Hello Mr.X: Letters To An Anonymous AdTech CEO

Last month, I became the subject of a hit piece by a pro-Nazi gamer site called One Angry Gamer. I found that the website is monetized by some of the biggest names in adtech. I began contacting the companies one by one to understand how this hateful, racist website passed their "brand safety process."

The following are emails I exchanged one adtech CEO (Mr.X), who gave me permission to publish with their name & company redacted.

This is the story of one tech leader grappling with their outsized role in the underground world of hate speech and misinformation.

But look more closely. Three years into Sleeping Giants campaign, the adtech industry has made effectively ZERO progress in brand safety.

This a close-up of an advertising ecosystem in chaos.

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Letter to Mr.X

Hi Mr.X, 

Nandini here from Sleeping Giants. I'm reaching out because I'm trying to understand why ZZZZZZZ is serving ads on a website called One Angry Gamer.

I became aware of this website recently after they published a hit piece on me. I was shocked to find not only extremist language, pro-Nazi rhetoric and deep anti-Semitism. (Please take a moment to read through the article and the comments section.)

Is there any policy in place at ZZZZZZZZ against working with pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic material? Is this an oversight?

Please keep me posted!

Best,

Nandini

Mr.X Responds

Hi Nandini,

Thank you so much for reaching out and bringing anything like this to our attention. This is the first I'm aware of it, but I'm anxious to learn more and will take some time tomorrow to investigate more about you and the site you're referencing. 

With respect to policy and matters related to content, we and I personally am very intolerant of any 'hate' or 'inappropriate' content that harms others or that negatively impacts our 'advertisers'. With that said, we certainly respect publishers and the free speech of content within those boundaries. I know it can be a delicate matter, but we will always favor the right principals over money.

I'll get educated tomorrow and will get back to you shortly to follow up.

thanks,

Mr.X

Mr.X Responds (Again)

Nandini,

Again, thank you for reaching out. I took some time yesterday to dive deeper into your background and activities of your organization, plus the sites mentioned. It is a whole world I wasn't even aware of. On the surface, my issue is probably the same as most intermediary platforms, on where the lines of free speech/communication and content rights are and how to systematically handle bad content appropriately and not overstep. Also, it's hard to separate where the policy and standards are versus the 'name calling'. It is definitely a noisy topic.

I want to share with you how we handle this to date. Currently to screen/handle these concerns at scale we use 3rd party industry standard technologies like IAS or DV who rate sites and content that are not brand safe, etc. and we block requests when those 'flags' are applied. In addition, we pre-approve all sites with advertisers electronically and then pass all the sites information to the advertiser or the advertising system real-time so they can again screen it against their 'filters' to decide if they want to bid on the ad space or not. While we do a basic review on each site upon sign-up, addressing each site humanly one by one, reading content, making ongoing judgements and assessments of evolving content is obviously very challenging and not scalable for you or for me.

I don't want to judge or comment on the specific sites you've provided, that would be inappropriate, but I am happy to receive anything you send and have the team study it and make decisions. Regardless, I'm happy to improve our site-review teams' criteria and I'd appreciate if you would provide your specific insights into how you see the lines to evaluate acceptable content, etc. Alternatively, I have some recommendations for your organization if you want to be more informative systematically to the greater 'system'.   

Thank you!

Mr.X

My response to Mr.X (text below for easier reading)

Hi Mr.X,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. Let me start off by saying I appreciate you taking the time to look into Sleeping Giants and what we’re about. This is definitely a noisy space, but it’s been my world for 3 years now. I’ve watched a lot of tech execs grapple with the same exact issues and can walk you through it. 

The best way I can explain advertising vs. free speech is to imagine you’re a TV show host and you’re announcing a commercial break. You know, when they say: ’This show is brought to you in part by…” If you choose not to advertise on a TV show, it’s not an attack on their right to free speech. It’s that it doesn’t align with or is inappropriate for your brand. 

The same principle applies to digital advertising. Your customers have asked you to make ad placements on their behalf, at scale. They aren’t looking to see where their ads are being placed because normal people don’t know that websites like OneAngryGame, Infowars and 4Chan exist. I know I never did. 

So what happens when they DO find out their ads are being served on websites like those? Well, since we started Sleeping Giants, 4400+ advertisers have blacklisted Breitbart from their media buy. Brands do not want their ad dollars funding bigotry and hate. Certainly if a brand like YYYYYYYY found out ZZZZZZZ was serving ads alongside anti-Semitic memes and the n-word, they would not be happy if you told them you feel uncomfortable infringing on the Nazi website’s right to free speech. That’s not what they pay you for. 

So when it comes to establishing standards & policies, you want to center them around protecting your customers (the brands you work with).

I’ve given PayPal a pretty hard time over the years, but they’ve actually done a pretty decent job of communicating who gets to stay in their network and who doesn’t. I’d encourage you to check out their statement clarifying their Acceptable Use Policy after the Charlottesville rally in 2017. (A lot of those guys raised money to organize/attend the rally via PayPal. It was an extremely bad look for the company.) 

If you scroll down to the comments, you’ll see I used that statement to call them out on white nationalist groups still using PayPal. (They’ve since been suspended.)

I think this is a really valuable exercise for every tech company to complete. If you get your policies clearly written down in a similar way, it serves as a North Star for you/your team’s decision-making. 

If you have the time & appetite, I’d like to invite you to watch a talk I gave to tech founders on the topic of brand safety. It’s about 30 minutes. I covered a few examples I hope you’ll find useful. https://www.turingfest.com/2019/speakers/nandini-jammi

And finally, yes, I’m open to any and all suggestions you may have for me!

Thanks so much, 

Nandini 

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What should Mr.X do next?

Should they blacklist the website? Should they audit their inventory? Should they call their brand safety/ad verification service for support? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Help keep the conversation going

Is your adtech company or tech platform struggling to make decisions about hate speech, bigotry and misinformation? DM me for an off-the-record chat.