I have to wonder how much this was intentional and how much was very poor communication.
My initial response was that it's a horrible shakedown, but on reflection, I wonder if it really was just Saliterman acting in both Everytown's and his own best interest. If it's a common tactic for the NRA to advertise where possible during anti-gun media, and if it's something Snapchat does not involve itself in mediating for journalistic purposes, then it's entirely possible the team that offered Everytown the free media deal inadvertently set them up to have the NRA run messages during their event, and Saliterman was trying to come across as "hey, I would have advised you against this for this exact reason, as the NRA is trying to get in on your ad spots and that's not something we can really prevent."
How you interpret it is probably highly dependent on your opinions of the companies involved as well as how it is presented here. I only wonder because it seems like it's in vogue to call out bad behavior of tech companies right now, and that undoubtedly leads to at least some articles that purposefully misinterpret events to convey that story.
To be clear, this story certainly makes it sound like a shakedown, and it very well may be. I have no idea if that's what happened here, and I doubt at this point we'll ever know know that it's in the realm of PR spin for damage control, but given that both parties refused to comment, I think chances are high that we're getting the author's assumptions rather than something reasonably close to the truth, whatever that may be.
> the NRA is trying to get in on your ad spots and that's not something we can really prevent
It's their company and they can decline to take ads if they would serve the company interest. This guy put the ad division's interest ahead of the company and hurt Snapchat's reputation in the process.
Also his phrasing was "we are talking with the NRA" whereas it would probably have been more explicitly "the NRA has approached us" if they were merely reacting. And again the reaction could simply be "no".
Why is it against the company interest? Because the ad division could literally target every political story the news division puts out as a target for competitive ads, thus forcing content partners to pay up lest they create a platform for their opponents. Thus most would pull out of the stories (as Everytown did) and ultimately decline to cooperate with Snapchat news at all. Sounds like this guy was sabotaging the story out of spite.
> This guy put the ad division's interest ahead of the company and hurt Snapchat's reputation in the process.
I already noted below that I believe this to be the most likely scenario, except it's also in Snapchat's short-term interest, which is why he probably got away with it, at least until now.
That said, the quotes are fairly sparse, and possibly out of context, so I'm hesitant to attribute too much intent to how they are presented in this article.
Any ethical publisher will go out of their way to ensure total separation between editorial (or content creation in the case of social publishers like Snapchat) and advertising. The advertising division typically isn't even allowed to know what kind of content is being run, and the content creators aren't allowed to know what kind of ads are being run.
The practice is often metaphorically referred to as "church and state".
Um, I can perhaps understand how this is the ethical path, but is it really all that common? Google AdSense is explicitly designed to run ads based on the content, and Facebook ad campaigns are precisely targeted to the subject matter. Furthermore, I would honestly prefer to see ads that are relevant to things I would be interested in, if only to have ads served in English, much less coordinated with my hobbies!
Were I the NRA, I would definitely pay a lot more, have better conversion rates, and have happier ad viewers if I could target ads at Snapchat users who talk about guns.
The ad department isn't supposed to influence how things are covered, but they very commonly know what's coming up precisely for this reason, to find advertisers who want to run adjacent ads.
So that part is normal. But sabatoging the subject of editorial with ad content is definitely not normal, and this ad rep's behavior would be totally out of line at any traditional media outlet for that reason.
1. Snapchat tries to advise Everytown that ad slots are open and the NRA is likely to capture some of them
2. Everytown can't afford to buy up all the slots at the quoted price
(So far, I think both Everytown and Snapchat are still ok here. No harm done.)
3. Snapchat representative, Saliterman, ends the running email conversation with an email saying this: "To be clear, the story has the potential to be bought by any advertiser, including the NRA, which will enable the advertiser to run three 10-sec video ads within the story."
(At this point, if I were in Everytown's shoes, I would now fully believe Snapchat was acting against my interests. They're not even trying to work with me any more.)
Why didn't Everytown call Snapchat's bluff? Run the campaign, not buy the ad slots, let Snapchat do what they may.
They could have screen-grabbed the resulting campaign and used it to generate _massive_ publicity.
Snapchat would have had huge egg on their face.
I can think of Everytown not wanting to make a spectacle of the families who had suffered such loss. But with advance notice maybe they could have gone to the families and asked politely? It seems likely some would have agreed to let this happen and then fight the NRA on the outcome.
(If I were the NRA, as well, I would be _furious_ at Snapchat for ill-using my ad spend in this way.)
That's a good question. Given that Everytown refused to comment now, to me that either points to them valuing their relationship with Snapchat over the perceived benefit from speaking out, or this not being a very accurate portrayal of the events, and they know enough to know that it's not clear that Snapchat was in the wrong and they don't want to be embroiled in the circus that would result.
Everytown did not refuse to comment; they did not respond to multiple requests for comment. There is a huge difference between the two.
Several years ago, I became embroiled in a local controversy. A journalist reached out to me via Facebook messages. As she was not one of my friends, the message went into the abyss. When the story hit her publication it contained the same "Greg Hluska did not respond to a request for comment."
I'm not sure Snapchat would have egg on its face in the scenario you propose.
Maybe there shouldn't be ad space in these types of campaigns, but if they have do have ad slots, anyone can buy them, and I can totally see the NRA doing that.
I'm almost positive there are regulations of some sort for ads on over-the-air (broadcast) networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, The CW), as their are specific rules applies for their use of public frequencies. I have no idea exactly how that applies to advertising for broadcast networks. I doubt it affects Snapchat in any way.
Only in regards to political candidates, who must be given reasonable commercial access; otherwise, nets are free to refuse to sell ad space to other entities, including political groups (e.g., CBS v DNC).
I think that's probably bullshit. Snapchat can restrict the ads they show as much as they want, as long as they're not discriminating against any protected classes of people.
Yea, I probably would have leaned toward calling the bluff. Organizations like Everytown use the NRA as a boogeyman in enough of their campaigns that it's almost assured that they'd get a ton of earned media out of this.
C'mon, this isn't a completely user-driven process here. Everytown was engaged with the editorial division. Snapchat can clearly control what ads appear where. The ad division has taken something that the editorial division was doing, and engaged in a bit of light blackmail.
This conversation is the email equivalent of "Hey, this is a really nice shop you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it. I'm not saying that anything is going to happen to it, but if you pay me some money, I'll do what I can to ensure nothing happens". It's just missing the pinstripe suit and the accent.
Here's the thing: it doesn't matter that Snapchat's internal divisions are at odds. 'Snapchat' was proactively working with a client and had organised a fee waiver, and then 'Snapchat' demanded blood money. Internal politics are Snapchat's problem, not their clients'. Letting them off the hook on this one merely gives them leeway for their broken internal promises.
This is all independent of the actual moral issues. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, but I'd be just as disgusted if Snapchat had organised to do an editorial with a Christian group, then "what a nice shop"'d them saying 'a hostile atheist group could buy ads'.
> The ad division has taken something that the editorial division was doing, and engaged in a bit of light blackmail.
Sure, that's definitely how it was presented. I'm just saying that we've been given a story, and very little to back it up. I'm not sure where these emails are they are referring to, and if it's possible to corroborate the story, but I think it's worth noting how little sources were cited, and how we got snippets of sentences, not even a single full email. Neither Snapchat nor Everytown are on record in the article either. Do I believe there's some truth to the story? Yes, and my other comments go into detail on that, but I don't think we should be immediately believing everything presented here without corroboration of some sort, just because it fits our current worldview.
I just can't see how your explanation of "Maybe his hands are tied" plays out in the real world. It beggars belief that the editorial staff have absolutely no way of controlling advertising on the things that they run. If their advertising department really does have such brutal control, then Snapchat deserves to get a bit of a grubby reputation over it.
I'm also not sure what kind of context would cast opening with 'we are also talking to the NRA about running ads within the story' in a good light. That's presented as a direct quote, not an inference.
If tech.mic is inventing things out of whole cloth here, then Snapchat has grounds for a libel suit.
> I just can't see how your explanation of "Maybe his hands are tied" plays out in the real world.
I don't think that's a good characterization of my position.
> I'm also not sure what kind of context would cast opening with 'we are also talking to the NRA about running ads within the story' in a good light. That's presented as a direct quote, not an inference.
And quotes have never been presented out of context before? All I'm saying is that in a story where both sides have not released any sort of statement clarifying the situation or their position, and there are just emails to go by, I would feel more comfortable if I was able to see the full email when presented with the scenario in question, rather than quotes taken out of the email and presented in the narrative of the article.
> If tech.mic is inventing things out of whole cloth here, then Snapchat has grounds for a libel suit.
That's not the only option though. It could very well be a fairly ambiguous chain of emails, and rational people might disagree on how to interpret them. I don't like having that chance denied me, nor being told how to interpret the situation through limited releases of information.
Edit: See https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/01/leaked-emails-put-spotligh... for Snapchat's statement. It's along the lines of what I figured it would be in my first comment, but that's an obvious way to reply whether true or not, and as I noted, at this point it's all in the hands of Pr departments.
I mean division and policy wise. I'm sure most media organizations vet certain ads during certain broadcasts to prevent issues like this, but I also think that's something they may have learned the hard way. That there's a separation between divisions and one is prevented from interfering with the other in certain ways that are too rigid isn't super hard for me to believe, but neither is someone playing up that rigidity to their own benefit.
Personally, I think the most likely scenario is a little of both. Policies existed, but management would obviously have stepped in if they were alerted, but someone used the policies for personal gain within the company by quoting them and figured they could fall back on them if called out on it by management. If that's the case, the bad PR this may result in may mean that protection is moot. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as Saliterman's actions may have been poorly thought out, and traded a small short-term company (and personal) gain for a much greater longer-term risk (which we might be seeing now).
And surely they could just make a call to not run ads against a community/non-profit story?
Is it not unlike Microsoft donating product as sponsorship? (e.g., $100k non-profit sponsorship turns out to be in-kind provision of MS Office licenses.) That's often viewed critically by many on HN.
To be fair, the NRA is a non-profit and does have a significant interest in gun safety. Their approach to the problem is different, but every bit as valid as a gun control group. It would actually be disingenuous to not allow the NRA a seat at the table.
Running an ad from Glock during the event -- now that would problably be a bit ridiculous.
> Politically they "have to" align to gun safety, because who doesn't like "safety"
NRA membership is large enough that they also conform to similar values as the general public.
As such, they also want weapons to be as safe as possible, while still remaining effective weapons.
An anti-gun member of the public doesn't want guns to be 'weapons', they want them to be 'hobby tools' which would allow you to compromise effectiveness to an extreme just to get safety.
To me the anti-gun lobby is disingenuous by framing gun ownership as a "hobby". Why in the world would there be a constitutional amendment about a hobby? This is like writing a constitution where the 2nd line talks about the rights to own basketballs.
The question the rest of the world asks is why a country would unquestionably abide to a 200 year old piece of paper, whereas the rest of the worlds countries are old enough to understand that things become obsolete.
But I guess it's the same with religion, and that's global.
Because you're dealing with sensitive subject matter. Many news sites switch off or minimise advertising on controversial stories. There's no reason Snapchat can't do the same.
It makes no difference one way or the other. The idea is that customer A doesn't want their campaign paired with ads from customer B. I don't care whether they're right or wrong in feeling that way -- they clearly do feel that way. So if you do it anyway, you are absolutely making a clear choice that you favor customer B.
That's my only point. There's no way to abstain and keep the goodwill of everyone.
To be honest, this is standard operating practice for almost every advertising venue.
If you work at Amazon and want to show Amazon ads at the top of the page, whenever a user searches for eBay, Google will happily let Amazon do that. If eBay wants to prevent it, they need to pay money go secure the advertising spot on "eBay" search results. Ditto for Windows/Mac, BMW/Mercedes, etc etc.
At its foundation, advertising spots are content-agnostic. Anyone is able to buy advertising slots on any page, and as long as everyone follows the rules, whoever has the best bid*click-through-rate will win. And to be honest, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to run a business that's funded almost entirely by advertising revenues.
Not exactly. Google orders and displays advertisements based on expected value (to Google). Then the winner of the slot pays the lowest market-winning price.
Overly simplistic example: eBay bids $1 max and Amazon bids $2 max. People searching for eBay have a 10% probability of clicking on an eBay ad and a 2% probability of clicking on an Amazon ad.
Expected value to google:
Ebay - $1 * 10% = $0.10 EV max
Amazon - $2 * 2% = $0.04 EV max
Ebay is displayed even with a lower bid because the expected value of the display is higher. The bid is never adjusted -- eBay is specific about its bid or its maximum bid and the market of expected value decides who is shown. Amazon could just as easily bid $5.01 and show up. And when the ad is clicked, if Amazon is the only bidder at $2, then Ebay would pay $.50 for that click because that is the lowest bid that wins the position using the EV.
To apply this to the Snapchat Conversation -- One might expect if Snapchat operated this way, then its probably fair to assume that EveryTown would have had a much higher relevancy score than NRA, so should have been able to win the campaign for much lower $$. But in paid placement like this, everyone is paying for placement not for performance. It is not an EV market. Hence the dilemma.
I work at Google. I pretty sure what I said before is true, bids are adjusted based on quality and relevance to the search query, not just predicted click trough rate.
Also this does not apply to snapchat, because afaik they do brand advertising based on impressions (CPM) and not clicks (CPC).
That's not even remotely true. There are lots of situations and content types that are filtered or blocked by most advertising companies. I couldn't advertise a porn site when people search for "hacker news" on google, for example.
I'm glad you are making an effort to be honest, thank you. However that is really too simplistic.
This is not competing retailers, it's people fighting over matters of life and death and they will use any tactic against each other no matter how distasteful because they believe the end justifies the means.
Clearly any media company has to carefully weigh controversial issues from different perspectives. Making money, preserving the integrity and their brand, potential bad press or defecting customers, etc.
Often there is no simple rule. A judgement call has to be made factoring in what's best for company overall and if we're lucky maybe integrity is mentioned by someone along the way.
> A judgement call has to be made factoring in what's best for company overall and if we're lucky maybe integrity is mentioned by someone along the way.
I'm pro-gun, and have given money to the NRA, and I'd be upset if snapchat wouldn't sell ad-space to the Brady Campaign during an NRA-sponsored event like if the 1000-person shoot had been captured using Snapchat.
I think it's a basic moral standing that whenever someone is saying something I want it allowed for the oposition to say the exact opposite.
I also think that the only people who'd be afraid of a pro-NRA ad in or during an anti-gun ad would be those who cannot defend their moral possition.
Personally, I'm happy when I get the opprotunity to see the anti-gun arguments on HN and that we can discuss ideas about these subjects. It broadens my understanding of what others think and vise versa.
There isn't a problem with saying "I sell X, and all I care about is the money I get from doing that" and then turning around and selling Xs to the highest bidder.
That would be principled but not in Snapchat's interest.
Their audience demographics would probably hate to see an NRA ad in a story about gun control, and it would hurt Snapchat's reputation, brand, and loyalty. You might even see hashtags trending about it, calling them "insensitive" and worse.
Those people aren't the people the NRA is trying to reach. They're on the wrong side of the issue as far as the NRA cares. The people who don't feel strongly about the issue are the ones the NRA wants to reach. They have a few seconds to snap them back into reality after consuming a bunch of sob stories about violent crime.
> That would be principled but not in Snapchat's interest.
It would definetly be in Snapchat's interests. The best thing for an arms dealer is a war, the best thing for a place of discussion is a clash of ideology.
They'd just sell the space to both sides, run the ads, say "We are a neutral party who doesn't get involved in politics; if we give one side a stand we're fine with giving the other side a stand. Complain to the NRA if you think it's poor taste, we just sell bilboard space"
> Their audience demographics would probably hate to see an NRA ad in a story about gun control, and it would hurt Snapchat's reputation, brand, and loyalty
Sadly, a lot of pro 2a people use Snapchat despite my, and many others, protestings.
Also, we need to ask a few questions about this "brand loyalty" and "repuation". What "reputation" does Snapchat have? What "brand" does Snapchat have? Their a service to send small clips of your life to other people. Wheather that's to send videos of you speeding at >100MPH, of crying people talking about how guns killed their relatives, or the NRA saying that it wasn't the guns but instead was a criminal who killed their relative.
That perception of their essential function is not damaged and in fact, if anything, a lot of pro-gun people would just be happy that their willing to be unbias in their ad-space.
> You might even see hashtags trending about it, calling them "insensitive" and worse.
I'd surely hope the anti-gun crowd can come up with a worse insult then "insensitive". Even still, I've never seen something come of the hash-tag-nag that happens after every major screw-up of a company. The demographics we're talking about come from a time when voting with your wallet isn't even a faint idea in the back of their head.
If Snapchat came out pro-Hitler, financially supporting neo-Nazis, I'd bet good money that after the initial hash-tag-nag craze the same crowd would still use the app.
The fact is that Snapchat has poised itself as a key piece of the communication networks that the younger generations are forming. It would need a suitible replacement for them to think about leaving it.
That's why it's an advertisers gold mine. All you have to do is keep the market clean and you'll be able to reach this century's bread-and-butter demographic.
> Out of pure curiosity, would you be willing to explain why you'd protest 2A people using a service that you also use?
I have snapchat installed on my phone. I do not use it. I do not like the company. I'm not in their demographic. I don't like taking pictures of myself nor of my suroundings.
I'm about as much of a use as I am Verizon Messanger+ user. It's there on my phone, I'll never use it, and I don't like it.
The extent of my usage of the app pretty much goes to telling people who message me on it to text me instead.
Except that Snapchat had already engaged the client and was working with them in an editorial sense. It's not a 'first-come first-served' free market buffet at that point.
Do you think it would be acceptable for the webmaster of Mercedes to put BMW ads on their site, because BMW was willing to pay them to do so?
According to their Form 990, Everytown for Gun Safety spends 5.5 million a year on lobbying, legal, and accounting fees. Their advertising budget is another 7 million. They spend 2 million a year on travel. Their top executive earns $350,000. Honestly, they seem to be a pretty well funded charity. I don't think SNAP was in the wrong here.
What if it wasn't about the money? I wouldn't buy an ad alongside editorial content about my brand. Savvy media consumers tend to see that and think that the editorial content is actually paid content.
An intelligent brand manager has to weigh the positives and negatives of paid and earned media. In this case, in light of Saliterman's email, a brand manager would weigh the (seemingly high) possibility that the NRA would advertise alongside fearful messages from grieving families. Since Everytown knew that this was a possibility, the advertising alongside the editorial had the capacity to damage the brand and (perhaps more importantly) cost jobs.
Would people have the same complaints if it was the other way around? Snapchat reached out to the NRA and offered a free Live Story as partnership for Gun Appreciation Day. Another division then threatened the NRA that it could run anti-gun ads during the NRA's free Live Story.
If the complaints would be different, then it's just your political bias. Some people think the NRA is important and its message is being harmed by groups like Everytown. In that case, why not focus on the heart of the issue which is "Snapchat allows NRA ads but I don't like guns".
Not quite correct. When you're discussing the death of innocent people, children, etc. some tact is appropriate. I'm generally pro-gun but yelling at the top of your lungs about how great guns are to the parents of the victims of sandy hook is completely repulsive and something I'm sure you would never do.
Pro-gun ads are great but if they appear right after a haunting piece about a child killed through gun violence they are disgusting unless they are very, very tactful (which I have never seen from ANY ad). They shouldn't be placed there because it's offensive (and it does no favor to the pro-gun cause). I think that's on snap chat to avoid those instances always.
You could say hyper-emotional appeals about the victims shouldn't be done, and I'd agree with you, but they are done, so tact is important.
To take a bit of a devil's advocate approach, one might argue that seeing gun control ads in the context of Sandy Hook would be inappropriate because one could argue that more responsible people carrying guns could have prevented the tragedy. I am not supporting or opposing that viewpoint but it could be argued just as effectively as an assertion that gun control would have prevented the tragedy.
I do NOT want to (or intend to) get into a gun control debate -- my point is that there a many ways to parse these things.
When discussing the Boston Marathon bombing no advocacy groups were demanding a ban on pressure cookers. In France after the Nice attack, nobody was advocating for stricter truck licensing requirements or enhanced background checks on commercial truck renters/puchasers.
My second point is that agenda groups hijack tragedy to achieve their own ends. As Obama's advisor Rahm Emanuel said, "Never let a crisis go to waste." In the context of a story, its editorial malfeasance to prevent all sides of a story from being expressed.
The problem is neither of your analogies are appropriate.
A reasonable analogy would be ads cheerleading nuclear power after a nuclear power plant explosion killed thousands and permanently ruined a region of a country. And an ad just played that tried to garner sympathy for the children of women effected by the nuclear blast.
A reasonable analogy would be additional regulations on airplanes after they killed thousands of people in a terrorist attack.
Could you explain why you think his two analogies are not appropriate? You simply state it as a fact and then go on to give two analogies that are far less appropriate in my view. Your first analogy is not even seem to be about deliberate use of technology to harm others but about some advertising after a horrible accident. While advertising is a theme in the original article posted it has nothing to do with the points the gp is arguing with his analogies. Your second while more reasonable is still I think less appropriate then the gp. A fully loaded 747 jet is far more leathal then a pressure cooker bomb or a commercial truck attack. Also many many people do think that that regulations/security in airports are heavy handed.
As far as I can tell the only reason you view his analogies as inappropriate is they don't support the conclusion you want to draw.
Also I would like to point out that accses/ownership to pressure cookers, trucks, nuclear power, and air-travel are not constitutional protected whereas gun ownership very explicitly is. I am all for talking about removing/modifying the 2nd amendment through the constitutional amedment process I just not for pretending like it's not there .
The parent post creates a hypothetical opinion held by hypothetical people, and then criticizes it. IMHO this kind of comment is merely inflammatory; I'm no smarter after reading it, and if I buy into it then I become misinformed.
I'm trying to isolate the political beliefs from the "treating customers badly" or "being mean" concerns. People sometimes confuse them and expect that groups on their own political side should be given better treatment than opposing groups. You might not be making that mistake yourself so perhaps it's no use to you. In general, I think isolating those separate ideas is helpful for thinking critically.
> You might not be making that mistake yourself so perhaps it's no use to you
But is anyone thinking it? I can say in reference some people I don't like, 'I disagree with the people who like to kick puppies'.
Part of my objection is that throwing unfounded allegations around is at the core, IMHO, of the propaganda that seems to rule public discourse currently. It's easy to make them, it takes far more time to refute them - and then the attacker makes another one.
It is called the Straw Man fallacy[1]; once you learn about it (and other fallacies) you will see it in many more places. Don't forget to account for personal Bias though.
I think there's a perceived difference with non profits. E.g. I enjoy alcohol but would still feel the same way if this happened with MADD vs Jonny Walker
Furthermore, the NRA is pro-gun safety. I can't speak for the NRA, but myself and other members will be wearing orange on June 2nd. It's not like the NRA is going to run a "BUY MORE GUNS!" advertisement... it'll likely be something tasteful. Then again, I have been disappointed by the NRA's taste in the past.
The NRA has lobbied to block federally funded scientific research on gun violence and safety[1], so I wouldn't say they're pro gun safety, at a macro level at least.
The Dickey Amendment only banned political advocacy, not research. The problem is that the CDC was producing research that was thinly veiled political advocacy.
Patrick O'Carroll, one of the major researchers involved with the CDC's efforts in question, infamously wrote that, "We’re going to systematically build the case that owning firearms causes deaths." Doing research to support a predetermined conclusion is not good science. It was political advocacy wearing the mantle of science.
And that is a huge issue with people that don't understand science backing away from and outright rejecting science. That is the whole problem with "Science" today is once you inject advocacy in one little area and it is exposed people throw the baby out with the bath water.
Take environmental sciences for example, the CRU and other leaks where scientist where exposed colluding with other scientist to blackball legitimate skeptics tainted the whole industry. Now we are seeing an wholesale rejection of environmental sciences and the gutting of the EPA. In a manner this is good, because there was obvious collusion and political advocacy and intent to stifle real science. On the other had, we also got a wholesale rejection by the voting majority which is now set to put clean energy back decades.
I personally put the blame squarely on the scientist of the CRU and the NOAA pause buster scientists (they are a disgrace to the title). They cost us dearly by trying to advance their agenda. When you compromise the integrity of science the cost is just too great.
I think it's naïve to think that the agenda is only held by the person who accidentally exposed it. I think a research team where a member can speak broadly about their group "we're going to.." versus "I'm going to" is tainted. What about the way people characterize the paid faux research commissioned by the tobacco industry? Generally it is bad enough that they paid for it, it tainted all the results of the study.
I think it's bad enough if one researcher says that they and their entire team ("we're") are committed to corrupting the results of the study to reach a foregone conclusion.
The state does not like citizens having guns, the state owns and operates the CDC and decides its budget and staffing. In a way, the research is about matters which the state has a vested interest in. If this were a private company, we would be ready to write it off entirely.
When the logging industry finds certain invasive species on land it owns it clear cuts, chips and burns a few square miles just to be on the safe side.
I have no problem with science taking that approach. At least it keeps it fairly pure.
Science 'rejects' the behavior choices of individuals all the time. Should we ignore the obesity epidemic because it 'rejects' those suffering from it?
Science isn't about making feel comfortable, it's about following the scientific method. It often presents ugly or inconvenient truths.
If the evidence at that point was damning he wouldn't have been biased (don't know enough, but I suspect I very well could have been) rather than operating from the evidence.
The cool thing about science is that regardless of your beliefs, you have to show your work, and it must stand up to scrutiny. The process filters advocacy. When there's ample data that suggests causal relationships (which there is in this case), you go out and try to prove a cause and reject the null hypothesis.
Certainly the scientific community is prone to coming to broader conclusions than the findings suggest, but every scientific paper's discussion section can be prone to this. And, that isn't where the conversation ends, as follow-on research will often pick apart those conclusions.
Meanwhile, the NRA has effectively bullied the CDC into not doing any research at all related to guns, as you can tell from how they respond to the NRA:
> Following the January 2011 shootings in Tucson, Ariz., (in which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was injured), the New York Times published an article reporting that the CDC went so far as to “ask researchers it finances to give it a heads-up anytime they are publishing studies that have anything to do with firearms. The agency, in turn, relays this information to the NRA as a courtesy.” In response to this report, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence sent a letter (PDF, 647) in March 2011 to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius expressing concern that the agency was giving the NRA a “preferred position,” and urging that the NRA not be given the opportunity to exercise special influence over CDC’s firearms-related research.
> In December 2011, Congress added language equivalent to the Dickey amendment to fiscal year 2012 appropriations legislation that funded the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 (PDF, 1.3MB), stating that “none of the funds made available in this title may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.” The NRA’s advocacy efforts that lead to this amendment are thought to be a response to a 2009 American Journal of Public Health article by Branas et al., titled “Investigating the link between gun possession and gun assault,” presenting the results of research that was funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. [1]
In what other domain do we tip toe around research like this?
I think its pretty clear the NRA is simply afraid of the implications of such research - the hard question that comes up when liberties and their societal costs intersect. Maybe we choose liberties, but we have to go into that conversation with our eyes open.
For those who weren't paying attention during the time this occurred (you can hardly be faulted) -- this is perhaps the best summation of how I recall it.
Which is exactly why the auto insurance industry heavily funds MADD, to the point of driving MADD's agenda: the credit people give nonprofit advocacy groups with a superficially socially responsible purposes makes them a very good tool for industry.
Ya, a non profit sorta like how the NFL was :) It's more or less an industry advocacy group, so it's a bit different than a typical nonprofit advocacy group.
Err, no.
The NRA is not an industry association non-profit like the NFL was (the NFL is no longer a 501(c)(6) since 2015)
It's only an industry advocacy group in the sense that there is an industry that happens to have goals that align with the people who fund it.
That's not an industry advocacy group, in the same way the various brady groups are not industry advocacy groups simply because there is an industry (trigger-locks, non-lethal weaponry, etc) that happens to have goals that align with the people who fund that.
I meant it as a bit of a tongue in cheek response, and indeed I used 'was' to indicate the NFLs former status.
Nevertheless, I don't think its as simple as goals happening to align with industry, nor do I see equivalence in the industry relationships to brady groups (though admittedly I haven't researched that).
Given the NRA's closely held governance structure and the large individual donations from manufacturers, one does not need a great deal of money (and certainly not majority of $) to influence direction toward industry ends that may not be in the interest of individual members as much as industry members and NRA leadership. That's honestly the best kind of influence to have, as your goals appear to be those of the large passionate group of individuals.
I agree though 'more or less' overstates that relationship, I was wrong. I'll amend that to: the industry has influence over the policies the NRA advocates for, and benefits from those policies appearing to come from their large member base.
FWIW I'm not opposed to the NRA per se, in fact a group for teaching responsible gun use is great. I'm just opposed to the current incarnation of the organization.
"and the large individual donations from manufacturers,"
This, FWIW, is in fact the case with the brady groups as well.
Honestly:
It's just that companies tend to donate more to individuals. That seems normal.
"I agree though 'more or less' overstates that relationship, I was wrong. I'll amend that to: the industry has influence over the policies the NRA advocates for, and benefits from those policies appearing to come from their large member base.
"
I think you have the arrow of causation backwards.
How do you now know that it isn't "NRA individual members want to make sure industry does not get screwed, so NRA works with industry to formulate policies that help the industries, to help their members"
?
Cause otherwise, i could argue the same thing about the brady groups.
"The non-lethal weapon industry has influence over the policies the various brady groups advocate, and benefits from those policies appearing to come from their large member base"
(substitute non-lethal-weapons from any of a number of industries that benefit here. there are plenty on both sides of this coin :P)
I believe, without evidence otherwise, that the arrow of causation is "members want industry to survive and thrive, so mother org works with industry policy wise".
Note that your arrow of causation is applicable to roughly any major org.
IE industry donates heavily to EFF, in large amounts (though not, AFAIK, larger than user base, much like the NRA). Therefore "industry has influence over the policies EFF advocates for, and benefits from those policies appearing to come from their large member base".
(as you can see, this argument line can be applied to any association accepting corporate contribution :P)
Not at all. The NRA gets most of its money from individual donors. More importantly, the NRA's power doesn't come from the money at their disposal. It comes from the fact that they control a large bloc of single-issue voters.
If you make or sponsor a gun control bill, the NRA will tell every member in your district to vote you out of office... and they will. This means that the only legislators who can safely support such legislation are those who are completely entrenched. Everyone else makes slight nods of approval at the Diane Feinsteins while refraining from committing totally; they can't afford to piss off thousands of very reliable, very energetic voters.
You're suggesting there is a type of symmetry around relative moral beliefs on the gun debate, and it is somewhat arbitrary to be upset on one side of it but not the other.
If that was all there was to it, I would agree.
However, that's missing the huge asymmetry at play here: money. Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it, and the people who's family members have been victims of gun violence don't.
If this was a spat between, say, Google and Oracle, each of which has boatloads of money to buy the competitor's advertising spots, no one would care.
But this story feels scummy because it's a human story, one where the little guy is fighting a noble cause but is being shaken down by organizations who write weekly checks larger than some of these people will see in their lifetime.
If you pretend that money doesn't create an asymmetry, then yes, you being upset this way but not the other is all relative.
> [...] money. Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it [...]
The NRA is a member-funded group. Five million members paying annual dues -- that's where their money comes from.[1] They use some of this to fund gun safety education and training (Everytown For Gun Safety does not, oddly enough). Sure, industry chips in, but it's just a couple million $ (which is tiny compared to member dues).
" Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it,"
It's really really not.
There are plenty of groups that fall into that category, the NRA is not one of them.
The fact that you are just kind of saying this blindly, without any data to back it up, when even trivial searches would tell you it's wrong, severely dilutes any argument you have.
(note, i actually am very anti-gun, but i try to at least research the assertions i'm going to make)
The industry group for gun manufacturers is the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NRA is a membership organization with over five million members. Portraying the NRA as an industry group just because corporations donate to it is misleading. Would you consider the EFF to be an industry group because PayPal donates to them?
Is it really? It seems to me that there is a lot of reason to believe that the NRA is funded primarily through membership fees and individual contributions.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of the NRA, and probably ever other pro-gun advocacy group you've ever heard of, and some you haven't.
Everytown is funded by wealthy people like Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett. If there aren't enough other donors to give them the resources that the NRA has, it might be that there aren't enough people who support their agenda enough to donate. They are not "the little guy".
Hmm, other than a communication blunder I don't see the foul here? I don't know how Snapchat advertising works internally, but if the NRA is a known purchaser of advertising, and can choose to target its ads in specific content segments it would seem like Everytown might want to be warned that leaving their ad segments unclaimed means the NRA claiming them is a possibility. Even if the ads get assigned randomly or through some sort of automated process you'd still think a good client relationship manager would want to give his or her (prospective) client a heads up that an NRA ad in their time slot is possible, no? Imagine if he had said nothing, and then the NRA _did_ run ads in the Everytown slot? Would that have been better? If I was Everytown I'd be angry at Snapchat for not warning me that this was a possibility. As far as I can tell, Saliterman did his job, his job just happens to have intersected with an emotional flash point, and is by nature manipulative.
Now, how someone got to his professional level without knowing how to handle this conversation more tactfully is beyond me. And further if he was trying to convince them this was a possibility when it _wasn't_, or some other nefarious ploy then sure - let's jump on the outrage bandwagon, but from that article? Nothing to see here.
Social media sites really need to face the decision of whether they're "common carriers" or are liable for consequences of discrimination against common/normal views.
when an ad causes serious consternation in the press, they pull it because "we've a private site and can regulate speech".
But if there isn't sufficient controversy, they can hide behind the banner of free speech.
Sites like Facebook need to either commit to allowing all lawful ads, or admit they exercise editorial judgement on what is "proper" speech, and start a larger conversation about what sort of speech should be restricted.
I remember in the Facebook pre-IPO days they invited a handful of notorious internet marketers / affiliates to sit down with senior executives to figure out how they could work together to drive higher CTRs for fare like ringtones, weight loss pills, etc with the goal of goosing revenues upwards.
I'd guess these are similarly interesting times in the SnapChat ad sales department on the way to an IPO - they are under tremendous pressure to drive results.
Looks like a combination of bad team communications (one team tries to sell service, another offers essentially the same for free) and even worse attempt to rescue the sale by FUDing the client ("if you go with free option, we might run competitor's ads inside your content!"). I hope that's not a routine way for them to work, because that would be rather stinky practice.
I think there's different ways of communicating. Trying to hard sell the same service other team offers for free looks stupid, and I don't think sales team being aware of the editing team's actions and behaving in a smarter way would not hurt the trustworthiness. It's not like this "if you don't pay us, we'll run your competitors ads inside your content" snafu did wonders to the trustworthiness.
Great response - that's one of the classic arguments against having a wall in between ad sales and editorial. And, for what it's worth, I agree with you.
Editorial staff would reply, "Okay, in that situation, it might be okay. But what happens if we want to run a well researched/sourced story that is highly critical of one of our biggest advertisers?"
Their fear would be that if there is too much communication between advertising and editorial, advertising would use its control over revenue to hurt editorial independence. And, then ad sales people tend to reply, "Well, if you won't give us the chance to kill a story, it is better if we don't even know about it. That way, when the person who I have sold ads to calls me up yelling, I can truthfully say that I didn't know because there is a wall between advertising and editorial."
In other words, the wall between advertising and editorial mostly sucks for both sides, but it's better than any alternative. It preserves editorial independence while giving sales people the chance to save relationships (in anticipation of their next job).
Why do people expect ethics and morals from startups? Snapchat here and Uber all year. Is it because they are startups and someho the HN crowd assumes they will be good citizen? The same thing if done by some pharma company or may be some division inside Johnson and Johnson would go unnoticed and expected even.
It looks to me that most people on here work for startups and new companies and some how want to work in a field that has higher morals and ethics. Why would a sales guy try to behave differently and not make a sale? We have seen this again and again with other sales teams from Yelp and others. I am not trying to explain the actions of sales people just to understand where the outrage is coming from.
People should expect ethical behavior not only from startups but from any entity private or public. As a customer we have the right, or even an obligation, to say - If you're not ethical we don't want to do business with you. It's as simple as that.
> People expect ethics and morals from people. Startups are run by people.
I agree with your sentiment. That said, would you expect ethics and morals from a CEO that organized a Sally Hemings[1]-Thomas Jefferson party? Would you expect ethics and morals from a CEO that used to joke about urinating on women? Which is why I would avoid interaction with that startup.
[1] Sally Hemings was the 14 year old black slave girl that the 44 year old Thomas Jefferson had 6 kids with.
> Why do people expect ethics and morals from startups?
I think this depends on what you mean by 'expect'. If we believe that they will act morally at the expense of their own interests, that is probably naive in most cases. But if we 'expect' them to act morally in the sense that we hold them to a certain ethical standard, and get upset if they don't live up to it, then the expectation can to some extent be self-fulfilling: if bad behaviour will hurt their reputation, they have to take that into account when making a decision, and in some cases that will cause the right thing and the self-interested thing to converge.
It's not that people expect ethics and morals from startups. It's that people expect their ethics and morals from startups. To some people, not allowing the NRA to advertise in this context is the only ethical choice. To others, the very question is horrifyingly unethical.
Many of us are not aware that corporations do not have moral standards. You can coerce them to pretend they do, but if it was up to corporation we would still have child labor today.
Empirically, do humans presently, and have humans in the past been observed to, "act ethically"? And, of course, there's a tremendous diversity about what exactly is ethical.
I don't think it would have to be free. If they specifically reached out to the NRA to initiate the process, I'd call that pretty gross, whether or not they gave them a break on pricing.
Just to be clear, if roles were reversed and the NRA advertised you would _not_ want Everytown to have ad placement as a rebuttal or do you just find it gross because you disagree at a political/personal level?
If I'm your customer, I don't want to feel like you're going to devote time and resources to finding the optimal way to fuck me over if I don't cough up more money. That sentiment is completely independent of the editorial content we're talking about.
The issue I have is less the rebuttal, but rather the blackmail. They shouldn't reach out to one organization as an attempt to extort more money from another, especially when they are non profits.
What is the issue here? Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
If I post an video on Youtube for my spaghetti event. And it has reach, then of course other spaghetti vendors may want to run ads on it if they pay up.
I wonder if they also try to get the NRA to pay so that Everytown for Gun Safety ads don't appear. This actually seems like a decent way for social media companies to make money, although it sure does feel smarmy.
(as an aside, Everytown for Gun Safety is not actually a gun-safety charity: it's an anti-gun organisation)
I didn't get that from the article, but it would make sense. The NRA has long-standing and well-funded firearms safety programs, ranging from training for adults to the "Eddie Eagle" program for kids.
Everytown's budget for political contributions last year was about 1/3 of the NRAs, but the the overall organization budgets are vast different - Wikipedia shows the NRA having $348m in revenue in 2013, while Everytown brought in $4.9m in 2012.
From a purely financial perspective, Snap should be prioritizing the NRA's business over Everytown's.
This is a perfect example of why a firewall between editorial and advertising departments in a news organization is not sufficient. I would really like to see a subscription only news service exist that doesn't take any advertising dollars. It would make very clear that it serves the readership, not advertisers. Alas, I don't think enough people are willing to pay what it would take and media companies are too risk averse to even attempt it.
What about organizations like NPR and PBS? It seems like that is as close as you can get to a subscription only news service that doesn't take advertising dollars. Their news reporting is really top notch.
Technically it's not a subscription, it's a donation. And technically they do make money with underwriting but I think user contributions make up the vast majority of their funding.
Both organisations' underwriting credits raise plenty of questions.
For much of the 1970s and 1980s, major PBS programming was funded by oil companies (Mobil in particular, if you watched Masterpiece Theater). Today, Nova receives heavy funding from Koch sources. Even nonprofit sources are tainted -- the John Templeton Foundation (look it up) has a very specific agenda, and there is/was a two-part series, "The Real Adam Smith", which was essentially a straight-up, full-on propaganda piece put out by the Mont Pelerin Society / Atlas Network, funded by Templeton, and with Chicago PBS affiliate WTTW's name specifically attached to the production. The content is highly slanted, and I found (and find) the whole matter exceedingly questionable.
I'm not saying there isn't a lot of good work coming through PBS, NPR, PRX, and similar sources. Or that the quality isn't, generally, vastly superior to commercial media. But that bar is set miles below floor level, and the problems with co-option of public media have been increasing with time.
Part of that I attribute to "Woozle's Epistemic Paradox": because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place.
A problem which attaches to other (really, any) media, including online: BBSes, Usenet, Geocities, Facebook, Reddit, HN.
That's a good point. I was really only thinking of how for-profit news organizations could reorient themselves to serve their readership. There's no reason such organizations need to have be for-profit.
How would you ensure that the news service doesn't accept side-channel donations for the "right" news? How would you ensure that the news service doesn't keep telling the subscribers what they want to hear?
The news service could have an independent accountant affirm that all revenue comes from subscribers. As for bias, this is not something I'm suggesting would be prevented. I'm only suggesting it would be a news organization incentivized to serve the readership and not advertisers.
A corporation wants to use another corporation's services to distribute content, but does not want to compensate them in any way, expects that the facilitating corporation will prevent a charitable organization from paying them to reach out to the same audience.
Everytown for Gun Safety is a private lobbying effort funded by Michael Bloomberg, and believes that they can use a company's service for free while censoring paid ads from a true community charitable organization which is funded primarily by membership dues. Mic deliberately characterizes Everytown for Gun Safety as a "gun safety charity", and avoids using similar language to describe NRA, a registered charitable organization with a considerable number of members. Are they trying to say that the NRA doesn't care about gun safety?
I don't really see why Snap Inc. should have to promote Michael Bloomberg's fantasies for no pay, and prevent the voice of an established charitable institution from being included alongside it through the standard advertising process.
Uhm, they should restrict the ads embedded in that story in order to convince that partner to contribute content?
Like, if a LGBT organization wanted to give a television network the rights to air an Orlando Shooting documentary on the condition that they don't sell ads for conversion therapy in the middle, that's kind of their right to make that sort of offer. It's a very short distance from making those demands to the distribution side preemptively seeking out those sorts of deals.
"I don't see the issue here. There's no reason that Twitter should voluntarily suspend abusive users from their system and reduce their advertising revenue."
The bigger picture, that's why. Not tomorrow's quarterly results.
The headline oversells the story in a way that makes its overselling of the story completely deniable. Reminds me of something… Oh yeah—of the actual behavior the story describes. Is this a postmodern meta-storytelling piece?
Why does any organisation? Why does the NRA? Perhaps it would be nifty to split the world into commercial entities without no permission to lobby, and political entities with no permission to deploy commercial activities, but that sure isn't this world.
In any case, the issue isn't political activism, it's the tastelessness of the threat. It also doesn't help that it exposes how this particular employee apparently felt no compunction in undermining what others in his business were working for - it sure looks like he wasn't actually handling in the best interests of his employer, and I can't imagine he didn't know it.
Social media sites are generally perceived as "common carriers" whom we expect no political activism from (beyond refusing illegal activity & promotion thereof) - to wit commercial entities whom we expect will not lobby (legislators nor customers) re: non-sequitur topics.
Well, we expect social media sites to try and avoid blatantly taking sides. But they definitely thrive on human-interest stuff (such as this), especially if it's something with a social mobilisation aspect, and that's almost bound to skirt the political rather closely. As it does here. At best you might expect social media firms to give opposing sides equal opportunities (even more business!). But even openly biased media is common - e.g. Fox news, but really many other news outlets too - and I see no reason to think social media firms couldn't evolve in the same direction.
I'm not saying we should applaud this development...
In any case, I don't see no evidence that snapchat it being particularly biased based on one story they're pushing. It's pretty much impossible to make that conclusion based on one story, given that they push so many. It looks more like sheer incompetence to me than anything else.
The other employees in his business were donating the services of the business to their pet political causes. Saliterman was trying to make money for the shareholders. It's an advertising business: that means everyone pays.
If Snapchat's board are all in agreement that that's where they want the money to go, fine --- but they should also realize that Snapchat is a social network, and the appearance of fairness is probably a reasonable thing to aim at. If the DNC or RNC launched a social network, they would find themselves somewhat hampered in their ability to grow, and with good reason.
I'd expect Snapchat users to discuss politics on the platform. I wouldn't necessarily expect Snapchat to expend their own resources to explicitly push an issue-driven political agenda that is unrelated to their own line of business.
Most people can decide whether to "continue doing consumer culture stuff" or to freak out about politics without the help of Snap or any other corporation. There's an odd sort of corporate worship/megalomania that makes people think they're morally obligated to "weigh in" on an issue. They're not, and their constituent individuals are more than capable of pursuing their own political activism and/or creating more appropriate vehicles for voluntary cooperation toward those ends.
What would that have added to the article? The issue seems to be between Snap and Everytown. NRA ads just happen to be the thing they're disagreeing over but it could've been pandas.
I am pretty sure if the email had read "a panda petting zoo might advertise during the campaign" this article would never have been written. The only reason this is controversial at all is because it involves the NRA. The article repeatedly mentions the NRA and leaves it as an open question if the NR A was interested in running ads. Requesting comment from the NRA would be appropriate in my opinion.
"Yes, Snapchat reached out to us for a particularly good ad spot at a discounted price" would be highly interesting.
"Snapchat? Do they accept advertising?" would be quite illuminating as to the situation at hand.
The NRA is either a bogeyman posited by Snapchat as a hook for the hard sell, or they're an unwitting co-conspirator, or they're just a buzzword to grease the skids on this article. It would be informative to know which, and if the news is supposed to inform, then I can't see how there's any harm in reaching out.
Companies opt-out of advertising on shows or events that revolve around programming they don't feel aligns with their company values. So, when I see the NRA opting into advertising for this event, I see it as sponsorship and support of the message.
If I saw an Exxon Mobile commercial during a climate change documentary, I would take that as tacit support of the subject.
Now, obviously I'm wrong. So can someone explain why this advertising is so valuable to the NRA? I guess it's just trolling.
As soon as the head of political sales found out about the editorial he stated:
> We are also talking to the NRA about running ads within the story.
Later in the article it says that the NRA advertised on Snapchat in 2015, have they since? Or was it that now we will contacting the NRA to tell them it's a good idea to advertise during your editorial.
Seeing the comments it looks like the majority doesn't see a problem with this because the NRA is free to do advertising. To me it's just bad business to be featuring a good cause as a so-called partner and then extorting them like this. It certainly also seems like that would be a negative experience for the viewers and the partner.
In the end Snapchat lost both an editorial partner with a group that resonates with their target demographics and any potential advertising revenue from the event.
Saliterman was a former spokesperson for George W. Bush, by the way.[1] I'm shocked.
This was absolutely an unprofessional move and not simple targeted selling. The story would not have been as attractive a target for the NRA without Everytown's cooperation in the first place. So now that Snapchat's roped them in, to maintain the integrity of their story they need to pay up? This guy put his division ahead of Snapchat's reputation as a company.
How double dumb, gun people do not want ads targeted to those that will not buy and those that do not want to buy guns do not want the ads. A waste AND a shakedown.
In fact the anti gun lobby should tell their members to click on all these ads (or get a 'clickbot to do it) since that will burn gun company cash for zero gains
This title is very clickbaity, and the first half of the article does a very poor job of communicating what's really going on.
Snapchat has no obligation to favour one side of the gun reform debate over the other. But the way this article frames it, they're actively blackmailing the gun-reform side.
I can't help thinking that the anti-gun group could exploit this by specifically running content that attacks NRA advertising tropes, thereby turning the NRA ads into an exercise in deconstructing NRA propaganda.
The timing of this is more interesting than the fairly standard advertising practices itself. I would say this is pretty bullish for Snap since they have leverage over the organizations founded by movers and shakers!
It seems we are in the middle of an unfortunate trend when industry disruptors also seem to be conveniently "disrupting" (ie ignoring) established ethics at the same time.
An additional nuance here is big guy vs. little guy. If this was Coke vs. Pepsi where either could afford buying up the ad spots, it wouldn't be a big deal.
No one seems to be mentioning that doing so would presumably screw over the NRA harder than Everytown. The target viewer for gun control content would presumably not be interested in an NRA ad, but the NRA is nonetheless paying to run it.
Oddly the "threat" is essentially that you might become ritually unclean by proximity to such content.
Were I in charge of NRA advertising, I would consider my ad running along a gun-violence-awareness campaign to be a misfire, akin to running a smoking ad alongside a story about smoking-induced lung cancer or a Coke ad alongside a story about Crystal Pepsi coming back.
No, democrats using a shooting event to blame guns and call for bans and stricter gun control causes gun sales and membership to go up. Obama has been the best gun salesman for the United States ever.
You're just repeating my point, but applying a predictable anti-liberal bias.
>Obama has been the best gun salesman for the United States ever.
Because of all the extremist gun control legislation he passed?
No, wait.. people just believed Obama was coming for their guns but he never actually did that.
It's almost as if people have been trained to respond to gun violence by supporting the NRA and buying guns ... in some sort of Pavlovian response.
But I can't imagine what organization or industry could possibly have spent decades and millions of dollars in political capital engineering such a virtuous cycle for themselves.
I still don't know why the political process working as intended justifies the degree of paranoia that leads to mass stockpiling of guns and ammunition, though. Or why that paranoia manifests behind all gun control legislation, not just the "draconian" attempts which fail.
That article's thesis appears to be that nearly all attempts at gun control legislation, including those by Republicans, fail regardless of their intent because of the political and lobbying influence of the NRA.
I don't see evidence of the "draconian" bills you mentioned, or of nefarious intent by "Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, and other ilk."
I see a bill to ban assault rifles, to limit the sale of high capacity magazines and an article about a Senate proposal to ban the sale of firearms to people on the government's no-fly list.
The first two don't seem draconian to me, they seem reasonably targeted to address specific concerns. The bills listed appear to provide exceptions for weapons owned before the bill would take effect, for law enforcement, etc. I don't see the typical doomsday scenario of wholesale banning, mass confiscation or disarmament that we're told the democrats are always working towards. Maybe I need to read between the lines?
The third is disturbing because of the no-fly list, not the ban itself. Felons are already banned from owning firearms as a class, and no one would argue that terrorists or criminals should have guns, so the premise of banning firearms in some cases seems acceptable even to many gun advocates. The no-fly list wasn't created by Democrats, but it was expanded in scope and overwhelmingly supported by Republicans, so I can't really consider that part to be a Democrat issue per se - blame the Democrats for the ban, but blame the Republicans for the blacklist that makes the ban unacceptable.
If gun legislation is, as stated earlier by jonnycoder, "using a shooting event to blame guns and call for bans and stricter gun control," then the typical response by gun advocates amounts to "using a shooting event to promote guns and call for higher gun sales." Why can gun advocates criticize the former, but not the latter?
Well we can agree to disagree. The AWB would require registration, like has happened in NY. Registration leads to confiscation. Their goal is an Australian style ban; turn them in and melt them down.
There was other legislation and regulation; .50 caliber ban, steel core ammo ban, mail order ammo ban, import ban of Korean War surplus rifles, import ban of Russian guns.
Though I agree with you about Republicans; they can support gun control too.
What is wrong with this ? I love NRA and I think they are doing a wonderful job of protecting our rights. If anyone want s to compete with them they should obviously pay.
I'm consistently amazed by how often I see Americans brag about their "right" to shoot up a school. As someone from another country it's such an absurd thing to see that it still surprises me.
Such a crazy cognitive dissonance. What about your right to have a bomb? Or a biological weapon?
I've often wondered how "the right to keep and bear arms" can be abridged for, e.g. a shoulder-launched surface-air missile, but not for a hand gun or rifle. Surely both are "arms" within the meaning understood at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified.
US courts have tried to get around this by finding a right to self defense, and finding that preventing someone from carrying a handgun infringes this right, but preventing them from carrying a missile does not. However this makes no sense: if someone points a gun at you then its already too late to pull your own gun out and shoot them, so guns are only useful for self defense against criminals who don't have guns.
Its true that there are some extremely narrow circumstances in which a legal gun carried by a bystander can be used to stop a gun crime, but only in a tiny fraction of cases.
One should be able to own & buy a shoulder launched missile. In fact you can (at least a bazooka; non-guided). It's destructive device, and requires a $200 tax stamp. It's perfectly legal to own hand grenades too.
You should report whoever brags about _their right to shoot up a school._ to your local law enforcement.
Unless that's disingenuous of what they actually "brag" about. Are they just bragging about having freedom to protect themselves? Freedom to own an inanimate object?
I don't think the distinction really matters to the story -but yeah, the author wasn't subtle in trying to present one party as the victim here.
But even if the roles were reversed (threatening anti-gun violence ads on an NRA piece), what that sales rep did would have been nasty to both his client and to his colleagues. But hey, I'm sure the PR department can use the extra work.
dinging him as the “ultimate hypocrite” for lobbying against Second Amendment rights for average Americans while maintaining his own personal armed security force.
Were you under the impression that wealthy people are supposed to follow the same rules as the commoner?
Maybe you also believe in the religious just-world theory? And that guns would bring about a homogenous equality to all, instead of forming warring factions?
Were you under the impression that wealthy people are supposed to follow the same rules as the commoner?
I think that depends on who or what is doing the supposing. I certainly don't expect the wealthy will ever live by the same rules as the commoners, but it would be very interesting if someone like Bloomberg admitted that. Americans are pretty fond of having a legal system that at least nominally holds the wealthy to the same standards as the commoners, and Americans are well armed so punching a giant hole in the facade could get ugly.
Either way, I don't quote that to point out his hypocrisy, but to point out that he finds guns to be useful.
And that guns would bring about a homogenous equality to all, instead of forming warring factions?
History is not my best subject, but I think warring factions predate guns by quite some time. No, guns will not bring about equality, but they do seem to move the scale in that direction. Controlling an armed group of people seems at least to require you to pay greater respect to their wishes.
Plenty of people from all walks of life successfully (and lawfully) defend themselves with firearms.
Why do you believe an 80 year old widow should need to "toughen up" to defend herself from a group of much younger, more able home invaders (or other assailants)?
As much as I hate responding to rhetoric with rhetoric, the simple fact of the matter is that there are guns, and if we're being honest with ourselves, there always will be. The number of them might wax or wane, but the very idea of a gun will not be extinguished until and unless something more powerful, and that is also dirt simple to manufacture in a garage, replaces it.
NRA's Eddie Eagle program doesn't teach kids how to become expert marksmen behind their parents' backs. It teaches kids that guns are dangerous, and if one is found, it teaches them to treat it as dangerous, to notify their parents or another adult, etc...
Pretending that guns don't exist, or that a child will never encounter one is, in my view, more akin to practicing abstinence to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Sure, it's a means to an end, and in a vacuum, abstinence is very, very effective... but when we realize that we're not living in a vacuum, and that the world we live in has guns in it, as well as people with which you might be sexually attracted, in both cases, education is a much more effective tool than unrealistic optimism.
I grew up in the US, and never encountered a gun until I was approximately 30 and specifically sought them out. That doesn't mean that they don't exist in America or in the UK. They do.
I'm in the USA. I was given a shotgun for my 8th birthday. I shot an AR-15 when I was six. Guns were not treated as some mystical, forbidden devices.
Both my kids (8 and 11) have their own rifles, and we shoot regularly. If my kids want to shoot or handle a certain gun, I let them do it under supervision with no reservations.
Were that true, we would expect Switzerland (3rd highest number of guns per capita in the world) to have a higher murder rate than the UK (82nd in guns per capita), but it does not. This lack of correlation continues with other European countries: Serbia and Sweden have a fair number of guns, but not much murder, while Ukraine and Lithuania have few guns, but some of the highest murder rates in Europe.
If you're about to point out that social, economic and political conditions are very different in Switzerland and Ukraine, you're probably on to something. Murder rates of various countries do correlate with several measures of social, economic and political stability, but not with gun ownership.
That isn't true. You're probably thinking of the change to ammunition issued by the army to members of the militia (a large fraction of the population) for civil defense. It is no longer standard practice to issue ammunition to keep at home.
Buying ammunition from a gun store appears to be an option for anyone with any of several types of gun license.
It really depends on the sample - if you look over the last 100 years the picture really changes. You'll find massive government killings of their own unarmed citizens.
Yet would those massive government killings of their own citizens not have happened if those citizens had guns? There are plenty of methods a government can use to kill large swaths of its population without ever coming in contact with said population, even a 100 years ago.
Anti-firearms people love to imply that weapons of mass destruction and other exotic shit would be used to quell uprisings in an American Revolution-style event.
"You can't stop planes and tanks with a rifle, therefore the Second Amendment is useless!"
Small arms seemed to work just fine in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Personally, I think it would be more useful to ban (or make harder to get) handguns than automatic weapons. In almost all the legitimate uses of guns I can think of, rifles and shotguns work just fine. Easily concealed firearms are the problem. Make those more problematic to own and buy.
So we'll just forget about (atomic) bombs that we drop from the sky, gasses and other biological agents, cutting them off from necessary resources like water (or poisoning it) and food and so on? The strongest military in the world could probably just outlast them. Might take another 100 years though.
My initial response was that it's a horrible shakedown, but on reflection, I wonder if it really was just Saliterman acting in both Everytown's and his own best interest. If it's a common tactic for the NRA to advertise where possible during anti-gun media, and if it's something Snapchat does not involve itself in mediating for journalistic purposes, then it's entirely possible the team that offered Everytown the free media deal inadvertently set them up to have the NRA run messages during their event, and Saliterman was trying to come across as "hey, I would have advised you against this for this exact reason, as the NRA is trying to get in on your ad spots and that's not something we can really prevent."
How you interpret it is probably highly dependent on your opinions of the companies involved as well as how it is presented here. I only wonder because it seems like it's in vogue to call out bad behavior of tech companies right now, and that undoubtedly leads to at least some articles that purposefully misinterpret events to convey that story.
To be clear, this story certainly makes it sound like a shakedown, and it very well may be. I have no idea if that's what happened here, and I doubt at this point we'll ever know know that it's in the realm of PR spin for damage control, but given that both parties refused to comment, I think chances are high that we're getting the author's assumptions rather than something reasonably close to the truth, whatever that may be.