I have to wonder how much this was intentional and how much was very poor communication.
My initial response was that it's a horrible shakedown, but on reflection, I wonder if it really was just Saliterman acting in both Everytown's and his own best interest. If it's a common tactic for the NRA to advertise where possible during anti-gun media, and if it's something Snapchat does not involve itself in mediating for journalistic purposes, then it's entirely possible the team that offered Everytown the free media deal inadvertently set them up to have the NRA run messages during their event, and Saliterman was trying to come across as "hey, I would have advised you against this for this exact reason, as the NRA is trying to get in on your ad spots and that's not something we can really prevent."
How you interpret it is probably highly dependent on your opinions of the companies involved as well as how it is presented here. I only wonder because it seems like it's in vogue to call out bad behavior of tech companies right now, and that undoubtedly leads to at least some articles that purposefully misinterpret events to convey that story.
To be clear, this story certainly makes it sound like a shakedown, and it very well may be. I have no idea if that's what happened here, and I doubt at this point we'll ever know know that it's in the realm of PR spin for damage control, but given that both parties refused to comment, I think chances are high that we're getting the author's assumptions rather than something reasonably close to the truth, whatever that may be.
> the NRA is trying to get in on your ad spots and that's not something we can really prevent
It's their company and they can decline to take ads if they would serve the company interest. This guy put the ad division's interest ahead of the company and hurt Snapchat's reputation in the process.
Also his phrasing was "we are talking with the NRA" whereas it would probably have been more explicitly "the NRA has approached us" if they were merely reacting. And again the reaction could simply be "no".
Why is it against the company interest? Because the ad division could literally target every political story the news division puts out as a target for competitive ads, thus forcing content partners to pay up lest they create a platform for their opponents. Thus most would pull out of the stories (as Everytown did) and ultimately decline to cooperate with Snapchat news at all. Sounds like this guy was sabotaging the story out of spite.
> This guy put the ad division's interest ahead of the company and hurt Snapchat's reputation in the process.
I already noted below that I believe this to be the most likely scenario, except it's also in Snapchat's short-term interest, which is why he probably got away with it, at least until now.
That said, the quotes are fairly sparse, and possibly out of context, so I'm hesitant to attribute too much intent to how they are presented in this article.
Any ethical publisher will go out of their way to ensure total separation between editorial (or content creation in the case of social publishers like Snapchat) and advertising. The advertising division typically isn't even allowed to know what kind of content is being run, and the content creators aren't allowed to know what kind of ads are being run.
The practice is often metaphorically referred to as "church and state".
1. Snapchat tries to advise Everytown that ad slots are open and the NRA is likely to capture some of them
2. Everytown can't afford to buy up all the slots at the quoted price
(So far, I think both Everytown and Snapchat are still ok here. No harm done.)
3. Snapchat representative, Saliterman, ends the running email conversation with an email saying this: "To be clear, the story has the potential to be bought by any advertiser, including the NRA, which will enable the advertiser to run three 10-sec video ads within the story."
(At this point, if I were in Everytown's shoes, I would now fully believe Snapchat was acting against my interests. They're not even trying to work with me any more.)
Why didn't Everytown call Snapchat's bluff? Run the campaign, not buy the ad slots, let Snapchat do what they may.
They could have screen-grabbed the resulting campaign and used it to generate _massive_ publicity.
Snapchat would have had huge egg on their face.
I can think of Everytown not wanting to make a spectacle of the families who had suffered such loss. But with advance notice maybe they could have gone to the families and asked politely? It seems likely some would have agreed to let this happen and then fight the NRA on the outcome.
(If I were the NRA, as well, I would be _furious_ at Snapchat for ill-using my ad spend in this way.)
That's a good question. Given that Everytown refused to comment now, to me that either points to them valuing their relationship with Snapchat over the perceived benefit from speaking out, or this not being a very accurate portrayal of the events, and they know enough to know that it's not clear that Snapchat was in the wrong and they don't want to be embroiled in the circus that would result.
I'm not sure Snapchat would have egg on its face in the scenario you propose.
Maybe there shouldn't be ad space in these types of campaigns, but if they have do have ad slots, anyone can buy them, and I can totally see the NRA doing that.
Yea, I probably would have leaned toward calling the bluff. Organizations like Everytown use the NRA as a boogeyman in enough of their campaigns that it's almost assured that they'd get a ton of earned media out of this.
C'mon, this isn't a completely user-driven process here. Everytown was engaged with the editorial division. Snapchat can clearly control what ads appear where. The ad division has taken something that the editorial division was doing, and engaged in a bit of light blackmail.
This conversation is the email equivalent of "Hey, this is a really nice shop you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it. I'm not saying that anything is going to happen to it, but if you pay me some money, I'll do what I can to ensure nothing happens". It's just missing the pinstripe suit and the accent.
Here's the thing: it doesn't matter that Snapchat's internal divisions are at odds. 'Snapchat' was proactively working with a client and had organised a fee waiver, and then 'Snapchat' demanded blood money. Internal politics are Snapchat's problem, not their clients'. Letting them off the hook on this one merely gives them leeway for their broken internal promises.
This is all independent of the actual moral issues. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, but I'd be just as disgusted if Snapchat had organised to do an editorial with a Christian group, then "what a nice shop"'d them saying 'a hostile atheist group could buy ads'.
> The ad division has taken something that the editorial division was doing, and engaged in a bit of light blackmail.
Sure, that's definitely how it was presented. I'm just saying that we've been given a story, and very little to back it up. I'm not sure where these emails are they are referring to, and if it's possible to corroborate the story, but I think it's worth noting how little sources were cited, and how we got snippets of sentences, not even a single full email. Neither Snapchat nor Everytown are on record in the article either. Do I believe there's some truth to the story? Yes, and my other comments go into detail on that, but I don't think we should be immediately believing everything presented here without corroboration of some sort, just because it fits our current worldview.
I mean division and policy wise. I'm sure most media organizations vet certain ads during certain broadcasts to prevent issues like this, but I also think that's something they may have learned the hard way. That there's a separation between divisions and one is prevented from interfering with the other in certain ways that are too rigid isn't super hard for me to believe, but neither is someone playing up that rigidity to their own benefit.
Personally, I think the most likely scenario is a little of both. Policies existed, but management would obviously have stepped in if they were alerted, but someone used the policies for personal gain within the company by quoting them and figured they could fall back on them if called out on it by management. If that's the case, the bad PR this may result in may mean that protection is moot. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as Saliterman's actions may have been poorly thought out, and traded a small short-term company (and personal) gain for a much greater longer-term risk (which we might be seeing now).
And surely they could just make a call to not run ads against a community/non-profit story?
Is it not unlike Microsoft donating product as sponsorship? (e.g., $100k non-profit sponsorship turns out to be in-kind provision of MS Office licenses.) That's often viewed critically by many on HN.
To be honest, this is standard operating practice for almost every advertising venue.
If you work at Amazon and want to show Amazon ads at the top of the page, whenever a user searches for eBay, Google will happily let Amazon do that. If eBay wants to prevent it, they need to pay money go secure the advertising spot on "eBay" search results. Ditto for Windows/Mac, BMW/Mercedes, etc etc.
At its foundation, advertising spots are content-agnostic. Anyone is able to buy advertising slots on any page, and as long as everyone follows the rules, whoever has the best bid*click-through-rate will win. And to be honest, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to run a business that's funded almost entirely by advertising revenues.
Not exactly. Google orders and displays advertisements based on expected value (to Google). Then the winner of the slot pays the lowest market-winning price.
Overly simplistic example: eBay bids $1 max and Amazon bids $2 max. People searching for eBay have a 10% probability of clicking on an eBay ad and a 2% probability of clicking on an Amazon ad.
Expected value to google:
Ebay - $1 * 10% = $0.10 EV max
Amazon - $2 * 2% = $0.04 EV max
Ebay is displayed even with a lower bid because the expected value of the display is higher. The bid is never adjusted -- eBay is specific about its bid or its maximum bid and the market of expected value decides who is shown. Amazon could just as easily bid $5.01 and show up. And when the ad is clicked, if Amazon is the only bidder at $2, then Ebay would pay $.50 for that click because that is the lowest bid that wins the position using the EV.
To apply this to the Snapchat Conversation -- One might expect if Snapchat operated this way, then its probably fair to assume that EveryTown would have had a much higher relevancy score than NRA, so should have been able to win the campaign for much lower $$. But in paid placement like this, everyone is paying for placement not for performance. It is not an EV market. Hence the dilemma.
That's not even remotely true. There are lots of situations and content types that are filtered or blocked by most advertising companies. I couldn't advertise a porn site when people search for "hacker news" on google, for example.
I'm glad you are making an effort to be honest, thank you. However that is really too simplistic.
This is not competing retailers, it's people fighting over matters of life and death and they will use any tactic against each other no matter how distasteful because they believe the end justifies the means.
Clearly any media company has to carefully weigh controversial issues from different perspectives. Making money, preserving the integrity and their brand, potential bad press or defecting customers, etc.
Often there is no simple rule. A judgement call has to be made factoring in what's best for company overall and if we're lucky maybe integrity is mentioned by someone along the way.
> A judgement call has to be made factoring in what's best for company overall and if we're lucky maybe integrity is mentioned by someone along the way.
I'm pro-gun, and have given money to the NRA, and I'd be upset if snapchat wouldn't sell ad-space to the Brady Campaign during an NRA-sponsored event like if the 1000-person shoot had been captured using Snapchat.
I think it's a basic moral standing that whenever someone is saying something I want it allowed for the oposition to say the exact opposite.
I also think that the only people who'd be afraid of a pro-NRA ad in or during an anti-gun ad would be those who cannot defend their moral possition.
Personally, I'm happy when I get the opprotunity to see the anti-gun arguments on HN and that we can discuss ideas about these subjects. It broadens my understanding of what others think and vise versa.
There isn't a problem with saying "I sell X, and all I care about is the money I get from doing that" and then turning around and selling Xs to the highest bidder.
Except that Snapchat had already engaged the client and was working with them in an editorial sense. It's not a 'first-come first-served' free market buffet at that point.
Do you think it would be acceptable for the webmaster of Mercedes to put BMW ads on their site, because BMW was willing to pay them to do so?
According to their Form 990, Everytown for Gun Safety spends 5.5 million a year on lobbying, legal, and accounting fees. Their advertising budget is another 7 million. They spend 2 million a year on travel. Their top executive earns $350,000. Honestly, they seem to be a pretty well funded charity. I don't think SNAP was in the wrong here.
What if it wasn't about the money? I wouldn't buy an ad alongside editorial content about my brand. Savvy media consumers tend to see that and think that the editorial content is actually paid content.
Would people have the same complaints if it was the other way around? Snapchat reached out to the NRA and offered a free Live Story as partnership for Gun Appreciation Day. Another division then threatened the NRA that it could run anti-gun ads during the NRA's free Live Story.
If the complaints would be different, then it's just your political bias. Some people think the NRA is important and its message is being harmed by groups like Everytown. In that case, why not focus on the heart of the issue which is "Snapchat allows NRA ads but I don't like guns".
Not quite correct. When you're discussing the death of innocent people, children, etc. some tact is appropriate. I'm generally pro-gun but yelling at the top of your lungs about how great guns are to the parents of the victims of sandy hook is completely repulsive and something I'm sure you would never do.
Pro-gun ads are great but if they appear right after a haunting piece about a child killed through gun violence they are disgusting unless they are very, very tactful (which I have never seen from ANY ad). They shouldn't be placed there because it's offensive (and it does no favor to the pro-gun cause). I think that's on snap chat to avoid those instances always.
You could say hyper-emotional appeals about the victims shouldn't be done, and I'd agree with you, but they are done, so tact is important.
To take a bit of a devil's advocate approach, one might argue that seeing gun control ads in the context of Sandy Hook would be inappropriate because one could argue that more responsible people carrying guns could have prevented the tragedy. I am not supporting or opposing that viewpoint but it could be argued just as effectively as an assertion that gun control would have prevented the tragedy.
I do NOT want to (or intend to) get into a gun control debate -- my point is that there a many ways to parse these things.
When discussing the Boston Marathon bombing no advocacy groups were demanding a ban on pressure cookers. In France after the Nice attack, nobody was advocating for stricter truck licensing requirements or enhanced background checks on commercial truck renters/puchasers.
My second point is that agenda groups hijack tragedy to achieve their own ends. As Obama's advisor Rahm Emanuel said, "Never let a crisis go to waste." In the context of a story, its editorial malfeasance to prevent all sides of a story from being expressed.
The parent post creates a hypothetical opinion held by hypothetical people, and then criticizes it. IMHO this kind of comment is merely inflammatory; I'm no smarter after reading it, and if I buy into it then I become misinformed.
I'm trying to isolate the political beliefs from the "treating customers badly" or "being mean" concerns. People sometimes confuse them and expect that groups on their own political side should be given better treatment than opposing groups. You might not be making that mistake yourself so perhaps it's no use to you. In general, I think isolating those separate ideas is helpful for thinking critically.
It is called the Straw Man fallacy[1]; once you learn about it (and other fallacies) you will see it in many more places. Don't forget to account for personal Bias though.
I think there's a perceived difference with non profits. E.g. I enjoy alcohol but would still feel the same way if this happened with MADD vs Jonny Walker
Which is exactly why the auto insurance industry heavily funds MADD, to the point of driving MADD's agenda: the credit people give nonprofit advocacy groups with a superficially socially responsible purposes makes them a very good tool for industry.
You're suggesting there is a type of symmetry around relative moral beliefs on the gun debate, and it is somewhat arbitrary to be upset on one side of it but not the other.
If that was all there was to it, I would agree.
However, that's missing the huge asymmetry at play here: money. Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it, and the people who's family members have been victims of gun violence don't.
If this was a spat between, say, Google and Oracle, each of which has boatloads of money to buy the competitor's advertising spots, no one would care.
But this story feels scummy because it's a human story, one where the little guy is fighting a noble cause but is being shaken down by organizations who write weekly checks larger than some of these people will see in their lifetime.
If you pretend that money doesn't create an asymmetry, then yes, you being upset this way but not the other is all relative.
> [...] money. Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it [...]
The NRA is a member-funded group. Five million members paying annual dues -- that's where their money comes from.[1] They use some of this to fund gun safety education and training (Everytown For Gun Safety does not, oddly enough). Sure, industry chips in, but it's just a couple million $ (which is tiny compared to member dues).
" Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it,"
It's really really not.
There are plenty of groups that fall into that category, the NRA is not one of them.
The fact that you are just kind of saying this blindly, without any data to back it up, when even trivial searches would tell you it's wrong, severely dilutes any argument you have.
(note, i actually am very anti-gun, but i try to at least research the assertions i'm going to make)
The industry group for gun manufacturers is the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NRA is a membership organization with over five million members. Portraying the NRA as an industry group just because corporations donate to it is misleading. Would you consider the EFF to be an industry group because PayPal donates to them?
Is it really? It seems to me that there is a lot of reason to believe that the NRA is funded primarily through membership fees and individual contributions.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of the NRA, and probably ever other pro-gun advocacy group you've ever heard of, and some you haven't.
Everytown is funded by wealthy people like Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett. If there aren't enough other donors to give them the resources that the NRA has, it might be that there aren't enough people who support their agenda enough to donate. They are not "the little guy".
Hmm, other than a communication blunder I don't see the foul here? I don't know how Snapchat advertising works internally, but if the NRA is a known purchaser of advertising, and can choose to target its ads in specific content segments it would seem like Everytown might want to be warned that leaving their ad segments unclaimed means the NRA claiming them is a possibility. Even if the ads get assigned randomly or through some sort of automated process you'd still think a good client relationship manager would want to give his or her (prospective) client a heads up that an NRA ad in their time slot is possible, no? Imagine if he had said nothing, and then the NRA _did_ run ads in the Everytown slot? Would that have been better? If I was Everytown I'd be angry at Snapchat for not warning me that this was a possibility. As far as I can tell, Saliterman did his job, his job just happens to have intersected with an emotional flash point, and is by nature manipulative.
Now, how someone got to his professional level without knowing how to handle this conversation more tactfully is beyond me. And further if he was trying to convince them this was a possibility when it _wasn't_, or some other nefarious ploy then sure - let's jump on the outrage bandwagon, but from that article? Nothing to see here.
Social media sites really need to face the decision of whether they're "common carriers" or are liable for consequences of discrimination against common/normal views.
when an ad causes serious consternation in the press, they pull it because "we've a private site and can regulate speech".
But if there isn't sufficient controversy, they can hide behind the banner of free speech.
Sites like Facebook need to either commit to allowing all lawful ads, or admit they exercise editorial judgement on what is "proper" speech, and start a larger conversation about what sort of speech should be restricted.
I remember in the Facebook pre-IPO days they invited a handful of notorious internet marketers / affiliates to sit down with senior executives to figure out how they could work together to drive higher CTRs for fare like ringtones, weight loss pills, etc with the goal of goosing revenues upwards.
I'd guess these are similarly interesting times in the SnapChat ad sales department on the way to an IPO - they are under tremendous pressure to drive results.
Looks like a combination of bad team communications (one team tries to sell service, another offers essentially the same for free) and even worse attempt to rescue the sale by FUDing the client ("if you go with free option, we might run competitor's ads inside your content!"). I hope that's not a routine way for them to work, because that would be rather stinky practice.
I think there's different ways of communicating. Trying to hard sell the same service other team offers for free looks stupid, and I don't think sales team being aware of the editing team's actions and behaving in a smarter way would not hurt the trustworthiness. It's not like this "if you don't pay us, we'll run your competitors ads inside your content" snafu did wonders to the trustworthiness.
Readit News
My initial response was that it's a horrible shakedown, but on reflection, I wonder if it really was just Saliterman acting in both Everytown's and his own best interest. If it's a common tactic for the NRA to advertise where possible during anti-gun media, and if it's something Snapchat does not involve itself in mediating for journalistic purposes, then it's entirely possible the team that offered Everytown the free media deal inadvertently set them up to have the NRA run messages during their event, and Saliterman was trying to come across as "hey, I would have advised you against this for this exact reason, as the NRA is trying to get in on your ad spots and that's not something we can really prevent."
How you interpret it is probably highly dependent on your opinions of the companies involved as well as how it is presented here. I only wonder because it seems like it's in vogue to call out bad behavior of tech companies right now, and that undoubtedly leads to at least some articles that purposefully misinterpret events to convey that story.
To be clear, this story certainly makes it sound like a shakedown, and it very well may be. I have no idea if that's what happened here, and I doubt at this point we'll ever know know that it's in the realm of PR spin for damage control, but given that both parties refused to comment, I think chances are high that we're getting the author's assumptions rather than something reasonably close to the truth, whatever that may be.
It's their company and they can decline to take ads if they would serve the company interest. This guy put the ad division's interest ahead of the company and hurt Snapchat's reputation in the process.
Also his phrasing was "we are talking with the NRA" whereas it would probably have been more explicitly "the NRA has approached us" if they were merely reacting. And again the reaction could simply be "no".
Why is it against the company interest? Because the ad division could literally target every political story the news division puts out as a target for competitive ads, thus forcing content partners to pay up lest they create a platform for their opponents. Thus most would pull out of the stories (as Everytown did) and ultimately decline to cooperate with Snapchat news at all. Sounds like this guy was sabotaging the story out of spite.
I already noted below that I believe this to be the most likely scenario, except it's also in Snapchat's short-term interest, which is why he probably got away with it, at least until now.
That said, the quotes are fairly sparse, and possibly out of context, so I'm hesitant to attribute too much intent to how they are presented in this article.
The practice is often metaphorically referred to as "church and state".
1. Snapchat tries to advise Everytown that ad slots are open and the NRA is likely to capture some of them
2. Everytown can't afford to buy up all the slots at the quoted price
(So far, I think both Everytown and Snapchat are still ok here. No harm done.)
3. Snapchat representative, Saliterman, ends the running email conversation with an email saying this: "To be clear, the story has the potential to be bought by any advertiser, including the NRA, which will enable the advertiser to run three 10-sec video ads within the story."
(At this point, if I were in Everytown's shoes, I would now fully believe Snapchat was acting against my interests. They're not even trying to work with me any more.)
Why didn't Everytown call Snapchat's bluff? Run the campaign, not buy the ad slots, let Snapchat do what they may.
They could have screen-grabbed the resulting campaign and used it to generate _massive_ publicity.
Snapchat would have had huge egg on their face.
I can think of Everytown not wanting to make a spectacle of the families who had suffered such loss. But with advance notice maybe they could have gone to the families and asked politely? It seems likely some would have agreed to let this happen and then fight the NRA on the outcome.
(If I were the NRA, as well, I would be _furious_ at Snapchat for ill-using my ad spend in this way.)
But it's all hypothetical, apparently.
Maybe there shouldn't be ad space in these types of campaigns, but if they have do have ad slots, anyone can buy them, and I can totally see the NRA doing that.
This conversation is the email equivalent of "Hey, this is a really nice shop you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it. I'm not saying that anything is going to happen to it, but if you pay me some money, I'll do what I can to ensure nothing happens". It's just missing the pinstripe suit and the accent.
Here's the thing: it doesn't matter that Snapchat's internal divisions are at odds. 'Snapchat' was proactively working with a client and had organised a fee waiver, and then 'Snapchat' demanded blood money. Internal politics are Snapchat's problem, not their clients'. Letting them off the hook on this one merely gives them leeway for their broken internal promises.
This is all independent of the actual moral issues. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, but I'd be just as disgusted if Snapchat had organised to do an editorial with a Christian group, then "what a nice shop"'d them saying 'a hostile atheist group could buy ads'.
Sure, that's definitely how it was presented. I'm just saying that we've been given a story, and very little to back it up. I'm not sure where these emails are they are referring to, and if it's possible to corroborate the story, but I think it's worth noting how little sources were cited, and how we got snippets of sentences, not even a single full email. Neither Snapchat nor Everytown are on record in the article either. Do I believe there's some truth to the story? Yes, and my other comments go into detail on that, but I don't think we should be immediately believing everything presented here without corroboration of some sort, just because it fits our current worldview.
Eh, surely snapchat can prevent it?
Personally, I think the most likely scenario is a little of both. Policies existed, but management would obviously have stepped in if they were alerted, but someone used the policies for personal gain within the company by quoting them and figured they could fall back on them if called out on it by management. If that's the case, the bad PR this may result in may mean that protection is moot. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as Saliterman's actions may have been poorly thought out, and traded a small short-term company (and personal) gain for a much greater longer-term risk (which we might be seeing now).
[1] http://corporate.findlaw.com/law-library/i-have-a-great-comm...
Is it not unlike Microsoft donating product as sponsorship? (e.g., $100k non-profit sponsorship turns out to be in-kind provision of MS Office licenses.) That's often viewed critically by many on HN.
If you work at Amazon and want to show Amazon ads at the top of the page, whenever a user searches for eBay, Google will happily let Amazon do that. If eBay wants to prevent it, they need to pay money go secure the advertising spot on "eBay" search results. Ditto for Windows/Mac, BMW/Mercedes, etc etc.
At its foundation, advertising spots are content-agnostic. Anyone is able to buy advertising slots on any page, and as long as everyone follows the rules, whoever has the best bid*click-through-rate will win. And to be honest, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to run a business that's funded almost entirely by advertising revenues.
Overly simplistic example: eBay bids $1 max and Amazon bids $2 max. People searching for eBay have a 10% probability of clicking on an eBay ad and a 2% probability of clicking on an Amazon ad.
Expected value to google: Ebay - $1 * 10% = $0.10 EV max Amazon - $2 * 2% = $0.04 EV max
Ebay is displayed even with a lower bid because the expected value of the display is higher. The bid is never adjusted -- eBay is specific about its bid or its maximum bid and the market of expected value decides who is shown. Amazon could just as easily bid $5.01 and show up. And when the ad is clicked, if Amazon is the only bidder at $2, then Ebay would pay $.50 for that click because that is the lowest bid that wins the position using the EV.
To apply this to the Snapchat Conversation -- One might expect if Snapchat operated this way, then its probably fair to assume that EveryTown would have had a much higher relevancy score than NRA, so should have been able to win the campaign for much lower $$. But in paid placement like this, everyone is paying for placement not for performance. It is not an EV market. Hence the dilemma.
This is not competing retailers, it's people fighting over matters of life and death and they will use any tactic against each other no matter how distasteful because they believe the end justifies the means.
Clearly any media company has to carefully weigh controversial issues from different perspectives. Making money, preserving the integrity and their brand, potential bad press or defecting customers, etc.
Often there is no simple rule. A judgement call has to be made factoring in what's best for company overall and if we're lucky maybe integrity is mentioned by someone along the way.
I'm pro-gun, and have given money to the NRA, and I'd be upset if snapchat wouldn't sell ad-space to the Brady Campaign during an NRA-sponsored event like if the 1000-person shoot had been captured using Snapchat.
I think it's a basic moral standing that whenever someone is saying something I want it allowed for the oposition to say the exact opposite.
I also think that the only people who'd be afraid of a pro-NRA ad in or during an anti-gun ad would be those who cannot defend their moral possition.
Personally, I'm happy when I get the opprotunity to see the anti-gun arguments on HN and that we can discuss ideas about these subjects. It broadens my understanding of what others think and vise versa.
There isn't a problem with saying "I sell X, and all I care about is the money I get from doing that" and then turning around and selling Xs to the highest bidder.
Dead Comment
Do you think it would be acceptable for the webmaster of Mercedes to put BMW ads on their site, because BMW was willing to pay them to do so?
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/208...
If the complaints would be different, then it's just your political bias. Some people think the NRA is important and its message is being harmed by groups like Everytown. In that case, why not focus on the heart of the issue which is "Snapchat allows NRA ads but I don't like guns".
Pro-gun ads are great but if they appear right after a haunting piece about a child killed through gun violence they are disgusting unless they are very, very tactful (which I have never seen from ANY ad). They shouldn't be placed there because it's offensive (and it does no favor to the pro-gun cause). I think that's on snap chat to avoid those instances always.
You could say hyper-emotional appeals about the victims shouldn't be done, and I'd agree with you, but they are done, so tact is important.
I do NOT want to (or intend to) get into a gun control debate -- my point is that there a many ways to parse these things.
When discussing the Boston Marathon bombing no advocacy groups were demanding a ban on pressure cookers. In France after the Nice attack, nobody was advocating for stricter truck licensing requirements or enhanced background checks on commercial truck renters/puchasers.
My second point is that agenda groups hijack tragedy to achieve their own ends. As Obama's advisor Rahm Emanuel said, "Never let a crisis go to waste." In the context of a story, its editorial malfeasance to prevent all sides of a story from being expressed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
pre-emptive edit in case someone finds some place where this isn't true: I mean generally. They are not a gun manufacturer or seller generally.
If that was all there was to it, I would agree.
However, that's missing the huge asymmetry at play here: money. Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it, and the people who's family members have been victims of gun violence don't.
If this was a spat between, say, Google and Oracle, each of which has boatloads of money to buy the competitor's advertising spots, no one would care.
But this story feels scummy because it's a human story, one where the little guy is fighting a noble cause but is being shaken down by organizations who write weekly checks larger than some of these people will see in their lifetime.
If you pretend that money doesn't create an asymmetry, then yes, you being upset this way but not the other is all relative.
The NRA is a member-funded group. Five million members paying annual dues -- that's where their money comes from.[1] They use some of this to fund gun safety education and training (Everytown For Gun Safety does not, oddly enough). Sure, industry chips in, but it's just a couple million $ (which is tiny compared to member dues).
[1] https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Ri... (graphs data from NRA's public tax filings)
It's really really not. There are plenty of groups that fall into that category, the NRA is not one of them.
The fact that you are just kind of saying this blindly, without any data to back it up, when even trivial searches would tell you it's wrong, severely dilutes any argument you have.
(note, i actually am very anti-gun, but i try to at least research the assertions i'm going to make)
Is it really? It seems to me that there is a lot of reason to believe that the NRA is funded primarily through membership fees and individual contributions.
https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Ri...
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of the NRA, and probably ever other pro-gun advocacy group you've ever heard of, and some you haven't.
That's just not true at all:
https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Ri...
(edit: bah, in the time verifying my sources, three other people posted the same info :) )
Now, how someone got to his professional level without knowing how to handle this conversation more tactfully is beyond me. And further if he was trying to convince them this was a possibility when it _wasn't_, or some other nefarious ploy then sure - let's jump on the outrage bandwagon, but from that article? Nothing to see here.
when an ad causes serious consternation in the press, they pull it because "we've a private site and can regulate speech".
But if there isn't sufficient controversy, they can hide behind the banner of free speech.
Sites like Facebook need to either commit to allowing all lawful ads, or admit they exercise editorial judgement on what is "proper" speech, and start a larger conversation about what sort of speech should be restricted.
Facebook does exactly that, with slightly different rules for posts & comments and with ads.
https://en-gb.facebook.com/communitystandards
https://en-gb.facebook.com/policies/ads
I'd guess these are similarly interesting times in the SnapChat ad sales department on the way to an IPO - they are under tremendous pressure to drive results.