Who is on Vodafone’s whitelist?

Vodafone is blocking its advertising from appearing on websites that feature hate speech or ‘fake news’.

Fake news, hate speech and harmful content. Vodafone wants to avoid even a remote connection with sites carrying such content. The mobile brand is using content controls developed by its agency WPP as well as Facebook and Google to steer clear of choppy waters.

This is a change from Vodafone’s original approach of blacklisting by which it ensured that its ads do not appear on porn or gambling sites. Such sites were easy to identify through metadata. But sites carrying fake news or hate speeches were difficult to spot, with algorithms.

According to Vodafone’s new approach of avoiding ‘dodgy outlets’, involves a checklist that has the following guidelines. It will avoid sites that:

.deliberately intend to degrade women or vulnerable minorities

.present as fact-based news (as opposed to satire or opinion) that has no credible primary source (or relies on fraudulent attribution to a primary source) with what a reasonable person would conclude is the deliberate intention to mislead

At the same time, it would like to avoid a “whitelist so narrow that we exclude diversity of opinion and people’s ability to say what they think online.” Tough call that.

Source : https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/06/06/vodafone-block-ads-appearing-fake-news-sites/