Listener skipping episodes to protest Bitcoin related ad(s)

Sure, I understand that TWiT has to make money; it’s a business, that was never in question. I am very grateful that TWiT hasn’t gone down the route of caving in to advertiser demands for extra tracking or anything like that, and I attempt to do the survey every year (although it often tells me to go away because I’m overrepresented). I’ve been listening long enough that there were no ads when I started, and it really threw me the first time I heard an ad (living in a country where host-read ads are not a thing), but I accepted that TWiT needed to make money and got used to it. However, regardless of the commercial realities, the ads an organisation chooses to run (especially when read by the host) don’t get to be chosen in a vacuum in which it doesn’t reflect back on them - I’m sure everyone has a line at which they would stop listening; this is mine, I’m not saying it should be anybody else’s.

Thinking slightly more on this on a walk today, I think there are more reasons why this specific ad causes issues for me. I think one is that there is no plausible deniability for someone who covers tech news to know about the environmental impact of Bitcoin. Secondly, for me it drastically undermines any discussions related to climate change in the future.

I’m not doing any bragging. I’m not the one who brought up Club TWiT, I explicitly avoided doing so because it would be a distraction from my point. I was very explicit that my say has less of an impact from not being a member. I’m not expecting my action to have any impact on anything, but saying something to accompany an action is more useful than not saying something.

I’m tired of having to defend myself when all I’ve said is that I think it’s the wrong thing to do to run an ad for a Bitcoin-related service in 2021 and so I personally won’t be downloading any episodes that have this sponsor as I don’t feel I can ethically do so. I don’t know if the topic title (that I didn’t chose and was assigned when it was split off from the episode topic) might be making people read my comments in a more antagonistic tone than they’re intended, since I wouldn’t use the word “protest”, or maybe that’s just how I’m unintentionally coming across. But I’ve made my point and I’m going to unsubscribe from notifications because I don’t think I really have anything more to say.

2 Likes

Okay, in that spirit I will lock the thread.

2 Likes