Right-Wing Companies Create Shell URLs to Infiltrate Podcast Networks

Imagine you're listening to your favorite Democratic podcast, and you hear an ad from a gun manufacturer. Here's how they do it.

I’ve been podcasting for a long time - and since May 2021, I took control over my content by starting my own podcast network. It didn’t take long to learn about the tedious game of whack-a-mole we’d have to play with insidious right-wing advertising trolls who trick the system to get their ads into the ears of our listeners.

As the owner of our network RSS feeds, we are able to block advertisements from certain companies and products. For instance, I have implemented a broad block of all gun manufacturers, republican politicians, right wing podcasts, and Donald Trump branded products - just to name a few. I have also blocked specific companies like Black Rifle Coffee - pro-gun, conservative coffee jerks.

But right wing companies learned quickly that they could buck these blocks through deception, and that has resulted in a difficult game of cat-and-mouse as we search for these guys to ban them from our networks.

Our podcasts have two kinds of advertisements: programmatic ads that are automatically inserted by the podcast platform that carries our feeds and casts them to your podcast player, and the host-read ads where you hear the host personally talk about the product. The programmatic ads are the ones that are being exploited to get right wing ideas into your ears.

Here’s just one of dozens and dozens of examples that we deal with on a near-daily basis:

This morning, we got a note from a listener who informed us that they heard an advertisement for guns while listening to today’s Daily Beans Podcast. But we’ve blocked all gun ads, so how did this happen?

First, we had to ask the listener which episode, when during the episode, what city they are in, the name of the company, and what time of day they heard it. That info helps us narrow down the search of ads that ran in that market during that time.

When we searched the list of advertisers, we didn’t see anything that appeared to be associated with guns. They all looked benign, except for one:

“undisclosedcorporatemg.com”

Gun groups and right wingers are creating “shell URLs” to get past the blocks we set up. They do this ALL THE TIME.

We blocked that specific URL, but another will pop up - much like the social media crypto bots and porn bots. They use artificial intelligence to create fake URLS to mask their true intentions so they aren’t subject to the controls we put in place.

When we find these assholes, we zap them and donate any proceeds from the ad revenue to the Harris/Walz campaign.

I urge other podcast networks to do the same.

~AG