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Companies Boycott Facebook Over Inaction on Hate, and Facebook Takes a $50 Billion Hit

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Facebook like thumb with a molitov cocktail

Activists groups asked businesses to pause or stop advertising on Facebook, and many answered the call. In fact, over 133 companies, including large companies like Coca-Cola and Unilever, stated they would not advertise for Facebook, at least for a period of time. The result? Facebook saw drop in valuation that personally cost Mark Zuckerberg $7.2 billion. The company’s 8% devaluation accounted for a full $50 billion drop in value from the company.

Since playing a part in genocide, hate speech, violence, and a autocratic, anti-democracy, and hateful presidency hasn’t convinced Facebook to change their policies on hate, perhaps billions in losses will.

Now we know. Facebook has reacted to the boycott, with Zuckerberg announcing new policies. Turns out that, while Facebook may not care about genocide or violence, they really do care about money. Unfortunately, Facebook’s new policies leave much to be desired.

Facebook’s Wrongdoings

Facebook logo made up of people displaced in Myanmar

From Reuter’s report on hate on Facebook. Photo: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun

I almost didn’t include this section. The crimes of Facebook are too long to list. Listing them doesn’t do Facebook’s large-scale impact on the world. The overall systemic issues that Facebook has created, including increased polarization of political ideas and advancing anti-science bias, as well as directly contributing to violence and genocide, can’t be summed up nicely in a list. But if we keep that in mind, we can list out a few things Facebook has done.

And there are many more. Too many to keep listing. From privacy violations to rampant hate speech to voter manipulation. Facebook has shaped our society for their own profit, and they really don’t like it when people fight back.

Stop Hate for Profit

A few civil rights groups came together to ask Facebook for some large changes. The group, stylized as the hashtag, #StopHateForProfit, is comprised of a number of civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP. LULAC, nhmc, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press, Common Sense, and Mozilla are also involved.

It didn’t take long before companies started signing up as well.

The North Face and REI were among the first to show up for the Stop Hate for Profit movement. But they haven’t been alone. At this point, over 133 companies have pledged not to buy ads on Facebook, at least for the month of July. Some of these companies, like Unilever, are huge, and incorporate many brands. These aren’t just small companies, they’re behemoths on their own. Joined by others like Coca-Cola, Dockers, Honda, Levi’s, Mozilla (maker of the browser I type this from), TalkSpace, Verizon, Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, Viber, and other large, influential companies, and Facebook is hurting.

In fact, they’ve lost $50 billion in value based only on the threats of these companies. That’s nothing compared to potential third quarter profit impacts for Facebook. This could be only the beginning of the damage dealt to Facebook.

Their Demands

The organizing group has created a 10 step list that outlines what they want to see out of Facebook. To summarize, the solutions they propose should sound familiar. #StopHateForProfit wants Facebook to be transparent, and more accountable for their actions. They want the company to work to remove racist and hateful posts and groups, to stop making Facebook a platform for radicalization and misinformation. Finally, they improvements to the teams that focus on identifying hateful content and removing it.

I, personally have reported hate speech on Facebook, only to be told the post didn’t match their guidelines for hate speech or harassment (it was an anti-LGBTQ post from a friend-of-a-friend targeting me). Facebook often relies on automated flagging, ignoring posts that don’t trigger this automatic flagging. Their rules are also lax enough to allow some targeted hate.

Facebook’s Response

Joel Caplan, right, Mark Zuckerberg, left

Joel Caplan and Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Tom Brenner/The New York Times

Mark Zuckerberg posted a response today that suggests he heard people are upset, but didn’t know why. He outlined three clear priorities, ensuring Facebook is a place for clear information about voting, combating voter suppression, and fighting hate speech. Those start to touch on the issues at hand, but how does Facebook follow through?

Voting Information Center

First, Zuckerberg states Facebook will have an “authoritative” resource on voting in their Voting Information Center. They’ll try to use this to increase voter registration by 4 million new voters. It will also include information on voter logistics, like when, how, and where to vote, as well as how to vote via mail, as most of you should do due to the coronavirus. Every single post that has to do with voting will have an additional label with a link to this, whether the information in the post is correct or not.

Elections Operation Center

To help stop voter suppression, Facebook will have an “Elections Operation Center” for the three days prior to the election to quickly remove false or misleading information about voting. This could include information like claims that a polling area had an outbreak of coronavirus, the kinds of things that AI can’t detect easily, but human reviewers could spot as an attempt to reduce voter turnout. They’ll also ban any posts about ICE being at voter stations, and other such false information.

 

Hateful Content in Ads

Finally, Mark states that Facebook will do better to remove hateful content in ads. Yes, he was specific about ads. He stated that Facebook will allow a larger range of hateful content in posts than ads, so your racist aunt can post a racist meme, but she can’t pay for it to be in an ad on the platform. They’ll also allow racists like Donald Trump to make statements that they’ll ban all Muslims from the country. While that’s a clear violation of Facebook’s hate speech guidelines, they allowed it to stay up because it was “newsworthy.”

That brings up the second part of this initiative: flagging rule violations that remain because they’re “newsworthy.” Of course, they could make it so the only people who can see those posts are politicians and journalists, people who have submitted personal identification to be authorized to submit political ads. That way, it would be effectively deleted to everyone except those reporting the news and those fact-checking it, as well as politicians. But Facebook will instead leave the post up for everyone to see, but remind people that such language is “very naughty.” It will do nothing to quell hateful opinions or speech.

The Remaining Gaps

Donald Trump shaking Mark Zuckerberg's hand

Photo: Donald Trump, via Twitter

Facebook’s response makes it look as though they missed the point entirely. But, due to the timing, it seems like it’s a response to the Stop Hate for Profit movement. Instead, it’s likely a cobbled together set of plans that Facebook was already planning to roll out for 2020 elections. The truth is, it doesn’t address Facebook’s prevalence of hateful content and their promotion of it. It won’t do anything to remove hateful content. Facebook allows people to break their rules and doesn’t clearly define or enforce hate speech. They also do little to flag it or remove it quickly.

There’s nothing here helping to clearly identify hate speech. People can still target an individual, BIPOC, or LGBTQ person, and Facebook won’t take action. These companies asked Facebook to take definititive steps forward, and Mark Zuckerberg went on a diatribe on his own network with no truly well-defined steps, rules, guidelines, or new measures.

The truth is, Facebook is still a place where hate thrives, and Facebook’s response shows they’re okay with that. Facebook profits off of hate. Controversial statements, falsehoods, it all drives angry discussion and hits. It allows Facebook to increase the amount of time you’re engaging with the website. As a result, they profit.

Facebook profits off of hate. It’s time we change that.

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