I really don't understand this protest at all. If they really care about this, why aren't they pulling from YouTube and Google? Which has very very bad comment sections? I'm not for big corporations calling for people to police speech. Patagonia boycotted Facebook, but they have 13 factories in China...a country with concentration camps for Muslims and political prisoners. A lot of corporate good will falls on deaf ears for me, especially when they have been so silent on issues in China/Hong Kong/Taiwan. Money talks, if this weren't a profitable thing to do, they wouldn't do it.
Verizon also currently appears heavily invested in TikTok which does not have better privacy practices and has yet to deal with many political issues Facebook must today.
I don't have a facebook, so I don't know how they are advertising these days? But I know that on YouTube your ads won't show on objectionable content. Is there a similar system on facebook? Or do your ads show against all content no matter how objectionable it is? If you can't control where your ads are shown, then this boycott doesn't really surprise me.
By way of a contrived example, suppose there is content about a person who was murdered and dismembered on facebook. Well if I'm Ginsu, I'm not sure I want a ginormous ad for my knives next to that content. I wonder if facebook makes guarantees like youtube does with regard to embarrassing situations like that.
Choosing how to spend your own money is hardly 'policing speech'. It sounds more like it's not that you don't understand it but you're set on framing it in a specific way. As you point out, this can lead to hearing loss.
I understand what is happening, and what they want. I don't understand why they want it, other than they've done market research to show such a stance could lead to increased sales or brand marketing. I mean, this protest alone has already brought them tremendous free press/advertising. They've crunched the numbers.
Also...they are calling on the company to police speech. So how can you say they are "hardly policing speech" when they are literally calling for another company to do that? They can do whatever they want with their money, but to pretend they aren't advocating the policing of speech on a platform is just nonsense.
Yes, it’s Facebooks right to run their site as they see fit, and it’s the right of all consumers and companies to associate with Facebook or not based on their own feelings about Facebook. End consumers are also free to express their opinions about Facebook, Verizon, and their relative agreements or lack thereof.
There is no real evidence that the Russian campaign on Facebook was effective at all in 2016. I believe the entire campaign wasn't necessarily to effect the outcome, but to sow doubt on the outcome. Putin just wanted chaos. The real poll shift came when Comey made his statement on the Clinton email server within weeks of the election.
I'm 100% in favor of Facebook policing things like the "Plandemic" nonsense, but that's not what these companies are asking for. They are essentially asking for a partisan tilt to the platform...when the platform itself (imo) should strive to be a neutral party.
Alas, how do you define neutrality? What happens if Plandemic hypothetically becomes associated with a partisan party? How can Facebook be neutral there?
I agree they should try to be neutral, but I don’t know if neutrality is even possible in a lot of cases.
The irony, of course, is that FB bans users left and right for the most mundane things. I follow blog of a poet who stopped publishing on Facebook because his poems get suspended all the time when they mention any issues.
Yeah their auto-screening isn't particularly impressive. I'm just learning the platform, but I posted a video ad that was rejected and had to be reviewed (fair); then I made that exact same video a boosted post on my business page and had to go through the process again.
I think we're still in the very eary days of L in ML.
It's a well known left wing ploy. Look at Media Matters for example. They try to shut down speech they disagree with politically by affecting the broadcaster or the platform economically.
