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Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

reuters.com

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Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#71

Post by seppin »

forbiddenvoid wrote: post #6

Sounds like Verizon's Facebook advertising spend is losing value because of COVID-19, so they're using this a way to redirect focus away from the negative impact on their business. All of the companies doing this right now are 'pausing spend' rather than redirecting. They're reducing their marketing budgets and pointing the finger at Facebook so no one looks too closely at the implications of their reduced ad spend.

> Sounds like Verizon's Facebook advertising spend is losing value because of COVID-19, so they're using this a way to redirect focus away from the negative impact on their business.

My first thought on all these "boycotts". Are we cynical or is there any proof of this?

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#73

Post by aabhay »

Barrin92 wrote: post #38
vvanders wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly? I think all political advertising shouldn't be allowed, it gives those with a disproportionate amount of capital a lever of influence that runs counter to the democratic process. If you want to push an issue you should have to organize people who believe in your cause and have them involved. There's been plenty of examples of microtargeting's influence that makes me think it has no place in the political di…

Yep, it's pretty much how campaigns here in Germany work. There's about a few weeks of campaigning during which political posters and so on can be put up, but otherwise there's strict regulation on political ads. Also the parties are significantly publicly financed and the amount of money is much lower, due to the much shorter campaign span, making the process much more egalitarian. For example the largest party in G…

parliamentary systems have less of the US two-party brinksmanship that explains all the robocalls and takedown ads.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#74

Post by seppin »

cwhiz wrote: post #41

We want Facebook to censor speech on Facebook! But oh not all speech just some speech that we don’t like. Only we are allowed to define the type of speech we don’t like. And we reserve the right to change at any time. So, please just censor speech that we don’t like. On this day. At this hour. At this minute. And next minute we’ll tell you what to censor next.

Speech that leads to violence, how about starting with that?

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#75

Post by danans »

This sounds similar to the advertiser boycott that led to demonetization of YouTube channels that were pushing hate content.

I don't know what action FB realistically can take to similarly disincentivize hate content or violence promoting though, since its primary content producers (people who post) are not paid - they are posting for their own sake - so there is nothing to demonetize.

Maybe they can follow Twitter's lead and flag content with warnings, but that seems unlikely given their current stance.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#76

Post by slg »

For all the people mentioning the free speech ramifications, I would like to point to the recommendations from the group leading this boycott[1]. It doesn't seem like any of this is related to free speech. They are asking for extra moderation and support. They also are asking for Facebook to stop profiting from hate speech and misinformation, but they stop short of asking for changes to any policy regarding the removal of content. What is wrong with these requests?

Provide more support to people who are targets of racism, antisemitism and hate

* Create a separate moderation pipeline for users who express that they have been targeted because of specific identity characteristics such as race or religion. This pipeline must include experts on various forms of identity-based hate.

* Create a threshold of harm on the platform where they will put a target of hate and harassment in touch with a live Facebook employee to help them address their concerns.

* Release data from their existing reporting form around identity-based hate. For example, how many reports of hate speech based on race or ethnicity did they get in 2019? How many, and what kinds of actions were taken?

Stop generating ad revenue from misinformation and harmful content.

* Create internal mechanisms (for every media format on every Facebook platform) that automatically remove all ads from content labeled as misinformation or hate.

* Change the advertising portal on all Facebook products to tell advertisers how often their ads were shown next to content that was later removed for misinformation or hate.

* Provide refunds to advertisers for those advertisements

* Prove it: send out an audited transparency report specifically addressing these suggestions.

Increase Safety in Private Groups on Facebook.

* At the request of a member of a private group, provide at least one Facebook-affiliated moderator per group with more than 150 members. Consider more moderators for even larger groups.

* Create an internal mechanism to automatically flag content in private groups associated with extremist ideologies for human review. This content and associated groups would then be reviewed by internal subject matter experts on extremism.

[1] - http://stophateforprofit.org/productrecommendations

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#77

Post by PascLeRasc »

throwawaysea wrote: post #22

Keep politics out of business. Stop caving into activist pressure (whether internal or external) and online outrage. That isn't representative of what customers care about or want. Companies entering cultural/ideological wars (like Verizon) are doing so based on the voices of a small vocal minority of people. By adopting such stances, these companies are doing the silent majority of their customers a huge disservice…

I agree, let's keep politics out of business. Let's start by not having the president announce policy decisions over social media.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#78

Post by hedora »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #47
narag wrote: post #21

I'm not American, I'm not in Facebook either. I've read TFA and still don't have a clue what is Facebook criticized for. What's that hate speech and who's doing it?

The triggering event, as I understand it, is they did not censor the President of the United States who said something to the effect of riots lead to death. There's two ways to interpret this. One way is that eventually people will get hurt in some way if riots continue. Another way to interpret it was as a death threat to protesters. FB's position was that even if it was a threat, that the protesters needed to know…

Trump did more than you suggest. He used well understood language (“when the looting starts the shooting starts” is a famous quote from a white supremacist) to encourage his supporters to murder/lynch blacks.

His campaign eventually started using Nazi imagery suggesting various opposition groups and protestors should be sent to concentration camps.

Facebook pulled the ad. Around the same time, he used Twitter to (successfully, apparently) incite lynchings.

Pulling a few Trump campaign ads was too little too late, and now people are boycotting Facebook.

Here is a link to a story about the ad. Don’t take my word for it: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/18/trump-ad-uses-nazi-symbol-...

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#79

Post by kingaillas »

papeda wrote: post #63
kingaillas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This situation appears to me to be corporations freely associating and/or choosing to do business, or not to do business, with other corporations. No government coercion involved in either forcing or blocking this behavior. In other words, the libertarian ideal of the future. I don't see the problem. The fact that this behavior isn't universally celebrated is an example of why libertarianism fails in the real world.…

Wait, where did this become a referendum on libertarianism? Nothing in the parent comment suggests this.

I was just noting that fundamentally this is an issue between two corporations acting in their own interests, and that the government isn't involved.

The OP paraphrased as "we want Facebook to censor", but that actual demand is "we want something that makes us comfortable". Which is a bit different.

These corporations are deciding out of their own free will, to withhold their money.

This seems to me to be ideal behavior from a free market, libertarian, perspective. Correct?

:edit for clarity

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#80

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

I'm very proud to live in a country that still has a strong, foundational principle of Freedom of Speech. Most of the euro countries at this point have criminalized objectionable expression, "hate speech", online. And they compel social media companies to delete it or face incredible fines. I don't consider France, Germany, or several other euro countries to be free societies.
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