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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

#331

Post by ashtonkem »

asah wrote: post #279
ashtonkem wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The marketplace of ideas is a pretty messy place.

Sounds good until those consumers form echo chambers that amplify crazy crap and then elect Actually Crazy people (on the left and right). Then it's time for some guard rails.

How Facebook was used against American elections would not work if American democracy was healthy.

And of course, once actual crazy people control the government, who is going to install and maintain the guard rails?

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#332

Post by consultSKI »

Yes, there a number of reasons to reduce an ad spend, but they also made a point of a key reason:

"Verizon Communications Inc said on Thursday it was pausing advertising on Facebook Inc in July, in support of a campaign that called out the social media giant for not doing enough to stop hate speech on its platforms."

Short, but insightful article. Worth a read.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#333

Post by iamstupidsimple »

ogre_codes wrote: post #328
iamstupidsimple wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> threatening threatening to use the military to suppress peaceful protests (an actual violation of the 1st amendment). The 1st amendment only covers peaceful protesters who aren't burning buildings down and having gunfights in the street.

There have been thousands of protestors out on the streets for nearly a month now. If there were burning buildings and having gunfights in the streets this whole time, there wouldn't be any cities left.

Uhh, have you seen the CHAZ/CHOP?

Edit: 38 people shot in half a day in NYC: https://www.pix11.com/news/local-news/24-people-shot-in-18-i...

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#334

Post by ballenf »

forbiddenvoid wrote: post #18
jedberg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to Verizon, they have not laid off a single person since March. The retrained 95% of their retail workers to be at home support agents and the rest are still working in their stores for issues that have to be solved in person. So it makes sense that they would need to cut budget somewhere, since employees is not one of them.

I don't fault Verizon for cutting budget. It's absolutely the right thing to do. But if we weren't in the situation we're in they probably wouldn't be doing this. The nuance between "we're going to stop doing business with Facebook because Facebook is bad" and "we have to cut budget from advertising and we chose to cut it from Facebook because Facebook is bad" is important. It's convenient to do this now, but hard to…

Their willingness to suspend advertising is also an indictment of the practically nonexistent competitive landscape in mobile providers in the US.

There just aren't good alternatives to Verizon for many people where T-Mobile/Sprint don't have good coverage. Switching between AT&T and Verizon is pointless for most plans.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#335

Post by Consultant32452 »

nl wrote: post #270
tomp wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To save everyone a click: the term is “kung flu”. Slur maybe, racist definitely not (China is a country, not a race).

A slur against an ethnicity is generally accepted as racist.

Trump is racist no matter what he does. He says neo-nazis and white supremacists should be condemned totally, they claim he said nazis are fine people. NYT, WaPo, etc. call it the Chinese corona virus? No problem. Trump calls it the Chinese corona virus? Racist. So fuck it, it's the kung flu. I think it's a gross thing to say and don't choose that language myself, but fuck everyone's faux offense. Also, people generally have a POSITIVE view of Kung Fu. Positive associations are not slurs. China is not an ethnicity. Good for him going scorched Earth.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#336

Post by jaekash »

marcinzm wrote: post #314
jaekash wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What so many of you flippantly dismiss as an outrage mob is a coalition of concerned citizens who believe Facebook is wrong for allowing dishonest political content to disseminate unchecked. So "hate speech" is a synonym for "dishonest political content"? Or are we maybe talking about different things here. And just repeating "hate speech" is not convincing either, other values exist and compete with the "human rig…

>to not be offended If you think this is about being offended then I feel sad for your limited world view. This is a mix of people not wanting politics to be controlled by external state actors and people not wanting acts of violence to be pushed for. The later leads to people getting actually hurt and killed. Avoiding that tends to be a value that most place rather highly.

> This is a mix of people not wanting politics to be controlled by external state actors and people not wanting acts of violence to be pushed for.

Democrats in the US is actively calling for violence and endorsing riots and insurrection. Nobody cares about violence. It is a lie.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#337

Post by edmundsauto »

nan0 wrote: post #232
edmundsauto wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt "FB going out of business" would have the effect you think. There would then be a vacuum where other actors to fill -- actors who have not experienced the lessons ($5 billion fine) that FB has. I just don't buy the idea of "start a company, making tens of billions, then your company goes out of business" is a warning. Just like I don't think Adam Neumann's situation is a warning to anyone. Michael Lewis relat…

> There would then be a vacuum where other actors to fill > if there's an opportunity, people are going to take it. Good, we need more platforms (preferably decentralized) to cultivate free thinking and public form. Not a centralized entity that bends to the will of domestic and foreign governments and angry mobs.

You might be right, although I don't think it's nearly so certain. Why wouldn't each niche community just become an even greater echo chamber when they are decentralized and don't have to follow the same community guidelines? Seems to me, you'd be looking at a lot of communities like /r/thedonald.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#338

Post by thephyber »

throwawaysea wrote: post #48
thephyber wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These companies are basically being gamed by sophisticated organization, campaigning, and manufactured outrage. I'm sorry I lost the thread. Is "these companies" the boycotting companies or the boycotted? > Stop caving into activist pressure and online outrage. Is this post not "online outrage"?

I edited my post, and hopefully it reads more clearly now.

FYI, I only posted because the ambiguity was ironic.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#339

Post by HunOL »

pdkl95 wrote: post #312
HunOL wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yet somehow it's hard to find this quote in Google if you select range before the events.

Google returns lots of results from a variety of sources for that quote: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22when+the+looting+starts%2... As expected, most of the results appear to be about the original use of the phrase in 1967 by the racist police chief of Miami Walter Headley.

That's why I told to select date range before, like 2010-2019.

Re: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

#340

Post by partiallypro »

ashtonkem wrote: post #331
asah wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds good until those consumers form echo chambers that amplify crazy crap and then elect Actually Crazy people (on the left and right). Then it's time for some guard rails.

How Facebook was used against American elections would not work if American democracy was healthy. And of course, once actual crazy people control the government, who is going to install and maintain the guard rails?

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.

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