WATCH: Walmart Leverages Tech Censorship For Lower Ad Rates According to Arkansas YouTuber
Tom Pappert
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During an appearance on the H3 podcast, the famous YouTuber revealed a personal conversation he had with a contact in Walmart advertising who said they do not care about big tech censorship, but are looking forward to the lower advertising rates they expect to pay as a result.
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter have all faced some extent of an advertiser boycott, with the blame levied on users who are deemed not to be “advertiser friendly.”
This has been YouTube’s excuse to demonetize popular right wing channels, and likely went into consideration for Twitter when they summarily banned Infowars, and Facebook and Instagram last week when they went a step further and said they would ban any user who so much as posted a link to Infowars video content or Alex Jones.
Boogie2988, a YouTube streamer who became famous for his parody videos, video game live streams, and for chronicling his weight loss journey, offered a nuanced take during the podcast.
“I know a lot of people that work at Walmart,” Boogie said on the podcast, “And I know people that work in advertising at Walmart, and somebody from Walmart, and I won’t say which person specifically, said to me ‘We don’t really care about any of that censorship crap, we don’t really care about any of the drama.'”
He continued, quoting his conversation with an anonymous Walmart advertising employee, “‘We care about lowering our bids, so we’re going to do a six months or one year hiatus, and when we come back, we’re going to have much lower bids.'”
Was watching clips from @Boogie2988's appearance on the @h3h3productions podcast and I think what he said about advertisers leveraging censorship disputes to lower their rates is really important to hear. Full clip: https://t.co/BGoqw6Ws0y pic.twitter.com/3KjtAfhkpO
— Justin Whang 🐙 (@JustinWhang) May 5, 2019
If true, it would seem the exodus of large advertisers from big tech platforms, and the sacrifice of many large content creators that followed, may be driven almost entirely by finance.
If YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are perceived as dangerous places to advertise, the cost of doing so on the platforms would naturally decrease exponentially.
As Twitter user Justin Whang wrote succinctly, “Advertisers played YouTube like a fiddle.”
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