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To stop the spread of wrong information around January 6 hearings In the United States, a nonprofit called My Ads Check is targeting Fox News Online by going after its ad dollars.
Co-founder and CEO Claire Atkin and her team look for ad tech (or ad tech) companies that sell online ad space and place the ads on Fox News. Then contact advertisers who may or may not know their ads are appearing on Fox’s website, hoping to remove them from the site.
As an example of the wrong information Tucker Carlson has repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the January 6 riots. And he delved into conspiracy theories about the attack on the US Capitol.
He spoke to Atkin, a native of Vancouver. Day 6 Saroja Coelho, host of Check My Ads, explains how the ad-tech industry works. Here is part of their speech.
Can you tell me briefly what check my ads do?
We control $400-billion. [U.S.] The ad tech industry, and our mission is to disrupt the disinformation economy.
At the start of the hearings on January 6, they announced that they would be targeting Fox News Online. why?
On the 6th anniversary of January, we launched a campaign to counter the insurgents’ money. We targeted six people who made a lot of money from the ad-tech system promoting the cause of violence.
These men included Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk, and Glenn Beck. And, in the last few months, we’ve had all their money cut off. We have downloaded all the ads from the ad exchanges that send them. Now our question is how does Fox News differ?
US law professor Lawrence Douglas says the stakes for criminal charges against former President Donald Trump are high, despite strong evidence.
I want to distinguish a little how this works. They were talking about promoting the idea [2020 U.S. presidential] The election was stolen. But, if I go to the Fox News website, there are all kinds of ads. How do you land there?
Yes, advertisers do not place themselves on the Internet. They basically have brokers for them. You can go to an ad agency, and then the ad agency goes to the ad exchanges.
These are large companies that bring advertisers and publishers’ websites together to basically bid for ad space on websites. And, these ad exchanges have what are called publisher policies or delivery policies.
In those policies, they say they won’t work with sites that post election misinformation or racism and bigotry, and that advertisers feel safe working with them.
What we’re finding is that these ad exchanges are basically lying, and advertisers are sending ads to places they think are brand-safe.
So, do the advertisers know if their ads are showing on the Fox website?
When advertisers want to advertise on Fox cable, just like on TV shows, they have to choose to be there. However, when advertisers advertise on the Internet, they often don’t know where their ads will go.
And, that’s really what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about default settings that push advertisers — who think their campaigns are brand safe — into promoting, supporting, and justifying insurgency.
Who are you targeting to download these ads?
The people who are making the decisions about where the ads go are the people who represent the ad exchanges. These are big companies. What we’re asking people to do is to email, campaign, and pressure exchanges to respect their own publisher policies, their own terms of service.
We’re talking about different ad exchanges like Google and PubMatic, all of which have been operating in relative obscurity. We are making them see the light of day. We are exposing their businesses to the public so that they are held accountable by law.
Some people hear this and say it’s censorship, you’re silencing a point of view because you don’t agree with it. What do you say to this?
My answer is that what we always struggle with here is transparency in the advertising industry. We fight for advertisers to have the choice to advertise on sites that promote violence.
Nowadays, our hypothesis has been proven many times over: advertisers do not want to support violence and hate. When they have a choice, they choose not to. But now it is the advertisers’ freedom of speech that has been taken away by these exchanges.
How much revenue do these online ads make for Fox News?
Fox News is a conglomerate and its ad technology offerings may only account for about five percent of their revenue. But, and this is important: the ad tech industry is like a propaganda tool.
For propaganda to truly thrive in the world, it needs three things. They need legitimacy. They need growth. They should be able to target people who are susceptible to lies and misinformation.
What the ad-tech industry does is give ads legitimacy. It signals to the reader that Fox News is a legitimate place to receive news.
The ad technology industry provides Internet users with personal and identifiable information. What it does is allow them to better target people who are susceptible to lies and deception. What we are talking about here is a propaganda tool and we want to cut it out of the arsenal.
What you describe is not a problem unique to the United States. Advertisements Here in Canada it ends surprisingly well. But it seems impossible to go after every ad you see. What do you see as the solution?
The answer is to talk about the people who control the traffic of the disinformation economy. What we do at Check My Ads, we don’t play in the game. We are only talking about people who make a lot of money and do a lot of damage and create very tangible results.
We are talking about an increase in hate crimes. We are talking about the prevalence of transphobia, homophobia, misogyny and violence. We are talking about the rise of global totalitarianism.
What we’re doing is… asking people who actually make decisions to send them advertising, money, and data, and asking, “How does this fit into your business practices? Because we like what you’re saying. Doing one thing and another.”
Written by Bob Bacon. Edited by Lori Allen. The Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
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