[longdustytrail]

First off yes I (and I think 99% of people) would be totally fine with your closing hypothetical. Why would I care about CNN’s ad revenue? Never even enters my mind.

But more fundamentally your frame totally omits brand safety, which is kind of the whole ball game. A group that exists to evaluate brands safety thought that changes to Twitter made it less brand safe and said so. It’s like suing a bond rating agency for downgrading your rating

[pjkundert]

The evidence presented thus far doesn't have any discussion of brand safety, and appears focussed on retribution for wrongthink against specific ad platforms.

Which may or may not be fine. IANAL.

Personally, I am shocked and appalled by the (few) ads I've seen lately, and arrange my affairs to avoid using any vendors I see advertising on the mainstream channels touted by the defendant in this case as being "safe" for their represented brands.

My young daughter sees none of these ads, as they are IMHO generally sex-cultish religious indoctrination... (specifically: the ads / programming revolves around glorifying whatever sexual identities or behaviours are embraced by that religion, instead of on the relevant topic or event at hand).

Once again, that's fine -- and I don't think there's a legal foundation preventing individuals (or the companies they own) from avoiding ad sellers that appear to be ideologically / religiously motivated to proselytize for (or avoid) sex-cultish religions.

It is probably even fine for an advertising industry organization to proclaim publicly that it rejects ad platforms based on ideological grounds -- I would certainly join such an organization, if it resulting in my company's advertising never appearing on a channel that contains sex-cultish religious programming or advertising!

Would that be ... illegal? I hope not!

So, in that light -- what is wrong with this industry organization avoiding ad channels that reject sex-cultish religious programming or advertising?

If everyone involved knew exactly that this was the goal of the defendant's organization (and they all felt that their product's ads belonged on channels containing such IMHO questionable programming), why wouldn't that be just fine?