Since the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, a lot of people have done what they can to prevent it from happening again. Tech companies made predictions about where mass riots could happen. By the time these solutions come face to face with a would-be rioter, it is too late.
Many people were radicalized by the conspiracy, hoaxes, and other obvious bullshit that led them to the Capitol's steps in the first place. Even if the Capitol is not targeted again, they can still express their beliefs in a violent way. One player has come up with an ingenious way to stop the conspiracies: targeting the ads that keep them bankrolled.
Check My Ads, a part-consultancy, part-watchdog group that is seeking to quash the business of telling lies, rolled out the pitch this week.
The announcement states that the J6 insurrection was fueled by advertising dollars. The Big Lie superspreaders raked in millions of dollars by ramping up the rage and anger across their websites, but it spilled out into real-world violence. The business model they had at work was what we saw that day.
Digital ads are often similar to the business model fueling the Charlie Kirks and Ben Shapiros of the world. Digital ads don't get routed by people when you read them on a website, which is one issue. They are routed by automated tech. According to a recent report, over $1.6 billion in ad dollars ended up with some sort of misinformation in the past year, because that automated tech diverts ad dollars to the worst parts of the internet. In a perfect world, outlets spreading misinformation will be wiped off the map entirely.
Attacking ads might sound strange, especially when Alex Jones is right there, waiting for you to dunk on him. The Check My Ads team has proof that it works. The group was founded by a woman who gained national attention as part of Sleeping Giants, a then-anonymous account that shamed thousands of brands into pulling their ads from the website. The quality of the Breitbart content is hard to get because the outlet lost most of its ad revenue two months after the campaign started.
Sleeping Giants could work for those who helped fuel the insurrection. Check My Ads published a step-by-step guide for people who want to reach out to OpenX, which is currently funneling its bucks towards the mouths of Dan Bongino and Steve Bannon.
The other half of the Check My Ads operation put it succinctly in a thread on the social networking site. We want to know what's going on. She wrote that it was time to cut them off. Sending an email is the beginning.
