Sept. 28, 2018

University Affairs//

UBC pulls advertisements from far-right website The Rebel

Written by Ben Mussett

UBC tweeted on September 24 that the university had removed advertisements for the Allard School of Law from the far-right website The Rebel. File Kosta Prodanovic

UBC tweeted on September 24 that the university had removed advertisements for the Allard School of Law from the far-right website The Rebel.

The announcement came two days after Twitter user @slarothestoic alerted the university to the ads. The tweet was then retweeted by the Canadian branch of Sleeping Giants, an online activist community that urges organizations to stop advertising on far-right websites like The Rebel and Breitbart.

“Thank you for contacting us about this,” UBC responded on Twitter. “Our ads have now been blocked on this and similar sites.”

UBC joins hundreds of organizations and companies, including TD Canada and the Hudson’s Bay Company, that have pulled advertising from The Rebel after Sleeping Giants Canada informed them that their advertisements were running on the website. Critics have repeatedly condemned The Rebel for spreading misinformation and content they say perpetuates bigotry and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Kurt Heinrich, senior director of UBC Media Relations, said in a statement that UBC was not aware that Allard Law School advertisements had appeared on The Rebel’s website.

“Many digital advertising technologies serve ads based on the user’s geography, demographics and online behaviour,” reads the statement. “These ads could appear on a wide range of websites.”

First appeared on Twitter in February 2017, Sleeping Giants Canada is not formally associated with its American counterpart, but its administrators said they were inspired by the American group’s efforts to oppose far-right websites by targeting their advertisement revenue.

“We just thought companies should know they were potentially supporting these sites and their ideas through their media buy,” said an administrator for Sleeping Giants Canada.

The Rebel is the only Canadian website that Sleeping Giants Canada currently targets. But the group also lets Canadian organizations know when their ads appear on Breitbart, an American website that has received similar criticism to The Rebel.

Heinrich said that the university has now temporarily halted its ad campaign across all websites — online advertisements will resurface once the university’s review is completed. Besides The Rebel, it is unclear what other sites will be blocked.

“UBC’s policy is that advertising be aligned with the university’s values and on platforms that share these values,” he said. “We will continue to refine our marketing processes to ensure university ad buys align with UBC’s values.”

But the algorithmic nature of online advertising has made it difficult to ensure advertisements do not appear alongside undesired content.

On the same day that UBC announced its ads would no longer run on The Rebel’s website, Twitter user @YelloHappiness2 pointed out that an advertisement for the UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs had appeared before a Rebel Media video uploaded to YouTube.

YouTube’s parent company Google has introduced ‘brand safety’ measures to help companies control where their ads play. But with approximately 400 hours of video uploaded every minute, Google’s efforts to safeguard advertisers remain a work in progress.

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