Nandini Jammi Campaigns to Stop Advertisers From Using U.S. Extremist Sites
Photo: Nandini Jammi
December 15, 2023
“Why are you still here with @RealAlexJones being back and all?” Ashley Dawn posted on X, formerly Twitter.
X user Dawn was responding to this post by Nandini Jammi: “I was part of the effort to get Alex Jones kicked off every major tech and marketing platform in 2018. Even @Apple won’t f… with him. If Elon (Musk) brings him back, I can’t emphasize how ‘easy’ it’s going to be to convince the last of X’s advertisers to drop him.”
This week, Elon Musk, owner of X, allowed Alex Jones back on to the platform. Jones spreads false, wild conspiracies, like claiming that a "New World Order" was sacrificing children on a California compound, and that the U.S. government had "weather weapons" that triggered catastrophes like major floods, according to NPR.
Jammi, who has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter, was also part of the campaign that led to the ouster of Jones from platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Spotify and the payment site Paypal.
Jammi, 34-years-old, is co-founder of Check My Ads, a watchdog of advertising technology. Advertisers use ad exchanges – technology companies that run ads for them. The exchanges decide on which websites to work with and which to block. Most advertisers’ contracts with an exchange require that their ads not fund sites that promote violence, extremism, bigotry, and conspiracy theories.
Check My Ads seeks to hold ad exchanges accountable for abuses against advertisers and consumers, according to its website. It also campaigns against advertising on Fox News talk show programs, with extremist hosts including Laura Ingraham’s The Ingraham Angle.
“It’s so important to focus on their revenue streams because it hits at the heart of their business model,” Jammi told The Washington Post this week. “These bad actors have made a business out of publishing increasingly extreme and hateful content because it makes them money.”
Photo: Claire Atkin and Nandini Jammi, from left
In 2020, Jammi co-founded Check My Ads, with Claire Atkin, 35, a fellow marketer. Atkin earned a Master’s in Urban Geography from McMaster University and a Bachelor’s in Geography and Professional Writing, from the University of Victoria, both located in Canada.
In 2016, Jammi anonymously co-founded Sleeping Giants, a “campaign to make bigotry and sexism unprofitable.” The group, with a community of more than 400,000 followers, ran campaigns on Facebook and Twitter, asking advertisers to stop paying for ads on offensive websites. The posts and comments by the community “helped us lose Breitbart 90% of its ad revenues, put Bill O’Reilly (a host on Fox News) out of a job and deplatform hate figures like Alex Jones,” writes Jammi on Medium.
In 2020, she resigned from Sleeping Giants alleging that her co-founder “gaslighted me out of the movement we built together.” She says she was not included in major campaigns, including one for Sleeping Giants India.
In addition to English and Telugu -her mother tongue - Jammi speaks German, Italian and Spanish. She grew up in the Washington D.C. area. Her parents are immigrants from Hyderabad, India. Jammi earned a B.S. in marketing and English from the University of Maryland.
She runs a newsletter for marketers and also seeks paid engagements to speak at companies, universities and organizations. Earlier, Jammi worked in marketing for tech startups in London and Berlin.
Conservative media have embraced personality-driven models for their hosts “for years, delivering news with a partisan slant that generates outrage, attracts large audiences — and turns a profit,” notes a report in The Washington Post.
In less than four days, since his return to X, Alex Jones has attracted 1.6 million followers. His first post on the platform is a video titled Premier of Documentary ‘ENDGAME: Blueprint for Global Enslavement’ - - PLUS Deep State Pushing Martial Law – MUST WATCH. In two days, the post has gotten more than 2.6 million views.
Jammi is in a tough battle to try to remove Jones from X (Twitter) again. The platform is now owned by Musk, who paid $44 billion to buy Twitter in 2022. In May Fidelity, an investor in X, reportedly slashed the value of its investment to a third, implying the company is valued around $15 billion.
Musk may be at risk of losing billions of dollars on his investment in X and may be under pressure from banks who extended loans for the purchase. But Musk has a net worth of $252 billion, as estimated by Forbes, making him the wealthiest person in the World. He is the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and other major companies. So, Musk’s potential losses on X, if it ever occurs, is unlikely to be a big hit to Musk’s personal finances.
On the day Jones was allowed back on X, Musk joined Jones, Vivek Ramaswamy, Laura Loomer (a self-described "proud Islamophobe" who has been banned from some platforms) and others in a live chat, NPR reported.
Evidently Jammi is prepared for the battle. Two days ago, she posted on X: “Hi, I’m Nandini. I have ADHD (attention deficit disorder) and absolutely nothing better to do than spend my days making hate speech unprofitable.”
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