Brand Safety

To create a strong, positive perception of a company, business or corporation, its products and services in consumers'minds is the life-blood of modern capitalism. And as with all aspects of this ideology, it's sucking the blood out of modern society.

What I've described above is called branding, and is achieved by combining lots of elements, like a logo, mission-statement, design, slogans, advertisement and upholding certain themes throughout all marketing communications. When the political campaigns of Obama and Trump communicate "Yes We Can" and "Make America Great Again" respectively, they're working on their personal brands. When Nike tells you to just "Do It", or when Coke wants you to "Have A Smile" while consuming their drink, they're establishing their brands in the subconscious minds of the consumers.

We've stopped being citizens a long time ago; we're now reduced to mere consumers. That's what capitalism wants us to be. No, needs us to be. When corporations suddenly take notice of, and cater to marginalized demographics, if it's by splashing rainbows, expressing support for BLM or casting diverse actors for their films, that's branding. That's capitalism at work, something I wish the political extreme right would get through to their minds, instead of yapping on about some "cultural Marxist" conspiracy spearheaded by George Soros and his shadowy cabal of co-conspirators.

Branding is all around us. As you may know, I'm somewhat of a gamer, and a fan of racing, of going really fast. So naturally I play a lot of racing games, although a lot less now that I'm older and have a family to take care of. I've also reviewed games for years as a freelance writer for mighty publications like PC Gamer and PC Zone. That's how I know that certain car brands have for years resisted their cars being able to take damage in games. It's how I know that meticulous care is taken with the placement of brands and slogans around race tracks, as to assure they're captured by the on-track cameras; the most wanted "slots" are around slow corners where the camera is on your brand for longer than on the fast straights.

It should be concerning to all of us that by now, in this world of late stage capitalism and capitalist realism, that by now we're encouraged to start treating ourselves as a brand. Life as a constant job-interview, where the goal is to "sell yourself" in order to up your "market-value" in the minds of potential consumers. You're not John anymore, you're John Inc. and Betty has become Betty LLC. I've long feared the moment when all human interactions become financial transactions and now, much under the influence of the 24 hour "grind set", that moment has arrived. Of all the things we've offered on the altar of corporate and personal profits, we now offer our humanity after we've already done away with justice, the environment and so on.

In yesterday's post I touched on the reason why Elon Musk won't be changing Twitter's moderation policies any time soon; for Twitter to make money it has to provide a safe space for advertisers. That's brand safety. It's "branding by implication", so to speak. Car brands don't want their advertisement placed next to news about some huge car accident. TV commercials are placed around programming that's friendly to certain brands. And the same goes for online branding and brand safety.

Brand safety is a set of measures that aim to protect the image and reputation of brands from the negative or damaging influence of questionable or inappropriate content when advertising online.

In response to ads being placed next to undesirable content, companies have cut advertising budgets[1] and pulled ads from online advertising and social media platforms.
_{source: Wikipedia}

For this goal, the advertisement industry has come up with thirteen categories to avoid, their own "Dirty Dozen" plus one: Military conflict, obscenity, drugs, tobacco, adult, arms, crime, death/injury, online piracy, hate speech, terrorism, spam/harmful sites and recently they've added fake news. Brands don't generally want to be associated with these categories, which is why they buy ad space from trusted publishers. For Twitter, and other social platforms, to stay a trusted publisher, they'll have to moderate their content. It's that simple. No woke conspiracy, just pure capitalism and brand safety. Elon Musk's decision to keep moderation at current levels is just protecting his investment and profits, and came after Elon Musk says Twitter has had ‘massive’ revenue drop as advertisers pause spending:

Twitter has suffered a “massive drop in revenue” because of advertisers pausing spending on the social media platform, Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Friday without providing numbers.
_{source: CNBC}

So, when Elon Musk tweets that "Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists", he's just upholding his own personal brand while lamenting what he has to do to uphold Twitter's brand. Get it? This man is living proof that there's no such thing as a "meritocracy", and this tweet got hit immediately with added context linking to reporting that show advertisers pause or cancel their ads due to concerns with Twitter content moderation...

I hope that clarifies some of the recent madness around the world's premier private public square. I'm not saying this is all good. I am saying that there's no use whining about "cancel culture" (unless it's part of your brand, like it is with Elon, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson... you know the types) if you're not willing to accept the implications attached to the only solution. If you don't want to have Elon Musk or any other private entity decide what you're allowed to say, the solution is to make it a real public square, to make it publicly (government) owned. Or join us here in the "wild west" of blockchain-based platforms where everyone owns their own space.

Now, Musk is going to hold to what I've described here, OR Twitter is going to become 4Chan, which will be the end of the platform as we know it. Well, as you know it, because although I do have a handle set up, I've only used it to get notifications on airdrops; you won't catch me in that madhouse. So, watch the above linked video as well, with a warning if this second scenario plays out, and what that could mean even for the upcoming mid-term elections. Musk is quite literally out of his dept here.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy!