
No, I understand.
Do you really think that if it wasn’t for their consortium, companies would think “you know what? I think we should run ads next to Nazis”.
Hint: No. They wouldn’t.
So let me get this straight: you hate ad companies and want to cast them all into the fire (a position I agree with, fwiw);
but you also think they are ethical enough and competent enough to self-police running against nazi shit.
What
But they would end up running ads next to them more often. There are a lot of shitty industry groups. This is like the most banal, inoffensive one to get shitty about.
I really think you’re missing the point here.
CNN is running a headline intentionally distorting the reality of what this group is. They’re making it sound like Musk destroyed the Humane Society.
They want people to feel pity for the world’s largest advertisers, or feel angry that Musk managed to slightly inconvenience them.
If you want to have a debate on the merits, you can’t have it in an environment like that.