Calls to fix platforms grow louder from Congress and civil rights groups
But will they have an impact?
Chef Jose Andres, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize from former Congressman John Delaney for his work with his World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that serves food to people devastated by disaster, had his Twitter account suspended this morning.
The reason? Violation of DMCA. Possibly?
Platforms play fast and loose with their own policies. Chef Andres gets dinged, but the President of the United States, who shares dangerous conspiracy theories and foments violence and hatred through his tiny fingers tapping away on Twitter and Facebook, doesn’t.
Facebook and Twitter have constantly, if not irrationally, argued that they are ‘not the arbiters of truth’ and that they cannot take down posts because that infringes on the user’s First Amendment rights.
While Congress has dragged the platforms to Capitol Hill for verbal hand slapping over the years, it hasn’t created legislation to regulate how the platforms operate. Though that may be happening soon.
Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) explained on a panel about social disinformation at the virtual International Grand Committee yesterday how Facebook actually works, how the platforms have gone unchecked, and why Congress set up an antitrust investigation. It’s a pretty cogent understanding from a member of a legislative body that has continually shown they don’t want to understand how platforms work.
“When someone does a post, that’s the declarant. When they do a post or send a tweet, that’s a First Amendment exercise. But then the companies use algorithms to decide how that will be distributed throughout their organization. That’s a business decision. That’s not a First Amendment decision.
“They’re taking the content of another person and based on a business decision, they’re using an algorithm that will promote it and ensure maximum engagement. That’s not a First Amendment right that’s protected; that’s a business model. So the notion that somehow they’re protected by the First Amendment and how they decide to use that post to enrich themselves by promoting division and engagement, is a fallacy.”
Good thread here from the event:
And it looks like the Department of Justice is taking the baton here. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that the DOJ
is set to propose a roll back of legal protections that online platforms have enjoyed for more than two decades, in an effort to make tech companies more responsible in how they police their content, according to a Trump administration official.
The department’s proposed reforms, to be announced as soon as Wednesday, are designed to spur online platforms to be more aggressive in addressing illicit and harmful conduct on their sites, and to be fairer and more consistent in their decisions to take down content they find objectionable, the official said.
The Justice Department proposal is a legislative plan that would have to be adopted by Congress.
Facebook and Twitter did not return a request for comment, and Google had no comment, as it said it hadn’t seen the DOJ proposals yet.
While the legal sparring between the government and the platforms will continue, civil rights groups and Congress have started to aim their messages towards Madison Ave. Mounting pressure from the legislative and executive branches coincide with calls to hit the platforms where it matters: their wallets.
At the same event Rep. Cicilline spoke at, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took advertisers to task, saying
“Advertisers are in a position, they have power to discourage platforms from amplifying dangerous and even life-threatening disinformation,” she said. “Some major advertisers and some not so major have begun to express objections to platform policies that promote voter fraud and violence ... We need to empower advertisers to continue to object and to use their power to hold social media companies accountable for their bad behavior. This is an undermining of democracy. It is a challenge to people’s health. It is just wrong.”
Adding to the pile-on, the NAACP and Anti-Defamation League, among other civil rights groups, took out a full-page ad in the L.A. Times asking for advertisers to pull their Facebook ad spend for July, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Today, we are asking all businesses to stand in solidarity with our most deeply held American values of freedom, equality and justice and not advertise on Facebook’s services in July,” the ad says. “Let’s send Facebook a powerful message: Your profits will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence.”
And this comes on the heels of the growing chorus from industry watchdogs like Sleeping Giants and Media Matters repeatedly urging advertisers to boycott the platforms.
The calls for advertisers to pull spend are not new. Putting pressure on the big boys - P&G and Unilever each spend $9 billion a year in advertising; JP Morgan Chase spends $5 billion - has, historically, seemed to have an onanistic impact, making everyone feel good but not really accomplish anything other than self-satisfaction.
A couple years ago, for instance, the CMOs of P&G and Unilever each made clarion calls to the social platforms to clean up, but instead of pulling ad spend, they had conversations.
In 2018, former Unilever CMO Keith Weed told me:
“I believe the best way is not to create ultimatums and cut spend and walk away because frankly then you just leave people to find their own way forward. The beginning of last year, many big advertisers walked away from YouTube and were very outspoken about that. We were equally outspoken by staying with YouTube [and] have stayed all the way through. In doing so, we have positive conversations with them. Would you prefer to engage and listen with someone who is still engaged with you or not hear anything because the other person just walked away?”
And of course, the underlying power of the platforms’ ad model is not in the giant companies, but instead, the millions of small businesses that use them.
Facebook and Google receive lots of ad revenue not from the companies groups call on to boycott, but your local dry cleaners or hardware shops or eateries. These small businesses and mom/pop shops don’t have media buying firms, and do everything by themselves. The 8 million Facebook advertisers have a pretty strong collective voice; perhaps the Bat Signal needs to go up to them and not the giant corporations. But that comes with challenges.
Small businesses have found that they can reach their audiences more efficiently through Facebook or Google than through ads in local papers (remember those lol). While these watch dogs are barking up the morality tree, the fact is that Facebook and Google help local businesses, and therefore 2/3 of the American Economy, stay in business.
It’s ... complicated.
But enough pressure can change the game. Ask Tucker Carlson.
There’s a sort of domino theory at play here: if P&G pulls spend, then Unilever pulls spend, then Kraft-Heinz, then Chase, Bank of America, Ford, Nike, Walmart, Disney will pull spend because no company wants to be the one to not do it when their multi-billion-dollar brethren are putting on their activism pants.
But the question I always come back to: what’s the line that marketers won’t cross? If they won’t pull spend after Facebook admits to fucking them over with fake video ad metrics, or they won’t pull spend after the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, or they won’t pull spend because of its privacy infringement with Beacon, or they won’t pull spend for Facebook’s role in violence in Sri Lanka or genocide in Myanmar, what will they pull ad spend for?
Advertisers and buyers have typically shrugged when a platform does something wrong. Is now the moment it’ll change? I don’t know. I’m just a guy writing a newsletter on his couch. If you’re a buyer and have been having these conversations with your clients, and actually are pulling spend, drop me a line.
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Stevie Wonder, “I Wish”
Some interesting links:
Zuckerberg wants to help 4 million people register to vote in 2020 (Axios)
Covid-19 Is Bad. But It May Not Be the ‘Big One’ (WIRED)
WPP commits to anti-racism measures (WPP)
Aunt Jemima brand to change name, remove image that Quaker says is 'based on a racial stereotype' (NBC News)
Target is raising its starting wage to $15 an hour (Washington Post)
Apple Pay is facing an antitrust investigation by The European Commission (Business Insider)
Netflix C.E.O. Reed Hastings Gives $120 Million to Historically Black Colleges (NYT)
Google bans website ZeroHedge from its ad platform over comments on protest articles (NBC News)