Advertisers accused of demonetizing conservative sites
The House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether major advertisers ran afoul of antitrust laws by coordinating about which news outlets to blackball.
The committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), obtained documents from the World Federation of Advertisers that show how it implemented a strategy to prevent major advertisers from doing business with disfavored news outlets. The coordinated effort could have the effect of bankrupting news organizations that don’t get the stamp of approval.
“The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) through its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative may be acting inconsistent with U.S. antitrust laws and congressional intent by coordinating GARM members’ efforts to demonetize and eliminate disfavored content online,” Jordan wrote in March 27 letter demanding further documents from advertisers.
“Evidence the Committee has obtained suggests that GARM members, led by Steer Team members, are colluding to demonetize conservative platforms and voices. Further, this coordination does not always revolve around ‘brand safety’ and ‘harmful’ content as GARM publicly claims, but instead the desire to censor conservative and other views that GARM members disfavor,” Jordan added.
The letters indicate that documents obtained by the committee suggest that the group tried to blackball mainstream conservative news organizations, specifically asking for “communications referring or relating to conservative news outlets, including Fox News, Daily Wire, and Breitbart.”
The letters went to major corporations on GARM’s “steering committee” — Unilever, Procter & Gamble, GroupM, Diageo, and Mars — saying the documents “directly connect” the companies with such efforts. The documents in the active investigation have not been released to the public.
The letters seek communications from the companies “relating to the categorization, demonetization, or elimination of online speech.”
They also ask for communications discussing “changes to X following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company,” when many advertisers left the platform in protest of the left-wing Jack Dorsey being replaced by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
The probe suggests that the companies could be held individually responsible for the actions of the group they created, and that GARM may act in a cartel-like manner, even though many of its members are nominally competitors.
...
As a conservative, I do not waste much of my time on liberal sites. Polls tend to show that most Americans are more conservative and therefore it does not make much sense to demonitize conservative sites.
Comments
Post a Comment