Conde Nast refuses to run Prop 19 ads on reddit | Hacker News Reader

Conde Nast refuses to run Prop 19 ads on reddit

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140 pointsholman99 comments

For those who have no idea what Prop 19 is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_19

Basically, a marijuana legalisation proposal.

More of a "tax and regulate", which is a step towards legalization.

Well, it does legalize marijuana on the state level, and additionally taxes and regulates it. It may or may not be a de facto first step to federal deregulation.

marijuana is an obsolete slang term popularized by fear mongering racists to push a certain economic agenda.

the scientific term is cannabis; colloquially hemp. And we're asking for re-legalization, thanks.

[edit: why is this being downvoted? do you need proof?? here's your god damned proof -]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(etymology)

http://www.jackherer.com/chapter04.html

You're probably downvoted because of "fear mongering racists" & "economic agenda." Now you're left with the "scientific term" for marijuana which is fine but off-topic (which is Prop 19, Reddit & CN).

Ytiquette is not written anywhere here, but I suppose it follows Reddiquette guidelines to some extend.

PS: your link (http://www.jackherer.com/chapter04.html) looks like it comes from dubious, tinfoilhat-like source.

The Emperor Wears No Clothes (Jack Herer, come ON!) is a widely referenced and generally regarded as a reliable source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_Wears_No_Clothes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Herer

Does running the ads for free count as a donation to the prop 19 campaign, and possibly trigger reporting obligations on the part of Conde Nast?

I don't think so. http://www.sos.ca.gov/prd/campaign_info/forms_instructions/c...

From what I can tell you only have to report expenditures greater than $1000. Maybe

>This was a decision made at the highest levels of Conde Nast.

Doesn't this put the lie to their "we're our own business and don't have anything to do with Conde Nast, that's why we need your charity" line?

Nope; it confirms that the Reddit guys and their Conde Nast overlords don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, and that Reddit is not given the freedom (or resources, apparently) to run itself as it sees fit.

That's kinda my point - if reddit can not be allowed the freedom then CN (or AP or the Newhouse Family) have control over reddit and not reddit themselves. The donations requested are thus donations to the billionaire Newhouse cause and not to an independently run reddit.

That's just how it appears to me.

CN bought reddit so they can do whatever they want to do with reddit. Either you take the cash or you leave it.

True, but there's also the massive anarchistic user base. /r/all is/was yelling censorship top to bottom. Starting to look a lot like the Digg Revolt[1] circa '07 regarding the 09 F9 .. censorship.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy...

Not really, during the aacs thing digg literally stopped to function under the weight of 09 f9 subissions. In comparison I've seen more pro-Ron Paul sentimennt on the front page at any given time than I have prop 19 stuff today.

Reddit responded to the prop 19 issue far more quickly than digg responded to the 09 f9 issue, mind.

Definitely true, I distinctly recall the first few submissions on 09 f9 in the evening, then the next day they started doing bans arround midday, and then finally the site came crashing down about 24 hours after it originally started.

Ah, yes, the Digg revolt of '07. Never had I seen so much online bloodshed and destruction.

We lost a lot of good users that day...

moment of silence

Disappointing. The downside to liquidity events, I suppose.

> Doesn't this put the lie to their "we're our own business and don't have anything to do with Conde Nast, that's why we need your charity" line?

The fact they have take the decision to run the ads for free possibly puts lie to ''that'' :)

No one ever said that. Ever.

Since we're not allowed to benefit financially, reddit is now running the ads for free.

Nice hack, reddit.

It's farcical. It's just circlejerking. The idea that advertising pro-prop19 to Reddit would have made any sense in the first place is just ridiculous given that they're all pretty much uniformly in favor of it.

It's fun to watch them run around being outraged boycotting and generally wasting their own time though.

It's an important way to maintain voter awareness and actually motivate them to vote when they get the chance. In politics, it's often more important to advertise directly to your base than anywhere else.

Actually it makes a lot of sense to advertise to this group to ensure they do actually vote. You can't take your public for granted.

Especially this particular constituency ;)

Fair point, but I expect the front page will be literally full of "VOTE" items at the right time.

Preaching to the choir is a great way to solicit contributions.

Because it doesn't want their money, so reddit is now running them for free:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ads/comments/d68xv/reddit_is_now_run...

I wonder why Conde Nast even bought reddit in the first place.

It's cool that they let them run the web site as an independent entity more or less, but it really seems like they don't like supporting them (see Reddit Gold).

They probably thought they were buying a broad general "What news will look like in the future" website.

In fact they ended up with a liberal pro drug, pro gay, pro adblock, anti capitalism, anti consumerism, anti advertising, athiest website.

As time has gone on Reddits userbase seems to have become narrower and narrower even though it's obviously grown massively. Maybe it's groupthink at work, or maybe it's just come to be known as a hangout for liberals being outraged by stuff.

So... They didn't to a single minute of due diligence?

I can't believe that comments like this are upmodded but yet HN has the audacity to tout some air of supremacy while laughing at the notion of a "digg vs reddit" flame war.

The community remains remarkably split on adblock use (especially on sites they like, etc). There are people that oppose plenty of drug use (calling pot a drug is disingenuous for shock factor of "calling out" reddit) and being antigay is yes, unpopular on a social voting news site, shocking.

The more surprising thing IMHO is the air of superiority that Reddit users have over religion, and especially over people who watch Fox News etc.

Now I'm not for one minute defending people who only watch Fox News, but there are people who only get their news from Reddit. So instead of a blinkered, biased, inaccurate kneejerkist feed of stories from Fox, they get a blinkered, biased, inaccurate kneejerkist feed of stories from Reddit.

The power of reddit (and for that matter hackernews) is the top-voted comment on most articles is a thorough debunking/rebuttal. I'll often read articles that seem perfectly reasonable but are quickly ripped to shreds by the community. So while you are getting a pre-filtered view of the news, you're not getting a single viewpoint on that news.

Furthermore (edit), the subreddits that you subscribe to radically change the articles you encounter on the homepage.

That's not the case at all IMHO. The top voted comment is just whatever the groupthink agrees is the 'right' stance on that issue.

Over time online communities such as HN and Reddit gravitate towards a specific set of viewpoints.

It means that you start only seeing certain types of article, you only see certain types of comments, comments that 'toe the party line' are upvoted to top, etc.

The other funny thing is how much Redditors etc love to sneer down their noses at the 'idiots' who watch TV. They don't seem to realize that spending hours on reddit looking at funny pictures, being outraged by liberal news etc isn't really any better than watching American Idol and being outraged by the stuff on Fox news.

</rant>

Precisely.

Which is why we should not have politics here.

I don't watch general news on reddit (and I don't subscribe to /r/atheism, which is almost unbelievably bad, though I'm an atheist), but subreddits that I'm interested in seems to present much more diverse opinion. /r/energy isn't that small and while it's generally very pro-nuclear, there are, time to time, anti-nuclear opinions and a lot of "renewables" as well. And there aren't that many places to get opinions and news about such topics (that can match reddit in diversity and even in objectivity).

> but there are people who only get their news from Reddit.

Can you suggest an alternative to reddit? I really want a less politic, religion or cat pics more tech, coding and critical thinking community.

Customize your Reddit--you can unsub from politics, atheism, and humor/pics and subscribe to other good sub-reddits in their place.

Already done that a while ago, but still find them narrow and sometimes boring. There are tons of repost and common media hype I really want to get rid of.

Umm... welcome to HN? :)

Just use the subreddits. Check out /r/DepthHub and the other subreddits linked off it.

>the air of superiority that Reddit users have over religion

Arguing that it should be taken seriously without evidence really doesn't help your case.

What can't you believe?

Us are always better than them it's a cornerstone of human culture.

Any source on the split adblock opinion? Sounds interesting.

Don't forget "anti-semitic". And before anyone even has the audacity to say "it's anti-Israel, not anti-semitic", this: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ccnir/im_gonna_get...

Gee, I don't think it takes much "audacity". As far as I can tell as an occasional reader, there's some anti-semitism and a lot more anti-Israel politics. But the picture you linked to is neither of those. It's garden-variety 4chan shockerism, and it looks like it worked.

I was talking about the highest-rated comments in that thread

The fact that they're running them for free is kinda interesting. Going from corporate censoring the ads, to reddit essentially giving the campaign a huge contribution. It'll be interesting to see what the fall-out from this is.

If I were Conde Nast, the fallout would be firing them, and yes I'm aware this may kill reddit.

You were bought. Reddit does not belong to you, and you don't get to decide what to do with it.

If you can't handle that then you should never have sold, or in this case you should quit.

Well the higher-ups could actually have been honest when they said they just didn't want to benefit financially, and might have approved the free ads.

There might be some really severe legal consequences to running those free ads. I'm not familiar with campaign finance but it's possible that the law considers Reddit's action to be a "donation" with a large equivalent cash value.

I was thinking the exact same thing. At the very least I think there are disclosure and tax issues, and the fact that the 'donation' came from Conde Nast has pretty significant implications.

I completely agree with you. Either you take the cash or you don't. But if you take the cash, you shouldn't be mourning afterwards about not having enough money (while spending close to 1/2 million a year on ec2) and not being able to decide which ads you run on the site you simply don't own anymore.

Deciding to make it public how much you care about your users opinions of you advertising might convince a few people to turn off AdBlock. Reddit already has a reasonable number of free/unsold ad spaces.

IMHO that'd make you a pretty crappy manager. Didn't Conde Nast pay something like 15 million for Reddit? And you'd make a decision that would, as you said, likely kill the site off over a little authority dispute? What a way to throw your money away.

If it's a sunk cost, then "throwing the money away" is maybe the best option.

It isn't like it's just a little authority dispute. Reddit probably costs more than it brings in, so closing it might make financial sense, too.

The founders already did quit, right?

It's actually really interesting. I've read a lot of articles about the perils of Gen-Y in the workplace, what about when Gen-Y runs your portfolio company?

What's the over/under on the complaints about corporate giveaways to political campaigns? I'll take the under.

I'm not familiar with Conde Nast's publications. Do they traditionally avoid political issue ads? If so I don't see any good reason why Reddit would be an exception. It sounds like they want to avoid the issue entirely and won't run anti Prob 19 ads either. I don't think that's unreasonable. I also have to question the value of any pro Prob 19 group spending money to advertise on Reddit. They'd be better off targeting the mainstream voter.

There's actually quite a few ads on Reddit that I've seen about "Avoiding the Obama Homesexual Agenda" (not to mention Scientology), so it seems more like Conde Nast is protecting their specific interests. Or at least, not allowing ads that oppose their views.

To be fair, those are all served by Google, they're not direct sales (like the Prop 19 ones seemed to be). We (not reddit) spent lots of time blocking Scientology and other moronic adwords ads back when we were running adsense. They sprout up like weeds.

No, they are avoiding ads that they think will cost them money.

Conde Nast publishes The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, both of which are associated with "northeastern liberalism". The Prop 19 thing isn't an issue because it clashes with their portfolio; it doesn't.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume that. there is a deep entrenchment in the establishment to oppose hemp, for purely economic reasons.

the war on <s>drugs</s> cannabis is way too profitable for the so-called "northeastern liberalismists" to turn away from it.

Uh, what?

I don't know, do you have any objections or are you trying to appeal to ridicule?

I literally don't know what you're talking about. A conspiracy to suppress hemp?

http://www.activistpost.com/2010/07/marijuana-conspiracy-rea...

Yes. I'm not surprised, to be honest. There is so much propoganda on this subject that most people are completely unaware of this plant's historical significance.

I apologize about the appeal to ridicule statement, your initial reply was unclear as to what you were implying.

I'll link some wikipedia articles to point you in the general direction, but do your own research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories#Dru...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont#Hemp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp_for_Victory

I think you're getting downvoted because these sources you're citing are pretty silly. Hemp is produced throughout the industrialized western world. Why hasn't it revolutionized Europe, where non-psychoactive hemp crops are legal?

Okay, here is a source that argues that while the hemp conspiracy might be overblown, the racist underpinnings of prohibition are still in place.

http://cannazine.co.uk/hemp/hemp-products/debunking-the-hemp...

I'd like someone to point out how this isn't true.

On a similar note, here are some cute pictures of kittens:

http://images.google.com/images?q=kittens&ie=UTF-8&o...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule

no apologies this time =(

The ones I'm familiar with are the New Yorker (respectable, and I was a subscriber when I lived in the US) and Wired (not so much, and no effin way), but I have a hard time imagining typical readers of either getting bent out of shape by marijuana use. (I mean, the New Yorker isn't the Atlantic!)

Less sure about their other rags, though.

The Atlantic is pretty liberal too, and to whatever extent it isn't, it's libertarian.

too late, they've already ran anti-prop 19 ads:

http://www.reddit.com/r/prop19/duplicates/cx665/no_on_19_ad_...

Condo is a company that exist for one single reason - to make as much money as possible for their share holders. That is their legal requirment, so if they don't do that and leave money on the table they open the self up to liability from their share holders.

They are a private company owned by the Newhouse family. They can do what they want.

Public or not the officers still have a fiduciary responsibility to those shareholders. Not that there's any concrete way to argue that this issue has anything to do with fiduciary responsibility.

"As a corporation, Conde Nast does not want to benefit financially from this particular issue"

I think that's fair. I can't fault them for that.

Am I the only one who has no problem with a parent company not wanting pro-marijuana ads running on their sites? They legitimately own Reddit, it seems rather childish that Reddit is "rebelling" by running the ads for free.

New media vs. old.

Conde Nast can retaliate somehow, but then all the users just get mad and go to the competitors, and Reddit becomse a Distant Memory Of The Past.

Why do you think they're rebelling? Isn't the most natural interpretation that the corporate statement ("we don't want to profit from this issue") is accurate, and that Conde Nast doesn't mind if Reddit runs the ads?

I guess the question is: Would Reddit have offered to run the Prop 19 ads for free even if Conde Nast hadn't told them not to run the ads at all?

I would say no, so it seems that the reason that the ads are running for free is because of the difference in opinion with the parent company. That's how I reasoned out "rebelling", although it's obviously a bit of hyperbole.

Because he thinks that corporate-speak is not meant to be taken literally, and he is probably right. The sentiment is "don't run these ads," which is what they are rebelling against.

These ads are purely political. They are not ads for a product for sale, as in the case of a tobacco or liquor ad.

Well, this will have the opposite effect. It seems Conde Nast doesn't understand their product very well.

Your basic Streisand effect.

Title isn't true, Conde Naste has no problem running Prop. 19 ads, as long as your viewpoints align with theirs.

http://www.reddit.com/r/prop19/duplicates/cx665/no_on_19_ad_...

After all these years, it looks like the publishing industry is still threatened by marijuana.

Could be they're not threatened by marijuana so much as their other advertisers.

It's not difficult to imagine an account with much deeper pockets and an opposing agenda making it clear that if CN takes money from "pro-drug" advertisers, then they'll pull their own.

I was mostly pointing out the irony that Conde Nast is continuing the legacy of William Randolph Hearst. My assertion isn't completely implausible though.

Perhaps its not that they're threatened by marijuana but disinclined to accept controversial and divisive advertising?

They already accept controversial and divisive advertising. Here is an example: http://i.imgur.com/pRN0K.jpg

Although it looks like that is a Google ad, so maybe they didn't intend to accept it?

Wow. Nevermind then!

Gentlemen, if you disable you ad blockers and visit Reddit you will see that the Prop 19 advert is now visible.

Ahh, green; the color of money.

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