Facebook stated on Friday that it’s testing new advertiser “topic exclusion controls” to address the concerns from marketers that their ads are appearing next to topics in Facebook’s News Feed that they consider bad for their brand.
Most advertisers on Facebook purchase ads through an automated bidding system. The proposed controls will help advertisers choose the types of stories they may want to bypass.
For example, an advertiser can select a topic, such as Crime and Tragedy, that they would want their ads to avoid, and the platform’s tech will try not to place that ad beside any stories related to those topics.
So far, Facebook says it plans to offer three topics: news and politics, social issues, and crime and tragedy. The company will continue to listen to advertisers during the test to learn what needs to be added or adjusted.
Some observers, however, worry that this will ultimately be manipulated for political purposes and advertisers will gravitate away from placing ads around news, particularly breaking news.
Facebook is part of The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which aims to improve “digital safety” by clamping down on “dangerous, hateful, disruptive and fake content online risks threatening our global community.”
In other words, by censoring conservative viewpoints.
The World Federation of Advertisers says of GARM:
The Global Alliance for Responsible Media was formed to identify specific collaborative actions, processes and protocols for protecting consumers and brands from safety issues. Alliance members will work collaboratively to identify actions that will better protect consumers online, working towards a media environment where hate speech, bullying and disinformation is challenged, where personal data is protected, and used responsibly when given, and where everyone is, especially children, better protected online. Alliance members acknowledge their collective power to significantly improve the health of the media ecosystem.
Twitter, Google/YouTube, and Verizon Media are among the platforms that are on board, as are a number of well-known advertisers such as Adidas, Bayer, BP, Danone, Diageo, General Mills, GSK Consumer Healthcare, LVMH, Mars, Mastercard, Mondelēz International, NBCUniversal, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Shell, Unilever, and Vodafone.
Facebook and its leadership have repeatedly shown themselves to be squarely on the side of Democrats. As The New American has previously reported, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckberberg spent half a billion dollars to increase voter turnout in Democrat strongholds.
Of this nearly half-billion-dollar sum, $350 million was given to the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), which “used the money to illegally inflate turnout in key Democratic swing states as part of this effort.”
According to the Amistad Project, of “the 17 cities and counties that have received the largest ‘grants’ from CTCL, totaling more than $51,000,000 combined, just under $300,000 was given” to Republican-leaning counties, meaning 99.4 percent of Zuckerberg’s grants went to maximizing turnout in blue counties.
The Amistad Project links the efforts of CTCL to former Barack Obama campaign manager and Zuckerberg-Chan initiative strategist David Plouffe, who wrote A Citizen’s Guide to Defeating Donald Trump.
The New American has also reported on the wide disparity in support for President Trump and Joe Biden among high-level executives at Facebook and Twitter. Donations for the former vice president totaled in the tens of thousands; in many cases, they donated the maximum federally allowed sum of $2,800.
By contrast, only two Facebook employees with “manager” or “director” in their title donated to President Trump’s campaign; no Twitter employees with those titles donated to the president.
Facebook has also announced its commitment to purging its platform of COVID-19 vaccine “conspiracy theories.”
“For example, we will remove false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips, or anything else that isn’t on the official vaccine ingredient list,” the company wrote in a blog post. “We will also remove conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines that we know today are false: like specific populations are being used without their consent to test the vaccine’s safety.”
And of course, there’s the fact that Facebook and other tech giants purged the president of the United States, Donald Trump.
Big Tech doesn’t even try to hide its bias anymore. They feel sufficiently empowered to openly use their platform to wipe out conservative speech, knowing they have an apparently unbreakable hold on the market. It’s time for Americans to support alternatives that aren’t run by socialists and globalists.
