The self-righteous anger being expressed over Facebook’s refusal to comply with the ‘social justice’ industry’s demands would be amusing if it weren’t so illiberal.
Writing on Bloomberg, IT analysts Tae Kim and Alex Webb argue that Mark Zuckerberg co-founder, chairman, CEO and controlling shareholder of Facebook, should do more to change the popular social media platform’s content policies. Some of its biggest advertisers, including Starbucks, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Verizon Communications, Best Buy and Microsoft, have suspended their advertising from Facebook and Instagram.
The move was initiated by a campaign led by a coalition of civil rights groups called ‘Stop Hate For Profit’ (SHFP). SHFP’s goal is to pressurise Facebook into doing more to curb hate speech and language which promotes violence. As the effort has gained traction, say Kim and Webb, the numbers joining the boycott are increasing daily.
The top 50 advertisers on Facebook account for just 4% of the company’s sales in 2019. Here’s the rub: most of Facebook’s advertising comes from millions of small- and medium-sized businesses that are less affected by any public shaming from activists and, arguably, more reliant on the exposure they get from buying ads on Facebook and Instagram.
However, a decision based purely on dollars and cents, say the authors, would be short-sighted in this instance and bad for business. They don’t say why this would automatically be so. Given its dominance, this is likely to be little threat to Facebook.
Delicious irony
There’s a delicious irony in the way the billionaires who run these 300 companies demand that another billionaire show contempt for the public that Facebook serves.
Kim and Webb say that ‘the recent wave of protests over racial injustice isn’t a short-lived phenomenon, but one that reflects a “sea-change in perception and beliefs” and — like the #MeToo movement before it — demands a change in behaviour. The backlash that started at the grassroots level and moved on to corporate action is likely to move next to the political and regulatory sphere.’
Although the alleged moral strength currently lies with woke leftist movements, it is becoming apparent that their ‘altruism’ masks authoritarian impulses, Marxist beliefs and real threats to democracy through undemocratic means.
The woke left hold in contempt anyone who doesn’t agree with their agendas or views. They have become the world’s self-appointed moral arbiters.
Opposition to the woke left lies in the fact that so many of their opinions are based neither on facts nor common sense. They are led by a sense of self-righteousness and emotion: in this sense, the woke left is little different from the religious zealots that burnt alleged witches from the 15th to the 18th centuries. A quick glance at threads on Twitter reveals the logic of the witch burners: if a woman admitted to being a witch, she was killed; if she denied she was a witch, she was killed because her denial was taken as proof that she was a witch.
Kim and Webb patronisingly advise that it would be better for Facebook ‘…to bend and make its own meaningful policy changes instead of being forced to accept more punitive prescriptions and further potential damage to its reputation and business’.
Supplication
Facebook is being asked to ‘take the knee’ in supplication to human rights lobbies that want it to do the work for them. The authors also cite the threat of ‘increased regulatory scrutiny’ in the United States, which means that internet companies are no longer exempt from legal liability over user-generated content. SFHP, however, has no control over the regulatory environment.
The authors suggest that the anti-trust regulations being considered in Europe are ‘the more effective way to tackle Silicon Valley’s shortcomings than regulation’. If anti-trust regulation breaks Facebook up from being a monopoly, its role as ‘moral guardian’ against hate speech won’t be the reason. Ironically Silicon Valley funds causes that proscribe free speech as a way of avoiding regulation. Silicon Valley is the most woke business environment on earth.
SHFP say: ‘Serious changes are needed — from being more effective in taking down hate speech quickly to clamping down on false claims and disinformation from all users. Such moves would help the company get ahead of future actions from regulators. That would be wise as government regulation will likely be far more punitive – whether it be from the European Union or a potentially new American administration. Simply, Facebook’s traditional hands-off approach isn’t good enough anymore. It’s time for Zuckerberg to show some real leadership.’
Ten demands
SHFP’s ten demands of Facebook are to:
1. Establish a civil rights infrastructure to evaluate products and policies for discrimination, bias, and hate. This is to ensure that the design and decisions of Facebook’s platform consider the impact on all communities and the potential for radicalisation and hate.
2. Regularly submit to independent audits of identity-based hate and misinformation with summary results published on a publicly accessible website.
3. Refund advertisers whose ads were displayed next to content that was later removed for violations of terms of service.
4. Find and remove groups focused on ‘white supremacy, militia, antisemitism, violent conspiracies, Holocaust denialism, vaccine misinformation and climate denialism’.
5. Adopt common-sense changes to policies that will help stem radicalisation and hate on the platform.
6. Stop recommending to users or otherwise encouraging groups or content from groups associated with hate, misinformation or conspiracies.
7. Create an internal mechanism to automatically flag hateful content in private groups for human review.
8. Ensure accuracy in political and voting matters by eliminating the politician exemption, remove misinformation related to voting and prohibit calls to violence by politicians.
9. Create expert teams to review submissions of identity-based hate and harassment. Ensure that its teams understand the different types of harassment faced by different groups in order to adjudicate claims.
10. Enable individuals facing severe hate and harassment to connect with a live Facebook employee in order to seek help.
The most revealing demand is ‘Find and remove public and private groups focused on white supremacy, militia, antisemitism, violent conspiracies, Holocaust denialism, vaccine misinformation, and climate denialism.’
Intensely anti-semitic
There are significant black groupings in America that are intensely anti-semitic. Should their anti-semitism lead to their being removed by Facebook?
What does SHFP mean when it talks about ‘vaccine misinformation’? Are they talking about information put out by anti-vaxxers or information put out by the authorities requiring parents to vaccinate children?
The provision, however, that outs the groups is the exclusion of ‘climate denialism’. The orthodoxy on the subject is highly intolerant. Its own opinions can be scientifically questionable and are often motivated by emotion aimed at shutting down debate. The orthodoxy holds the untenable view – not accepted in any other area of human endeavour – that climate science is settled. Science is never settled.
Business Maverick writes in support of the Bloomberg article and expresses the hope that ‘Facebook decides to do the right thing’. Let’s hope it doesn’t. Err on the side of too much free speech, otherwise the risk will be too little of it.
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