How a Twitter account convinced 4,000 companies to stop advertising on Breitbart

You can call somebody and talk to them about it, but Twitters a pretty public medium and if you ask a brand about something then theyre likely to get back because they want to address it.

Applying this lesson to something more important than cheap furniture, Rivitz started an account called Sleeping Giants, aimed at alerting advertisers whose ads were appearing on Breitbart. Today, the account has nearly 200,000 followers and has convinced more than 4,000 companies to take their ads off that site; it has also led campaigns aimed at Fox News, Laura Ingraham and Robert Mercer, but Rivitz says its not about politics its about bigotry and hate speech.

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For a long time he was one of the anonymous writers behind a very popular Twitter account that urged boycotts of Breitbart advertisers, but since July, hes been out in the open and hes here talking to us.

You just send it off and its trafficked through Google and Facebook and a couple other companies and they run it wherever theres space and wherever their market is.

They need to appeal to as many people as possible, so to sponsor a website that denigrates women and minorities and immigrants, they werent down with that.

Initially, when the big brands started coming down from Breitbart, thats when they didnt like when Kelloggs decided not to run ads with them.

They did us a massive favor by then, doing a counter-boycott on Kelloggs, which, of course, doesnt last for more than a day.

If Alex Jones, who harasses Sandy Hook parents, is on their platform, just like if he was doing that in an Arbys, Arbys is going to call the cops and get him out of there.

Original article
Author: Eric Johnson

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