Tag: advertising

‘It’s the First Amendment, Stupid’: Federal Judge Slams Florida for Threatening TV Stations

Floridians this fall will vote on a constitutional “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion.” So authorities decided to interfere with free speech in an attempt to thwart voters from limiting the government’s right to interfere in reproductive decisions. The state threatened TV stations with criminal penalties for running an ad supporting the abortion initiative (known as Amendment 4).

A federal judge isn’t impressed. “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” wrote U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker in an October 17 opinion.

Walker temporarily enjoined Florida from attempting to censor the ad, granting the temporary restraining order request sought by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group sponsoring Amendment 4.

“Importantly, this is a temporary restraining order, which is not generally appealable,” noted legal writer Chris Gender, author of the Law Dork newsletter, on BlueSky. “The preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for Oct.. 29, and the state could appeal from that.”

Florida has been pulling out all the stops to try and stop Amendment 4 from passing. The state has been using taxpayer money to run ads in opposition to the amendment while trying to prohibit people from seeing an ad in support of it.

The ad in question is “political speech—speech at the core of the First Amendment,” notes Judge Walker. “And just this year, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the bedrock principle that the government cannot do indirectly what it cannot do directly by threatening third parties with legal sanctions to censor speech it disfavors. The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false.'”

This is the rub of the state’s argument against Floridians Protecting Freedom’s ad. It features a woman called Caroline who was diagnosed with brain cancer while pregnant with her second child. “The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” she says. “Florida has now banned abortion, even in cases like mine,” she ads.

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Heinz Pulls Two ‘Racist’ Ads After Backlash

In a world where everything is racist, you can’t have a black person in an ad for tomato ketchup without legions of snowflakes complaining it perpetuates negative stereotypes and demanding that it be cancelled.

Ketchup kings Heinz folded like a soggy burger bun when they became the target of the angry puritan mob, pulling not one but two adverts after some complaints, likely mostly from white people with deep set guilt complexes.

The first ad, for a ‘family size’ pasta sauce, appeared on the London Underground and depicted a black woman getting married to a white man, with family members also in the picture.

At the meal they are eating the pasta with the sauce.

Seems diverse, right? Wrong.

Because there is no ‘black father’ present it’s actually deeply racist… or something.

It’s “shocking” that there are only two black people(?) out of five in the ad.

The lighter skinned people are looking at the black girl stuffing her face with pasta in a disparaging way, so it’s even more racist… or something.

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Florida Senator Sues State Over Anti-Marijuana Ad, Alleging Unconstitutional Use Of Taxpayer Dollars Ahead Of Legalization Vote

A Florida Democratic senator is suing the state for using taxpayer dollars to fund a recent ad that he says unconstitutionally attempts to influence voters to oppose a marijuana legalization initiative that will be on the ballot next month.

Sen. Jason Pizzo (D), who is expected to run for governor in 2026, announced on Friday that he would be seeking an injunction against the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) over the ad, which warns against driving under the influence of cannabis and then makes a contested claim that “DUI crashes increase in states with legalized marijuana, putting everyone at risk.”

Making such an assertion in an ad supported by tax dollars amounts to “political messaging” and therefore represents an unconstitutional use of appropriations authority, the senator says. The campaign behind the Florida legalization initiative has also sent cease and desist letters to 54 TV stations that have aired the public service announcement.

“For years, our state has wasted precious time, and many millions, peddling divisive and unproductive nonsense, while flouting practical solutions for critical needs,” Pizzo said.

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Kamala campaign BUSTED for taking out Google ads with FAKE headlines to deceive voters into believing positive coverage

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has been making fake news headlines for Google search ads for readers to believe more positive coverage of the Democrat nominee. According to a report from Axios, the Harris campaign has been buying Google search ads with fake headlines to make it appear as though news outlets are giving glowing coverage for Harris. The Trump-Vance campaign is not running these types of ads.  

The deceptive advertisements can be seen on the Harris for President Google Ads Center that look like news reports, but with fake headlines. One example from the UK Independent states, “VP Harris Protects Democracy – Trump Defends Jan 6 Comments.” 

The ad has the sponsorship label, and is paid for by the Harris for President campaign. Other news outlets whose brands were being used in this way included NPR, the AP, The Guardian, USA Today, PBS, CNN, CBS News, Time and others. 

Axios reported, “An ad featuring a link to an NPR story reads, ‘Harris Will Lower Health Costs,’ with supporting text that says, ‘Kamala Harris will lower the cost of high-quality affordable health care.'”

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The GARMs Race: The House Moves Forward With its Investigation of Blacklisting Company

We have been discussing media rating systems being used to target advertisers and revenue sources for certain cites and companies. NewsGuard and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) have been criticized as the most sophisticated components of a modern blacklisting system targeting conservative or dissenting voices. I recently had a series of exchanges with NewsGuard after a critical column.  Now, the House Judiciary Committee under Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is moving forward in demanding documents and records from leading companies utilizing the GARM system, a company that I have previously criticized. It is a welcomed effort for anyone who is concerned over the use of these blacklisting systems to curtail free speech. However, time is of the essence.

The demand to preserve evidence went to various companies, including Adidas, American Express, Bayer, BP, Carhartt, Chanel, CVS and General Motors.

In my new book, I discuss the rating systems as a new and insidious form of blacklisting. Notably, Elon Musk has now filed a lawsuit against GARM and may be able to get more evidence out in discovery on the operations of this outfit.

It is an effort to strangle the financial life out of sites by targeting their donors and advertisers.  This is where the left has excelled beyond anything that has come before in speech crackdowns.

Years ago, I wrote about the Biden administration supporting efforts like the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) to discourage advertisers from supporting certain sites. All of the 10 riskiest sites targeted by the index were popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. That included Reason.org and a group of libertarian and conservative law professors who simply write about cases and legal controversies. GDI warned advertisers against “financially supporting disinformation online.” At the same time, HuffPost, a far-left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation.

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World Federation of Advertisers shuts down GARM project after Elon Musk, Rumble sue over ad boycott

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media has decided to “discontinue activities” after a lawsuit filed against them by Elon Musk’s X and the Rumble platform. The group was under fire for antitrust violations after they had orchestrated ad boycotts of both platforms using their monopoly. 

The House Judiciary said this was a “Big win for the First Amendment” and a “Big win for oversight.” The House Committee brought questions about GARM, their monopoly on advertisers, and their use of that monopoly to influence online speech to a hearing. 

Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski simply wanted to know “what are they hiding?” He has been forthcoming in discussing the ad boycott of his platform.

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Censorship and the Corruption of Advertising

The most powerful companies in the world have united against free speech, and they’ve deployed your tax dollars to fund their mission.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee released a report on the little-known Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and its pernicious promotion of censorship. GARM is a branch of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), a global association representing over 150 of the world’s biggest brands, including Adidas, British Petroleum, Nike, Mastercard, McDonald’s, Walmart, and Visa. 

The WFA represents 90% of global advertising spending, accounting for almost $1 trillion per year. But instead of helping its clients reach the broadest market share possible, the WFA has appointed itself a supranational force for censorship. 

Rob Rakowitz and the Mission to Supplant the First Amendment

Rob Rakowitz, the leader of the WFA, holds a particular disdain for free speech. He has derided the First Amendment and the “extreme global interpretation of the US Constitution,” which he dismissed as “literal law from 230 years ago (made by white men exclusively).” 

Rakowitz led GARM’s effort to boycott advertising on Twitter in response to Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company. GARM bragged that it was “taking on Elon Musk” and driving the company’s advertising income “80% below revenue forecasts.”

Rakowitz also championed the unsuccessful effort to have Spotify deplatform Joe Rogan after he expressed skepticism for young, healthy men taking the Covid vaccine. Rakowitz attempted to intimidate Spotify executives by demanding to hold a meeting with them and a team that he said represented “P&G [Proctor and Gamble], Unilever, Mars,” and five advertising conglomerates. When a Spotify employee said he would meet with Rakowitz but not his censorsial consortium, Rakowitz forwarded the message to his partner, writing “this man needs a smack” for denying his demands. 

The WFA extended its efforts to direct manipulation of the news market. Through a partnership with the taxpayer-funded Global Disinformation Index, GARM launched “exclusion lists,” which created de facto boycotts from advertising on “risky” sites, which it described as those that showed the “greatest level of disinformation risk.” These lists included the New York Post, RealClearPolitics, the Daily Wire, TheBlaze, Reason Magazine, and The Federalist. Left-wing outlets, such as the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed News, were placed on the list of “Least risky sites,” which facilitated increased advertising revenue. 

GARM, the WFA, and Rakowitz is the latest scandal demonstrating the destruction of our liberties at the hands of consolidated power. Like the Trusted News Initiative or the Biden White House’s censorship efforts, the aim is to remove all sources of dissent to pave the way for the further corporatization of the oligarchy that increasingly replaces our republic. 

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Apple APOLOGISES For ‘Soul Crushing’ iPad Ad

Apple has issued an apology following massive backlash to an ad for the new iPad Pro that crushes physical creative tools in an industrial press.

As we highlighted, the commercial shows the device obliterating items such as musical instruments, paint and cameras, then unveiling an iPad as the replacement for everything creative.

Following an overwhelmingly negative response from viewers who branded the ad ‘soul crushing’, Apple issued a statement.

“Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad,’ the company claimed, going on to admit “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”

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Unbelievable: New AI Ad Will Make You Question Reality

Social media is going wild over a woman advertising body wipes for men.

The only thing is — everything about the woman, from her voice, to her eyes to her hair, are entirely AI generated.

In a head-spinning example of a new AI advertising platform known as Arcads, which creates ads using “AI actors,” a woman appears as though she’s delivering a social media lecture on male hygiene.

However, it soon becomes clear she’s reading a pre-written script pushing a product, and her eyes don’t exactly match up with the cadence of the words she’s saying.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” wrote one X user.

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TV drug ads are not about selling more pharmaceuticals; they’re about Big Pharma BUYING OFF the media

All those obnoxious pharmaceutical commercials that get laced into just about every television and cable “news” program that airs in the United States these days might seem like they are simply about selling more drugs and getting people hooked, but Big Pharma’s true agenda is actually much more sinister than that.

Former pharmaceutical industry insider Calley Means spoke to Tucker Carlson recently about what he described as an “open secret” within the pharmaceutical industry. In essence, Means says that Big Pharma is buying the media with all those ads, which allows the drug industry to control what gets broadcasted on television and across the internet.

“You’re saying that pharma buys TV spots not to convince people to ask for specific drugs from their physicians, but to subvert the news business?” Carlson asked Means during the segment.

“This is an open secret working for pharma,” Means responded. “The kind of silly ads you see between the news breaks, the point of that is not – it’s largely to impact the customer. But pharma has already got that. They’ve already bought off the doctors. They’re good on that.”

“The news ad spending from pharma is a public relations lobbying tactic, essentially to buy off the news,” Means continued. “They’re not investigating pharma. The news has become basically a referee. That you are a terrible anti-science luddite for asking why the shots that we require our kids to get, that fundamentally by their own advertising change the immune system of that child for life.”

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