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Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

nytimes.com

61–70 of 307 posts

Re: Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

#61

So because Mark Zuckerberg won't censor people with different opinions he is complacent in spreading fake news and hate? Wow, that kind of rhetoric is dangerous imo. For once I actually think Facebook have made the right call. Censoring people is wrong and Facebook should refrain from doing it. Let me decide what is true and false, I don't need Facebook or other people to decide that for me. Good job Facebook, thanks…

Censorship only applies to the extent that public authorities are willing to actively curb free speech through law enforcement.

That's not what's happening here.

Regardless whether you're Facebook or an administrator of a small time forum, it's entirely up to you to decide how you are going to moderate whatever people want to host and share on your own very private (!) infrastructure. And the private choice to host a public forum for other people does come with it's own special set of consequences.

Both Facebook and a small time forum are very much comparable to private Saturday night parties. It's the host who decides to get in and how they respond to their guests' behaviour is their personal responsibility.

Now, if some of those guests end up espousing questionable opinions which sour the overall mood of the party, the host can respond to that in several ways. One way is to step in and moderate or even kick out those guests at the behest of the others who simply want to chill and enjoy themselves. Another way is to excuse their behaviour and simply leave them be because of the host's whatever many personal motivations, intentions and beliefs.

Facebook - or any small time forum admin - choosing for the latter option is entirely their prerogative. Freedom of speech means they are free to ignore whatever and state that they don't want to step in. It just so happens that this keeps on souring the mood at the party they host to the point where some guests will simply leave out of themselves - these companies - and that other guests leave only to return with cardboard signs voicing their disdain in front of the door of the venue.

Facebook can't stop that kind of criticism from happening either: that's free speech too. It just works both ways, as intended.

Nobody bats an eye if a small time forum administrator with 100 users ends up doing a shoddy job at moderation to the point where half their users end up leaving the forum disgruntled. Plenty of groups or private individuals break up over disagreements all the time.

Literally the only difference between a small time forum administrator and Facebook is that the latter hosts a very private party with 2 billion attendees.

It just so happens that at that scale, the way you moderate debates and behaviour of guests at your party decides the fate of entire nations and tugs at the bedrock of all kinds of important values and principles up to and including, ironically, free speech. It's not unreasonable to point out that the management of Facebook does carry a certain measure of personal responsibility in that regard.

Re: Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

#62
It seems the pandemic and unemployment is finally causing voodoo economics (trickle down economics) to reverse course and perhaps cause trickle up economics, where the multi-billion dollar corporations and rich alike will begin to feel the pinch of poverty on a massive scale trickle up.

Unfortunately while taxpayers got their $1,200 Checks they were robbed blind of over $4T to the FED which went directly to stabilize the publicly traded companies. If it weren’t for that, we would have already seen bankruptcies on a massive scale from publicly traded companies...instead the markets are back where the were pre-covid. But at some point they will have to admit there can’t be a recovery when there are no consumers left.

Re: Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

#63
post #3
post #2

After the SSC debacle, NYT is likely to learn itself a thing or two about boycotts.

If we punish respected organizations (of any kind) for every gaffe, we would not have any left. In an era where the journalists are more under attack than ever, we might want to remember it is easier to tear things down than build them up.

How is NYTimes different than any for-profit business? They write what they write to get eyeballs. Just because they say "news media" doesn't mean they write truth. Some journalists may be under attack because they write lies and half-truths. Of course, they will portray it as the whole press is under attack.

Re: Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

#64
Serious questions: Are the people that work at Facebook proud to work there? What is morale like inside that place? When someone asks you what you do, and you say "I work for Facebook," what is their typical reaction?

Not trying to be snarky. I'm genuinely curious how these perceptions/feelings might have changed over the past few years.

Re: Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

#65

Given what they are trying to do to Scott Alexander, it's hard to take NYT's reporting angle seriously.

I’ve never read “Slate Star Codec” and I didn’t even hear about it until this week but I’m guessing it’s a blog about James Damore-style biological determinism. Can someone explain why this kind of material is so popular with San Francisco app developers?

1. You are guessing wrong. The blog wasn't about that and Damore said nothing about "determinism" just "average preference".

2. You seem to be under the impression that this site is visited by "San Francisco app developers" and you.

Re: Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

#66

Given what they are trying to do to Scott Alexander, it's hard to take NYT's reporting angle seriously.

I’ve never read “Slate Star Codec” and I didn’t even hear about it until this week but I’m guessing it’s a blog about James Damore-style biological determinism. Can someone explain why this kind of material is so popular with San Francisco app developers?

Yes, it does indeed have some articles about that, but more focused on race and upbringing than gender.

> Can someone explain why this kind of material is so popular with San Francisco app developers?

It is not. But for those who identify themselves as "libertarians", it is definitely appealing to think that nothing but themselves have influenced in their success, of which being a highly paid engineer is part.

Re: Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

#67

Given what they are trying to do to Scott Alexander, it's hard to take NYT's reporting angle seriously.

I’ve never read “Slate Star Codec” and I didn’t even hear about it until this week but I’m guessing it’s a blog about James Damore-style biological determinism. Can someone explain why this kind of material is so popular with San Francisco app developers?

Scott writes long thinkpeices about things like SSRI effectiveness and the role of neutrality and enlightenment values in healing America's cultural divide. As far as we know the NYT was not even planning to knife him, the issue is that they want to threaten his patient-doctor relationships by publishing his full name in a place where his mental patients could read it. (He's a practicing psychiatrist with hundreds of patients.)

Re: Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It surely feels like it at least when every single major javascript framework has a #BLM header. Nothing that don't matter or are relevant to me since I live in northen europe.

> It surely feels like it at least when every single major javascript framework has a #BLM header. Isn't that expressing free speech? Or do you believe those headers have been coerced, and they feel forced to post one? I'm dubious that's the case, and I doubt it'll affect the frameworks future success whether they post one or not.

If a majority posts a banner, and one doesn't, it will be understood as opposition. As we've been hearing a lot of late: "Silence is pro-racist" and "Silence is violence". Under those conditions, not posting a banner would be to risk being considered a racist organization. This is not quite coercion, but nor is it possible to decline to post a banner without substantial and probably unjustified cost.

Re: Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing

#70
post #17
post #6

Maybe I'm cynical, but I would think this has more to do with the cost of ads going up so much. If you were already thinking of reducing spend on FB, why not get a little PR out of it? Also, since the cost of FB ads has been going up over the last several years, that means there is no shortage of demand for ads on FB.

Yeah, pretty much all the big DTC brands (Allbirds, Away, Warby, OV, etc.) all have retail store fronts and "showrooms" now across the US. I always just assumed if they were spending $1mm+/month on FB ads, it wasn't a very difficult decision to move $20k/month to a store in a big city and see what kind of lead gen and brand awareness that yields.

Personal anecdote - stores resulted in a much better conversion but not a huge uptick in acquisition.
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