Mike Masnick ✅Nov 21, 2022
Interesting explanation from a decently large Twitter advertiser on why they've paused their ad budget on Twitter after keeping it running for the past couple of weeks. https://www.teamblind.com/post/i-told-my-team-to-pause-our-750kmonth-twitter-ads-budget-last-week-4dnbo1Ft
Show threadSamboyNov 21, 2022

@mmasnick Twitter is just a final link in a long line of big companies monopolizing Internet discourse, including MySpace, Facebook, and recently Reddit (Reddit used to have an open source version of their server).

Hopefully, with Twitter users flocking to Mastodon nodes, we will come back full circle to where we were 20 years ago, when Internet communities were not controlled by big monolithic corporations.

Show threadBoudNov 23, 2022

@samboy @mmasnick

Most people in this thread seem to have continued using the euphemism "advertising" instead of the word "propaganda" [1]. #EdwardBernays, the "father of public relations" [2], would be proud of his success!

de-euphemised: "Interesting explanation from a decently large Twitter propagandist on why they've paused their propaganda budget on Twitter after keeping it running for the past couple of weeks."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_%28book%29

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

Propaganda (book) - Wikipedia

Show threadMike Masnick ✅

@boud @samboy um. no. that would be misleading. advertising is one thing. public relations is another. propaganda is another. sometimes they overlap. sometimes one is used to pretend to be another.

claiming all advertising is propaganda is ridiculous and misleading.

Nov 23, 2022 at 8:56amPinafore
Show threadBoudNov 23, 2022

@mmasnick

You're welcome to correct any errors in [1], based on [[WP:RS]].

You've also posed a particularly interesting challenge:

What criteria must a paid advertisement by client X posted on an online social network satisfy in order to *not* bias the reader/viewer to be more likely to purchase X's product (versus a thorough, neutral, objective assessment comparing the rival products)?

In other words: what criteria define an advertisement that is *not* propaganda [1]?

@samboy

Show threadBoudNov 23, 2022

@mmasnick @samboy

Keeping in mind the #ClimateEmergency , a non-propaganda advertisement would also have to *not* encourage the reader/viewer to buy more products than are reasonably justified during this emergency, it seems to me.