“Advertisers have a first amendment right to choose who and what they want to be associated with. Advertisers should not have to subsidize viewpoints they don’t agree with – in fact requiring so would be unAmerican and unconstitutional. Elon Musk and X executives have the right, protected by the First Amendment, to say what they want online, even when it’s inaccurate, and advertisers have the right to keep their ads away from it. It’s as simple as that.
“Prominent voices like Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino want you to think that if a brand chooses to avoid sponsoring a website, the website’s First Amendment rights are being violated, and it is being censored. That’s not how the First Amendment works, and that’s not how business works. At Check My Ads, we believe platforms and the press have a first amendment right to editorial choices but here’s the thing – those editorial choices have business consequences. Forcing brands to sponsor all websites is laughably anti-free speech. Brands don’t want to be associated with ideas and activities that cause violence, distrust, or social damage. If their display ad shows up on a website that causes harm (like a laundry detergent ad showing up by an ISIS training video), that’s a brand safety issue and the idea that we should force advertisers to advertise alongside any and all content is nonsensical.”
- Statement attributable to Sarah Kay Wiley, Director of Policy of Check My Ads (First Amendment scholar and lawyer)
More on the Global Alliance for Responsible Media:
- GARM is an industry association representing a majority of the world’s major advertisers which came together in response to the brand safety crises the advertisers were experiencing. Last month, political pundit Ben Shapiro railed against the effort at a House Judiciary Committee hearing targeting GARM. In written testimony before the Committee, Shapiro claims the group’s brand safety standards concerning “harassment,” “misinformation,” or “hate speech” are “subjective” and “highly partisan” and calls on Congress to investigate “censorship cartels like GARM.”
- GARM works continuously to make sure its guidelines are reasonable to major advertisers. Check My Ads has aggressively pushed them to set standards faster. And for years, they have pushed back. ‘This is a process,’ they continued to say. ‘We have to make sure that our members are accounted for. We have to carefully make sure the language is right for everyone.’