It's Not About Brand Safety, It's About Blackmail.

If you want to understand where the zeitgeist is headed in Silicon Valley, you have to study The Information , the clubby, well-sourced favorite read of Valley oligarchs. The publication made its reputation by commanding lofty subscription prices back when nearly all tech news was free; it now enjoys multiple revenue streams, including advertising, events, and a “pro” version for $750-$999 a year. I’ve been a subscriber (of the “regular” variety) for years, and I probably always will be.

That said, every so often The Information runs a story that is so clearly aligned with the interests of the plutocracy it begs to be called out. “Advertisers Retreat From Social Media Policing ” is its latest entry in this category. The piece opens with a stupendous straw man: “For several years, a favorite tactic of progressives agitating against social media and conservative news outlets has been pressuring marketers to pull their ads.”

Um, no. I’ve worked with countless brands on the issue of safety (we practically invented the concept at Federated by bringing ads to blogging), and to a one, advertisers are not concerned about “progressive agitation.” They’re concerned about their ads appearing next to hate speech, terrorism, or pornography (all of which are ascendant on X, for what it’s worth).

But while those concerns remain, it is possible that some brands will respond to the harassment, bullying, and threats of tech robber barons, emboldened as they are by a Faustian partnership with our newly elected Troll in Chief.? (One reason my colleagues in marketing stayed off of Twitter back in the day was because they were terrified of becoming the subject of a negative tweet from Trump.)

In any case, The Information’s article goes on to explain that Dentsu, a major agency, decided to pull back from a brand safety project, leading to the piece’s inevitable conclusion that “efforts around ‘brand safety’ have become a political liability.”

That’s one way to put it. Another is that “brand safety” has been code-swapped by Valley bullies to mean “censorship of my right to take your money and have more power,” and the plutocrats are not having it. Tech’s loudest voices in the room – Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and their army of X quislings –? have decided that the best way to woo advertisers back to X (and to right-wing podcasts they favor) is to sue marketers into submission based on “conspiracy to restrict trade.”? In response, TechDirt’s Mike Masnick obliterates the tactic’s logic , but he makes one crucial mistake: He employs logic.

If logic mattered, then a natural conclusion to The Information’s trend-spottery of “advertisers retreating from social media policing” would be a marked increase in advertising support for news outlets, perhaps the single largest group of publishers impacted by advertisers’ brand safety concerns* . But no, that never comes up. In fact, the piece is remarkably fact-free, relying instead on anecdotal quotes and oh-by-the-ways that, taken together, seems to wish itself true. And that truth – surprise! – is that the oligarchs’ bullying tactics are starting to work.

With this piece, Elon and crew have the perfect headline to bandy about on X and to forward to their favorite targets on Madison Avenue and Capital Hill. What, you’re not advertising on X because of “brand safety”? Well, here’s a piece from The Information that proves you’re doing it all wrong. And oh, by the way, if you don’t start advertising with us, we’ll not only sue you, but we’ll also intimidate you publicly. Save your documents, here comes the subpeona!

Huzzah! Of course, there is one brand-safe news outlet where advertisers can bask in the glow of oligarchic ring kissing: It’s called The Information and they’d be happy to work with you .