The self-described “alt-right” website Breitbart’s fall from grace has been pretty sharp. While it shot to prominence during former President Obama’s time in office and got so popular that its CEO served as an adviser to the pussy-grabber-in-chief, there’s been a turning point and more people are recognizing it for the awful, bigoted platform it is.
Not only did Breitbart lose more than 90 percent of its advertisers in the span of two months, but the world’s largest ad platform AppNexus blacklisted the site in late 2016 for hate speech. Reuters reports:
AppNexus deactivated Breitbart News after an audit of the site's content determined that it violates the advertising network's code of conduct banning hate speech, spokesman Joshua Zeitz said on Tuesday.
Breitbart Chief Executive Officer Larry Solov said the company "always and continues to condemn racism and bigotry in any form," in an email statement.
This is in sharp contrast to Facebook who, according to the group Sleeping Giants, ignored requests to drop the website from its ad network for more than six months. Unfortunately, a screenshot of the response from the Silicon Valley giant shows they don’t seem to believe that Breitbart’s statements violate their “community standards.” The email reads, in part:
It’s important to remember that not all disagreeable or unpopular speech violates our Community Standards or Audience Network policies. Publishers whose content you may disagree with may be allowed to continue within the Audience Network. We review all publishers on the Audience Network both proactively when they sign up and reactively as they run ads through the Audience Network to make sure they are not in violation.
I respect your feelings on Breitbart and I would encourage any concerned advertisers to use the tools outines above to control where their ads are showing across the Audience Network.
So why did AppNexus’ review find racism and a violation of standards, while Facebook didn’t?