#StopHateForProfit: Why Social Media is Being Forced to Change. And How?
What will the world look like in 10 years?
A utopia of instant pizza, hoverboards and robot dog walkers has kind of been kicked into touch by the most recent decade.
Perhaps by 2020 alone.
Although that Back to the Future sequel was tongue-in-cheek, the future itself has proven to be a lot more bleak since catching up.
Fear of an irreversible climate crisis in seven years time. Fear of social anarchy. Fear of a highly contagious airborne virus. Even if you don’t live in fear, it’s in you. It’s within society.
The chronology of extended chaos over the last year has been well covered to say the least. Climate Change. Coronavirus. Race Riots — all have brought with them a plethora of content written or recorded about them.
And that’s why social media is a unique tool — a gift not only for us to share what’s happening in other parts of the world, but to create a dialogue between people who have not and would not otherwise have met.
We live in the most interconnected society there’s ever been — and social media facilitates that.
So why is it all — apparently — a bit broken? Why do campaigns like #StopHateforProfit exist?
In a sheltered world, it’s easy to fall into a trap of thinking there isn’t a mass problem threatening society.
But there is — and it’s not a good idea for us to continue letting it wreak havoc.
Online, there is a pandemic of hate and misinformation.
No, not name-calling in the comments section or your ex blocking your profile.
This is the paid-for placement of radical hate and divisive, un-checked misinformation which - thus far - is believed to have soured elections, radicalised teenagers, and woven itself into the fabric of human worldview.
And social media sites have let it happen.
Facebook permits Hate Speech for Profit. But now it’s at a loss
So far as a part of the #StopHateForProfit campaign, over 1,100 worldwide brands such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Vans, Ford and Adidas have joined a coalition, collectively objecting the social giants profiting from hate, division, and misinformation anymore.
Hundreds have stopped advertising on Facebook already. Why? Well in the wake of companies across the world taking a stand with the BLM movement, the majority feel that Facebook just aren’t doing their bit to combat hate speech.
Despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claims that the site itself removed a far-right Militia event in Kenosha, Wisconsin last month — it was later revealed by BuzzFeed that the event was taken down by the organisers the day after it happened. The event went ahead on August 25th, where two protestors were shot and killed by 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse.
The day before, Rittenhouse put out a call on the event’s Facebook page for “patriots willing to take up arms and defend” Kenosha. Other posts in the group, entitled “Armed Citizens to Protect our Lives and Property” read: “I fully plan to kill looters and rioters tonight.”
“When the shooting starts, make sure that somebody is sending a live feed of the mother fuckers going down,” another posted.
Yet why did Facebook say it took down the event, albeit too late, when it hadn’t? Why was the event allowed to grow in size, despite frequent flagging, without being removed?
Simply put — Facebook, for all its self-professed success in identifying hate speech, is still catastrophically falling short.
With regards to determining hate speech, the moral grey-area that Facebook permanently sits in facilitates violence in towns like Kenosha because of a top-down negligence — starting at the very top — with President Trump.
Trump’s post on the 29th May — in wake of nationwide protests to George Floyd’s murder — used the phrase, “when the looting starts the shooting starts.”
Twitter, unlike Facebook, took immediate, unprecedented action hiding the tweet behind a click-wall, warning users that it broke guidelines by inciting violence. Given the history of the quote, made by former Miami Police Chief Walter Headley in 1967- a quote which intensified citywide race riots — it was a diligent and profound step taken by Twitter.
Facebook on the other hand left the same post untouched. Zuckerberg’s inaction on a rife social issue needn’t require explanation. It spoke volumes on his prioritisation's. In layman’s terms, yes, the post was newsworthy (as well as furiously provocative, and harmful to susceptible voters.)
But to Facebook — with a spike in viewership and increase to ad revenue — it was profitable.
So long as profit is being prioritised, then you feel that at Facebook, propaganda will continue to be authorised
This is the exact reason why worldwide corporations have withdrawn advertising funds to Facebook. Although Zuckerberg has said himself that his company should not be the “arbiter of truth,” there is a point where a social platform with nearly 3 billion active users eclipses the responsibility of a profit-making company and is bound by a unique duty of care.
In the same way that Zuckerberg turned his eye to the hate, division and nonchalance that would filter through society from Trump’s words, his corporate customers decided it was time to turn their backs on Facebook. They didn’t want their ads appearing next to hateful content anymore — and sadly, this has been something that’s become more rather than less common.
The first boycott by #StopHateForProfit took place in July, with a third of Facebook’s 58 biggest advertisers choosing to snub the platform. The cost to Facebook? Losses upwards of $7billion.
With #StopHate only describing the first ad pause as a “warning shot across Facebook’s bow,” Zuckerberg’s retaliation showed he would much rather avoid a more strategic mutiny.
Amid staff walkouts, a falling share price, and Unilever’s announcement that they would be keeping off the platform for 6 months — Zuckerberg made a series of concessions to some long-standing demands.
What #StopHateForProfit has done. And what they still want.
If it wasn’t for the campaign, Facebook would not have created a role to oversee Civil Rights, would not have established a team to study algorithmic racial bias, and would not have started to take long-overdue action against hateful movements like Boogaloo and fake conspiracies like QAnon.
Yet according to the movement, this is nowhere near enough. Facebook has not yet reached anywhere near the type of meaningful action #StopHateForProfit wants to see.
They are demanding the creation of expert teams to review identity-based hate submissions, flagged by a new internal mechanism that is able to spot both private and public hate speech.
They are demanding a tighter tolerance on public and private groups to do with white supremacy, militia, anti-Semitism, holocaust denialism, vaccine misinformation and climate denialism. Hundreds if not thousands are still allowed to exist.
They are demanding that Facebook employees are available 24/7 in a live chat for those who have suffered harassment. They are demanding the “politician exemption’ like that cast over President Trump’s hate speech is eliminated. And they are demanding, amongst several other straightforward requests which you can see here, that advertisers receive refunds when their ads appear next to hateful content.
The writing has been on the wall for some months now. This is the only direction social media can go in, yet Zuckerberg continues to show reluctance in morphing the platform into what its users require and advertisers demand.
Progress is being made though. Just this week, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube signed up for regular, independent audits on how they tackle hate speech — which was the primary demand of #StopHateForProfit.
The only third-party audit to be carried out on Facebook’s civil rights record thus far however, released in July, gave a damning verdict on the platform’s decisions over the last year — decisions which have resulted in a “serious setback for civil rights.”
“The prioritisation of free expression over all other values, such as equality and non-discrimination, is deeply troubling to the auditors,” the report read.
Much work is still needed to be done.
What Social Media Needs To Look Like in the Future
From the viewpoint of both advertisers and the platform itself, Facebook works fantastically as a business model. 99% of Facebook’s annual revenue is attained through advertising, while the sheer volume of data harvested by Facebook gives advertisers an almost certain likelihood of targeted success.
But for the user, Facebook (along with a whole host of other social media platforms) does not work in its current format. The development of the platform in terms of accessibility and new features has better enabled the monetisation of engagement — correct — but the rising levels of teen suicide, depression, and internet addiction in tandem with Facebook’s revenue provides the undeniable conclusion that the law needs to catch up.
But why would it? Why would governments impose regulations, when in its current format, Facebook provides a platform for the newest, most successful political technique — a technique that influenced both Britain’s EU referendum and the 2016 US Election — Firehosing.
If politicians throw enough lies at the wall, then eventually some will stick — that is essentially what Firehosing is. It’s the reason Donald Trump has been put through numerous cognitive tests during his presidency. Not because he has early onset dementia. His tactic is to bombard the public with soundbite after soundbite — no matter how true the statement is — because he knows the make-up of social news feeds. Staying trending is more important than staying truthful, and the lack of regulation online fuels Firehosers like Trump — a rockstar of the Firehosers.
Putin is another. Russia disseminates false propaganda using dozens of proxy websites, believing that if a person sees the same story several times from several ‘reputable-looking’ websites, then they are more likely to believe its content compared with a true story that appeared once. It’s a tactic that peppers a user’s news feed with the same lies, before moving onto the next, and Facebook is the ideal backdrop for rapid-fire interpretation.
In 2017, Russia’s Ministry of Defence posted what it called “irrefutable proof” of the US aiding so-called Islamic State — but the image used was later found to be a screenshot taken from Call of Duty.
However for Russia, the content had been circulated, news feeds had been infiltrated, and the anti-American fire had been stoked. Job done.
Social media has facilitated our progression to a post-truth politics. The tenacity and volume of a political statement has overridden its requirement for truth. But social media’s negligence towards better regulation has led to a post-truth world. Without regulation on hate and misinformation, we will continue spiralling down a path of polarisation, on either team red or team blue, hating our counterparts over a statement that’s truth hasn’t even been checked by the social media platform it appears on.
What is the destination we’re hurtling towards? Civil War?
Just how rising sea levels and warmer springs are a reminder of environmental disaster, the riots this year should be nudging our conversations towards a better social media.
The uneasy summer should not only be motivating campaigns like #StopHateForProfit, we all must realise the problem and vie for change. It’s in our hands only. Both those in Silicon Valley and in Parliament will not move their hand until public pressure moves it for them.
Just because the fire hasn’t reached your bedroom yet, doesn’t make it wise to do nothing.