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Following campaigns in the United Kingdom, several US civil rights associations are proposing a total boycott of Facebook advertising in July under the hashtag #StopHateForProfit in response to the company’s refusal to remove hate speech from the social network.
Several recent news stories confirm that Facebook, aware that its platform and algorithms favored confrontation and extremism, made specific decisions to do nothing, ignoring its own research on the subject.
Why does Facebook encourage this kind of polarization? Because it boosts profits. According to a recent study by NYU, Facebook’s investments to moderate its content by employing tens of thousands of checkers were clearly inadequate and done under conditions that made it virtually impossible to solve the platform’s problems. Basically, this was a hollow PR exercise carried out at the same time as Facebook was designing products, such as groups, that made it impossible to control the spread of hate speech, conspiracy theories and fake news.
There is growing support for a boycott of Facebook, with brands such as Patagonia or The North Face announcing on Twitter their decision to join, while some advertising agencies are recommending that their clients do the same. Sleeping Giants is campaigning to get advertisers to stay away from conservative news platforms. Civil rights leaders, after meeting with Facebook, have criticized its stance. Meanwhile, Joanna Hoffman, known as Steve Jobs’ right-hand woman, has framed the issue in terms of drug dealing, accusing Facebook of peddling a highly addictive substance called anger. Even Facebook employees, company veterans and scientists whose research is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative have protested Zuckerberg’s strategy.
It is difficult to know whether the boycott called for next month will effective in changing Facebook’s position: in practice, many companies depend on Facebook’s targeted advertising to justify their marketing investments, and to fool themselves and others by buying traffic for their sites. But if the example is set and some companies start to proudly wear the Facebook-free badge, the initiative could have significant value for the future.
It must be terrible to think about what you’ve done in your life, and realize you’ve dedicated yourself to creating tools that polarize people, spread hate speech and encourage bullying and harassment. Mark Zuckerberg has rightly been called “an American oligarch,” a self-righteous monster who believes only in himself, capable of doing whatever it takes to keep making a buck, even if it jeopardizes the essence of democracy itself. Somebody on the wrong side of history.
