Major Ad Service Drops Breitbart For Hate Speech

Bloomberg reports:

AppNexus Inc., operator of one of the biggest digital advertising services, has barred Breitbart News from using its ad-serving tools because the conservative online publisher violated its hate speech rules.

AppNexus scrutinized Breitbart’s website after U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump tapped Steve Bannon, former executive chairman of Breitbart, to be White House chief strategist last week. The digital ad firm decided the publication had breached a policy against content that incites violence, said AppNexus spokesman Joshua Zeitz.

“We did a human audit of Breitbart and determined there were enough articles and headlines that cross that line, using either coded or overt language,” he said. Breitbart News Network Chief Executive Officer Larry Solov said in an e-mailed statement that Breitbart “has always and continues to condemn racism and bigotry in any form.”

AppNexus’s decision comes while the two largest digital ad sellers, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc., grapple with the rise of fake news — misleading or intentionally deceptive articles that appear in social news feeds and online search results. Last week, both companies said they would pull advertising support from sites that spread “misinformation.”