A collection of more than 500 companies is boycotting Facebook advertisements until CEO Mark Zuckerberg meets their demands to remove “hate speech,” abuse, and misinformation from the platform.
“Following weeks of protests against police violence and racial injustice, major brands have for the first time joined together to protest still-prevalent hate speech on Facebook’s platforms by taking aim at the social network’s $70 billion in annual ad revenue,” the Associated Press reports.
Of course, with the term “hate speech” being as loosely defined as it is now, gender critical Facebook communities will almost certainly be on the agenda when organizers meet with Zuckerberg next week.
The last few days have already seen a new wave of censorship on social media platforms. Twitter, Reddit, and Medium have all purged people and communities in what is clearly a campaign to stop a gathering storm of opposition to the gender lobby’s extreme agenda.
Zuckerberg’s meeting seems likely to include the same sort of voices that gloated after shutting down the r/gendercritical community at Reddit, that site’s largest feminist group, and then went on to take down a JK Rowling fan group just to make sure the message was received.
Trans activism has glommed on to Black Lives Matter just like every other progressive affinity group, and they are using this national moment of falling statues and a weak president to insert their own demands.
Beware hope. Unlike other social media CEOs, Zuckerberg has resisted political pressure before, yes. And it’s not clear just what effect the boycott will actually have. According to the AP, the worst-case scenario will not impact his all-important share price very much.
Stifel analysts said in a note to investors this week that “well over” 70% of Facebook’s advertising dollars come from small and medium-sized businesses and “these advertisers may be less concerned with the optics of where their ads are placed than large brands.”
Gender Heretics is running boosted posts on Facebook, so we are one of those “small businesses.” Zuckerberg is essentially being asked by big customers to stomp on his little customers.
Doing that might bad for business if the little customers were organized like the big customers, but that is not the case.
If they make it worth his while in some way, the boycott might just convince Zuckerberg to give them a few scalps.
While there is no shortage of actual hate groups on Facebook to keep his staff busy, any gathering of gender critical people that is large enough to have an impact should definitely beware of the banhammer coming down soon.
At the very least, we can expect new rules, probable interference, and new signs of thought policing. Facebook moderation is already bad enough; expect it to get worse.
