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The Los Angeles Police Department has suspended its digital recruitment ad campaign through Google ads and will open an “inquiry” after The Daily Beast’s Editor In Chief, Noah Shachtman, drew attention to the fact that LAPD adverts were appearing on a rival news website, Breitbart.
“Uhhhh why is the LAPD running recruitment ads on Breitbart?!” Shachtman asked his 100,000+ followers.
Other users then joined the conversation, going as far as tagging Sleeping Giants into the conversation – an organization that has, in the past, launched campaigns to stop brands from advertising on Breitbart.
Before long, tweets complaining about the situation ended up receiving tens of thousands of likes in support.
After receiving much backlash, both the LAPD and its recruitment Twitter account responded to the Twitter outrage.
“The LAPD celebrates diversity and embraces it within our ranks, and within the city we serve. We are aware that a recruitment advertisement has been circulated on a website that creates a negative juxtaposition to our core values,” the LAPD tweeted.
Further, it said it would open an “initial inquiry into the matter” to determine the ad’s validity and “what future steps can and will be taken to avoid this situation occurring in the future.”
In a follow-up message, the LAPD said that it had temporarily stopped all Google ads while they “reexamine our ad filters and take all necessary steps to ensure tighter control of ad settings.”
Google’s ad services work by scripts that are run in a user’s browser and are not hardcoded into any website, meaning that the LAPD’s adverts would appear on any website a relevant user is visiting. In most instances, ad-targeting is user-specific, meaning that the placement is targeting the user, not the website.
However, one of the outraged Tweeters said that organizations should be blacklisting websites that he suggests are “extremist conspiracy-mongers.”
Several conservative media outlets, including Breitbart, The Daily Caller, and Fox News have recently been at the receiving end of outraged online users trying to get brands to pull advertising from the sites.
Activists have, in the past, managed to campaign to get brands such as AT&T, Kellogg’s, BMW, Visa, Autodesk, Lenovo, HP Inc., Vimeo, Deutsche Telekom, Lyft, Allstate, Nest, and Warby Parker to blacklist adverts appearing on conservative news outlets such as Breitbart.
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