Yes, this sounds confusing, but it actually is not. It started with a simple article on the BBC, the article ‘Chloe Khan and Jodie Marsh rapped by watchdog’ caught me by surprise. The idea was given to me “The Advertising Standards Authority has named and shamed four influencers it said repeatedly failed to disclose when their Instagram posts were actually advertisements”, now I do not are about influencers, I tend to stay away from them and I do not use instagram. But the people that do follow these influencer tend to do so for very specific reasons. It comes to blows (to coin a phrase) when we compare this to Twitter. So when we see these two tweets, we do see the ‘promoted’ mention at the VERY bottom and these pages go towards photo’s and text surrounded by massive amounts of advertisement, some of these providers will try to get one photo per page with a next mention and the next page will show you even more advertisements. So is this not deceptive? What is the setting of the Advertising Standards Authority at that point? Is the creation of what I call ‘click bitches’ not deceptive? This has been going on for years, the in game advertisements on Android, and iOS devices have all kinds of deceptions, what have they achieved there?
And now we get to the first part, when is perception the brand. What is the perception? Are the tweets safe? Is the word ‘promoted’ enough? When we look at “Promoted Tweets are ideal when you want to increase your Twitter audience reach and engagement. When you have a big announcement, a new blog post, a marketing campaign, or an upcoming event you’d like to reach more people than you would organically, Promoted Tweets is the better strategy. This is because your Promoted Tweets will appear in users’ live feeds and search results” we see and accept that, yet when we see promotion emphasised by large breasts, is it advertisement, or deceptive conduct? Some people might not be able to tell the difference, and I believe that it becomes more and more about the ambiguity of perception. So, as such is the ‘shaming of people like Chloe Khan and Jodie Marsh warranted? As the Advertising Standards Authority is failing people, millions of people on Twitter, on iOS and Android games, is going after smaller players not merely hypocritical? As such, is the advertisement of 23 camping pictures deceptive? Perhaps the overload of advertisements is merely a side effect? As such, does the inability to act against Twitter, Facebook and Mobiles games not merely make the act against the influencers slightly overkill? And all this is before we take notice of “The ASA was responding to the #filterdrop campaign that called for it to be compulsory for influencers to state when they use a beauty filter to promote skincare or cosmetics”, this is what magazines have been doing for years, where was the Advertising Standards Authority then?
It all takes another turn when we take a look at the freedom of speech, this is shown in the last tweet.
First of all, the person gives the names and they are seemingly correct, but it is “Given that anti-rationality, anti civil rights (anti-woke) channel GB News is losing major advertisers already, due to the crap they are peddling, suggest some alternative advertisers” that makes me wonder. You see filtered information is handed to us by the bulk of the news channels. The evasion of news regarding Houthi missile and drone attacks against Saudi civilian targets is the most visible one, but not the only one. If the left filters to the left, is the right not allowed to filter to the right? And so far I saw three GB news articles on Youtube there was a view I might not agree with, but should they be attacked as such? So when we are given “I’m excited to tackle difficult subjects with voices you haven’t heard before”, so what is the problem here? And GB News matters, you see perception comes in two sizes, the perception we see and detect and the one that sneaks up unnoticed, but they are both filter forms that aid the perception that the transmitter wants to give us, so where these advertisers leaving through peer pressure, or is there a case of actual evidence? Consider that Andrew Neil has been working as a journalist since 1973, meaning he optionally has more experience than the sum of some news channel cast members. In addition, when we see “due to the crap they are peddling”, do you think that other breakfast TV shows are not peddling crap? Is one side better than the other? No, I do not think so, but there is a chance that if both exist I might get a decent balanced central view. In the end this is not merely about the news, you see if it was about the news, people would simply not watch it and if no one watches it the channel dies, but there is a larger need, the need for advertisers and there is the crux, saturation demands that advertisers choose where they are and they are wherever the masses are, the Express gives us “Despite the complaints from some viewers regarding the sound, the show pulled in thousands of viewers as according to BARB data, 164,500 people tuned in to watch between 7pm and 11pm on Sunday night”, which accompanies ‘Launch show beats BBC and Sky despite ‘technical difficulties’’ and that would scare any news channel, the fact that there might be a market for GB News and that is where these advertisers are soon to be, where do I get the best reach? It is a business decision and that decision is what other media fear, Fox grew to greatness and the news channels are scared of that, and whilst they TOO adhere to shareholders, stake holders and advertisers. The bulk of the advertisers can only afford one place, not all places and that is the fear of filtered information. The news is too much on shareholders and stake holders, all whilst the advertisers play (at times) a dubious role in this setup. Am I a fan of GB News? I do not know, I have not been able to make up my mind yet. I get it, a 24 hour channel needs it human interest stories, but when I see news of a cremated cat, I wonder who will cover the Yemen events. Consider that the BBC gave us on the 8th of March “The UN says the war has caused created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and caused an estimated 233,000 deaths”, yet the UN gave us on December 1st 2020 “UN humanitarian office puts Yemen war dead at 233,000”, so do you think that in 4 months in slaughterhouse Yemen ZERO deaths occurred over a period of 4 months, or is someone not doing their job? And when we realise the answer to that, do you really think I give a toss on the premise of a cremated cat from either GB News, Fox News, CNN, BBC, Channel 7, Channel 9, Sky News, ITV, CNN, Euronews, or CNBC? You have got to be joking. Does it make GB News bad, lousy or useless? No, but they are slightly to the right and the left does not tolerate any channel on that side of the aisle, they thought that Fox News was enough, but if Andrew Neil gets his way, the European channels will get nervous soon enough and no matter what the advertisers do, when someone bails ship others will try to get a slightly sweeter deal, when that comes out GB News will get its share of advertisers, I have no doubt, what remains is the perception created and it takes a little more time to see how GB News will fare and how the people will perceive it.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 