[HN Gopher] Facebook hate-speech boycott had little effect on re...
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Facebook hate-speech boycott had little effect on revenue
Author : hhs
Score : 121 points
Date : 2020-08-02 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| o909 wrote:
| Funny how half the country voted for Trump but not a single one
| can show up here and express a single opinion even in the most
| implicit way.
|
| You control all the big and small tech companies, online
| communities, all the big media except Fox and have your minions
| even inside the white house office yet still will lose miserably
| just like 2016.
| opqpo wrote:
| >[S]ome seem to wrongly assume that most of the content on our
| services is about politics, news, misinformation or hate
|
| Of course Zucky!, most of the content is actually ads. Only
| boring content is allowed to make people scroll more and view
| more ads. It's the most mediocre money printer of all time. And
| what is actually the hate speech that's on Facebook? most of the
| hate speech is coming from the left so that doesn't count anyway.
| You can post about supporting ISIS but not about supporting
| Trump. What does the MSM want exactly? the Facebook gestapo
| already bans most people on the center and right. Should they
| visit everyone who isn't a BLM staunch supporter and kill them
| and their entire family to make the MSM happy?
| ouid wrote:
| I'm sure you're about to get flagged, but you know ISIS is a
| decidedly right wing group, right?
| luckylion wrote:
| left/right completely falls apart when you apply it to groups
| like ISIS. They're decidedly not capitalist, which is
| strongly associated with "right wing", they run/ran their
| system on a religious taxation-scheme with a lot of
| "nationalization" of anything in conquered areas, but they're
| also not marxist in any way. They are obviously not
| nationalistic and are a diverse group, they are united by
| belief/ideology, not by blood/heritage.
|
| Declaring them to be "right wing" is obviously nonsense
| unless you remove all meaning and just call "right wing"
| whatever isn't explicitly left wing.
| ouid wrote:
| Well, sure, the notion of a total order on political
| ideologies is ridiculous, but if we are engaging in that
| silliness already, then the religious fanatics who insist
| upon their divine right to own women is pretty on the nose
| for comparison with other ideologies that describe
| themselves as right wing.
| xondono wrote:
| But even that isn't that clear either. Here in Spain the
| right wing has accepted and defended abortion (but they
| don't want social security to pay for it), but it's
| primarily the left that opposes sex work and surrogation.
|
| Why we're still classifying political views in a single
| line is still baffling to me.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| I don't understand, I thought ISIS was founded by Barack
| Obama?
|
| (depressing to consider that this might be needed, but just
| in case:) /s
| brigandish wrote:
| They're monarchists?
| ouid wrote:
| Monarchy is the same thing as theocracy. Authority is
| granted by divine right.
| opqpo wrote:
| Are the western left and left liberals _really_ against ISIS?
| I think that would be racist.
| iateanapple wrote:
| > I'm sure you're about to get flagged, but you know ISIS is
| a decidedly right wing group, right?
|
| The dividing line these days seems to be pro-western
| civilisation is right wing and anti-western civilisation is
| left wing.
|
| So ISIS is far left.
| unreal37 wrote:
| I really question what the real purpose of this "boycott" was
| during a pandemic.
|
| I've worked in advertising for 12+ years. I can easily imagine a
| company (say, Pepsi), deciding to pause a campaign they were
| planning to do because they figure the public are not in the mood
| to see advertising like that. And having nothing in the pipeline
| to replace it.
|
| So a "boycott" to the public is really just "we don't have much
| to say right now" in private.
|
| Also, "we need to save a few dollars because our quarterly
| profits have gone down."
|
| I don't think it was ever any "moral" boycott. It was just an
| excuse to cut ad spending for a few weeks and avoid being tone
| deaf during a BLM protest movement.
| darawk wrote:
| This is exactly right. It was a way to get free advertising
| from cutting your advertising budget.
| cutemonster wrote:
| When the execs in a company that cuts its ads spending makes
| that decision,
|
| Do they say to each other: "let's pretend we're doing this
| for a good cause and that it's not just to save money. Let's
| say this: ... to the public and our customers"
|
| Or do they tend to keep pretending, also when talking with
| each other in private meetings?
| darawk wrote:
| I think they probably say something like "You know, during
| this pandemic we should probably cut our ad spend. Which
| area do you think we can cut that will cause the least harm
| during this time? Facebook? Ok, and as a side benefit, we
| get to say we're opposing hate speech. Decided, we're
| cutting our Facebook spend."
| edgefield0 wrote:
| I think they keep pretending internally but many think in
| the back of their head that it's all bogus and the real
| reason for the cut is slashed ad spend.
|
| In any case, this situation reminds me of the time when
| Google exited China and said they were leaving due to
| censorship concerns. The real reason for leaving was that
| Baidu had gained an overwhelming share of the search
| market. I think at the time of Google leaving China, they
| had less than 5% market share.
| sukilot wrote:
| Why would they leave because of small market share? Costs
| and revenue scale with usage, and Google has near
| infinite money to invest in improvements.
|
| Being under attack (not just a verbal attack) by the
| government seems more of a concern.
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
| jowday wrote:
| From what I understand there was a massive, coordinated,
| and sustained cyberattack on Google's services that
| pretty clearly originated from the Chinese government
| that was interpreted as a pretty clear signal to get out
| of the Chinese market, along with what you outlined.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Two thoughts:
|
| One, I remember a study back when cigarette companies were
| told they couldn't advertise on television that all major
| tobacco brands loved this because it meant they didn't have
| to spend any money on these types of ads. I'm sure there are
| versions of this all over the place in most marketing
| strategies.
|
| Two, pardon my cynicism, but I'm sure companies model these
| things out and take action based on those models. No CEO is
| just like "yes, let's support a social cause." Randomly
| picking on a brand, but I'm sure Starbucks started flying a
| Pride Flag because it made sense to do so for the business.
| sukilot wrote:
| And _why_ is it good for business? Because it reflects the
| moral values of their customers.
| darawk wrote:
| No, because ad-spend there was zero sum. If their
| competitors were going to advertise on TV, they had to
| too, and that made everyone make less money. It was a
| coordination problem that the government solved for them
| by banning it.
| cortesoft wrote:
| It probably depends on the industry and market. For
| cigarettes, they weren't trying to make people aware of
| cigarettes, because everyone already knows what they are.
| The companies were simply fighting for market share, and
| were at a point where they had to advertise just to keep
| their market share.
|
| It was a prisoners dilemma, where the whole industry could
| be more profitable by cutting advertising, but there was
| always an incentive to 'defect' and advertise your product.
|
| The government banning the ads solved this problem for
| them.
| sukilot wrote:
| The government taxes cigarettes within a nickel of
| affordability, so it's not really the cigarette companies
| who profited from this.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I wonder how that boycott was set up and effectively put in
| place: disabling facebook pixels ? suspend posting on fb pages
| ? fire community managers ? suspending contracts with ad
| companies that sell pepsi/others space on the net to advertise
| ?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Just pausing spend (stopping campaigns in the ad manager.
| Typically an agency would be told to suspend the campaign and
| relevant creative (copywriting, art assets) budgets would be
| paused or diverted to support other media.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I see, hard to believe it was not just a PR and budget move
| then.
| adtechanon wrote:
| Throwaway account from an established HN person. I work with
| many of the top advertisers in the US. These are not simply PR
| positions that take advantage of lower marketing expenditures.
| Many of the top advertisers do not support Facebook's current
| advertising and content policies. Would you as a savvy marketer
| turn off your top 1 or 2 channel instead of lower performing
| channels? Facebook is typically in the top for both branding
| and performance media. Wouldn't the marketing teams save money
| and maintain healthy performance by shutting down other
| channels? Facebook has a closed marketplace that protects
| itself, and gives malevolent actors (certain advertisers) the
| power to manufacture misinformation at a global scale.
|
| I have first-hand seen other channels soak up the FB funds
| during this time. It has been interesting to see the
| diversification into media that historically was not a major
| investment, because it under performed when compared to FB.
| cheez wrote:
| Sure.
| ballenf wrote:
| I believe your account, but I still wonder whether the
| opposition to FB is more about it having the power to upset
| the status quo and how that is a threat to these mega brands.
| tootahe45 wrote:
| For a lot of these businesses relying on foot traffic, ads
| would be futile anyway during widespread lockdowns. So really
| just free point-grabbing.
|
| This whole thing would've been avoided if Mark grew a pair and
| permanently banned the first companies who did this from ever
| using FB services again. I really hope he bans media companies
| who are trying to extort FB right now, the antics would be
| dropped quickly.
| elliekelly wrote:
| If the decision is beyond your control then letting clients
| go graciously is good for business. They might be in the
| market for your services again soon.
| polyomino wrote:
| That would be a terrible move. Nobody would want to work with
| a company that acts so childishly. It would also alienate all
| of the people who support the cause.
| tootahe45 wrote:
| Facebook has not changed its policy with regards to hate
| speech as far as i'm aware, so these companies don't need
| to return to use FB services until it does. (Unless of
| course the protest was always meant as a 2 week gimmick at
| the expense of FB's reputation).
| ss7pro wrote:
| I hope those stupid compa ies would never come back to FB
| with their spending. Lack of blue chips on FB allowed
| SMBs to get cheaper ads on FB and their overall spending
| is bigger than blue chips so at the end FB benefited from
| this action. So those stupid companies are pu usher as
| their SMB competitors increases their market share!
| vageli wrote:
| > I hope those stupid compa ies would never come back to
| FB with their spending. Lack of blue chips on FB allowed
| SMBs to get cheaper ads on FB and their overall spending
| is bigger than blue chips so at the end FB benefited from
| this action. So those stupid companies are pu usher as
| their SMB competitors increases their market share!
|
| Overall spending is bigger than blue chips? I feel like
| that's a citation needed. I've worked for companies
| spending 1 million+ on twitter advertising channel alone,
| so I'm curious how SMBs could get anywhere near close
| that level of spend in one channel per month forget about
| across multiple.
| sukilot wrote:
| There are a lot more SMBs than Fortune 500s.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Why ban them when you can ignore them at no cost and accept
| their money again in the future?
| rvz wrote:
| Obviously.
|
| Perhaps those companies in this 'boycott' did themselves a favour
| by saving money to get by the mounted losses due to the pandemic.
| Pausing advertising subscriptions to save some money rather than
| trying to pressurise Facebook to do a u-turn.
|
| This stunt changes absolutely nothing.
| [deleted]
| gfosco wrote:
| Considering this, was the tech and other media coverage of the
| "boycott" fair or accurate? Really looks like it was agenda-
| driven activism itself.
| sinsterizme wrote:
| I never understood the appeal of decentralized social media
| platforms until now. How does it make sense for large centralized
| platforms to police their platform for every little thing that
| the current social environment finds unacceptable? People should
| be able to organize themselves into groups as they see fit and no
| unilateral decision should have final say in a global community's
| thoughts and discussions
| ergocoder wrote:
| I don't understand why none pushes for a justice process for
| taking out hate speech and bad speech.
|
| Instead we are basically begging Facebook to be the one who makes
| this kind of judgement. Obviously, Facebook doesn't want to do
| that. Nobody wants to do that.
|
| I'm not talking about obviously blatant cases. I'm talking about
| a high profile one like Trump tweeting something bad.
|
| Even a senate/former lawyer like Elizabeth Warren doesn't ask for
| a due justice process. She is also screaming at Facebook to just
| take down Trump's posts.
|
| I imagine, if what Trump posts is extremely bad and illegal, it
| won't be hard to prosecute him or get a court order to ban or
| take down his posts.
|
| (Apology for inaccurate language usage. I'm not familiar with
| these legal terms. But I hope you get the main idea)
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| >bad speech
|
| Lol. Yeah, we should totally ban "bad speech".
| ergocoder wrote:
| Come on, man. I'm not a native English speaker who is well-
| educated in laws and social study.
|
| By bad speech, I mean the ones that a lot of people (e.g.
| Warren) were yelling at Facebook to ban the accounts/posts.
|
| I would appreciate if you try to get the main point. Thank
| you
| justapassenger wrote:
| Because it's almost all politics and tribalism. Democrats
| complain that there's not enough content take downs and
| republicans complain that there's too much of it. No matter
| what internet companies do, they'll face tons of criticism.
|
| And both sides think that they that support free speech. But
| free speech mean to them speech they agree with, and everything
| else is a hate speech.
| hevelvarik wrote:
| How does your characterization - that Democrats want more
| take downs and Republicans less - support or even comport
| with your contention that both sides claim interest in free
| speech
| quotemstr wrote:
| The problem is that the speech that these people want censored
| isn't illegal. We have a strong constitutional prohibition
| against censorship.
|
| Many activists would prefer that we didn't have this
| prohibition, but they don't have the political clout to get it
| repealed --- rightly so, because despite everything that's
| happened, explicit censorship is very unpopular.
|
| Because the activists can't get the state to censor the public,
| activists have used increasingly underhanded tactics to get
| tech companies to censor the public. They've been very
| successful so far, but there's a growing resistance to their
| antics.
| paulgb wrote:
| One of the most successful PR strategies Facebook has used
| throughout this is to position it as a free speech issue and
| the boycott as calling on them to censor speech. It's been so
| successful that I've seen it repeated a number of times on
| HN.
|
| To the extent that they can make the argument _free speech_
| vs. _not free speech_ , of course they win hearts and minds,
| because as you say, censorship isn't very popular.
|
| The problem is that by making this all about censorship, they
| can ignore any responsibility they for harm they create in
| other ways. For example, creating incentives for publishers
| to create divisive content for the sake of enraging people,
| or recommending people join white supremacy groups. As far as
| I can tell, it was these sorts of measures that the boycott
| organizers called for.
|
| The cynicism of Facebook's PR "free speech" stance is
| especially annoying given their arbitrary and non-transparent
| block of Dreamwith a few weeks ago[2]
|
| 1. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-
| employ...
|
| 2. https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3861716.html
| ergocoder wrote:
| But we all agree that hate speech should be punished by
| laws though, and it currently is punishable.
|
| It's that Facebook shouldn't be the one who makes that
| judgement.
|
| And that's my point. We should get a court to make that
| judgement.
| quotemstr wrote:
| No, we don't all agree on that. That's my entire point.
| The position you're espousing is not shared by a big
| enough fraction of the US public to get the country's
| free speech protections overturned, so you're just going
| to have to deal with people saying things you dislike.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Among the organizers' 10 headline demands
| (https://www.stophateforprofit.org/productrecommendations)
| are:
|
| 4. Find and remove public and private groups focused on
| white supremacy, militia, antisemitism, violent
| conspiracies, Holocaust denialism, vaccine misinformation,
| and climate denialism.
|
| 6. Stop recommending or otherwise amplifying groups or
| content from groups associated with hate, misinformation or
| conspiracies to users.
|
| 7. Create an internal mechanism to automatically flag
| hateful content in private groups for human review. Private
| groups are not small gatherings of friends - but can be
| hundreds of thousands of people large, which many hateful
| groups are.
|
| So while they do want other things as well, the censorship
| seems like a pretty central part of the platform.
| paulgb wrote:
| Fair point, I'd agree that 4 and 7 verge on censorship
| (I'm less convinced about 6 -- I draw a line between
| functions that Facebook performs as a content transmitter
| and as a discovery platform. I would argue that
| disrupting content transmission constitutes censorship,
| but curating the discovery platform does not.)
|
| Still, it gets to my point that 7 or (arguably) 8 of the
| 10 demands do not directly call for censorship.
| ergocoder wrote:
| For number 4, who should make the judgement whether a
| speech falls into that category though.
|
| Should it be Facebook or our justice system?
|
| I'd rather not have Facebook do that.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| It can't be our justice system without a constitutional
| ammendment - which leaves just Facebook.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Then, pushing for an amendment would be the right
| approach and far better than having Facebook be a judge.
|
| Using Facebook as a judge becomes more like popularity
| contest with who can scream the loudest and are willing
| to harass Facebook employees for results.
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _create divisive content_
|
| I'll quote a paragraph of
| http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
|
| > _We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of
| them, from the all-purpose "inappropriate" to the dreaded
| "divisive." In any period, it should be easy to figure out
| what such labels are, simply by looking at what people call
| ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician
| says his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward
| criticism, but when he attacks a statement as "divisive" or
| "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false,
| we should start paying attention._
|
| The most interesting part is that the content that was
| classified as "divisive" when that essay was wrote is not
| the same that is classified as "divisive" now.
| perl4ever wrote:
| The implication is that if it's not false, it must be
| true.
|
| But that does not follow. Mostly, when people have
| trouble calling something false, it's because it is
| obviously ambiguous and the meaning is disputed. The
| point of words like "inappropriate" and "divisive" is to
| shift to something less easily disputed.
| paulgb wrote:
| Whatever you want to label it, surely I'm not the only
| one who has observed that the best way to get an article
| shared on social media is to amp up how controversial it
| is. Then people who agree share it to agree with it, and
| people who are enraged by it share it because they are
| enraged by it.
|
| Whether you want to call this "divisive content" (which
| definition fits it pretty neatly, in spite of PG's good
| essay) or "scissor statements" or something else is up to
| you, but it's a real phenomenon.
| ergocoder wrote:
| I can understand some random activists doing this. But Warren
| is a senate and former lawyer. Even she didn't want to go the
| legal route. It's pretty disappointing. Instead, she pulled a
| stunt with fake news facebook ads stuff.
|
| > The problem is that the speech that these people want
| censored isn't illegal.
|
| Please excuse my little legal knowledge. But I thought hate
| speech and fake news were illegal.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > But Warren is a senate and former lawyer. Even she didn't
| want to go the legal route. It's pretty disappointing.
|
| She doesn't want to go the legal route because she knows
| she'd lose. Free speech protections in the United States
| are ironclad. In other jurisdictions, e.g., Germany,
| they're not so strong and activists in those countries have
| succeeded in making the state compel tech companies to
| censor. This approach will not work in the United States.
|
| > Please excuse my little legal knowledge. But I thought
| hate speech and fake news were illegal.
|
| One of the most infuriating habits of the authoritarian
| activist types is their way of pretending that whatever
| they don't like is de jure illegal. That they've convinced
| people that there's some law against "hate speech" is sad.
|
| No, hate speech and fake news are not illegal, nor should
| they be: any prohibited category of ideas invariably
| expands to encompass whatever it is that the people
| defining the category dislike. The strict American
| prohibition of censorship is the product of centuries of
| experience in England with exactly this sort of creeping
| totalitarianism. Humanity has not changed since then. Power
| still corrupts.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
| conspiracy/wp/201...
| ergocoder wrote:
| Wait a min, hate speech isn't illegal?
| karaterobot wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by a justice process, but there is
| one already. In the U.S. the right to free speech is pretty
| securely enshrined in law (knocks wood). There are definitely
| limits to the first amendment, but speaking very broadly,
| private institutions can do more to limit speech on their
| platforms, whereas the justice system's role is to protect
| speech. Taking it out of the hands of Facebook (et al.)
| probably would not get you what you're after.
| davidw wrote:
| It's a tough problem.
|
| Imagine going out to a bar and some nazi walks in and starts
| screaming about this or that group that they hate. At the top
| of his lungs.
|
| Most places would kick his ass right out.
|
| Those that didn't, the customers would probably leave.
|
| Social media is a bit more complex than all that, but in some
| cases, it really is like that bar where the guy stays, and
| invites his buddies, and no one normal wants to go there.
| opqpo wrote:
| HN is a great place. Half the country voted for Trump but not a
| single one of them can show up here. Really makes you think.
| DevKoala wrote:
| From my perspective tons of advertisers stopped spending in late
| Feb/March across multiple channels, not only Facebook. This was
| necessary for advertisers to re-evaluate how they would allocate
| their budget and change their messaging. Things are back in full
| force now.
|
| I get the feeling that some companies were just posturing with
| the Facebook boycott, and planned on decreasing their ad spending
| regardless.
| christophilus wrote:
| This is it. It was nothing but a PR explanation of an already
| planned budget cut.
| autokad wrote:
| also, I have never seen adds on facebook from most of those
| boycotting companies.
| toephu2 wrote:
| Does anyone here run ads on Facebook?
|
| How does the performance of the ads compare to Facebook's
| competitors? (Snapchat, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, etc)
| bitxbit wrote:
| Expected since the uptick in ad money came from all the smid
| companies going full e-commerce as well as new categories such as
| masks.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Aren't Facebook ads essentially a perfect market (in the economic
| sense) if done properly? Even if someone drops out, there would
| be someone with a slightly lower bid just behind them.
| rhizome wrote:
| One month was always going to be too little. FB can ride it all
| out, and if I take a step back I wonder if they can be moved with
| financial attacks at all. I feel the greatest weaknesses they
| have, and which they can't defend against, are with reputation
| and MAUs.
| clusterfish wrote:
| The twitter mob can boycott Facebook all they want, for a month
| or a year, but the vast majority of people and businesses will
| go on using it because that makes no difference to them.
|
| Boycotts are always limited in time and scope because if the
| product wasn't useful you wouldn't need to boycott it, you'd
| just ignore it in perpetuity. Like, I'm not "boycotting"
| natural fur clothing for the 20th year, I'm just not
| interested.
|
| Facebook is useful to both people and businesses and will
| continue to be useful regardless of any boycotts. Maybe not to
| some tiny minority of people, but to everyone else.
|
| There are tons of companies that survive with shitty business
| practices that have much weaker market position than Facebook.
| seibelj wrote:
| Could it be that the loudest and angriest twitter scolds actually
| represent ~0.0001% of the population and shouldn't be immediately
| kowtowed to by our academic, cultural, and business leaders?
| TimothyBJacobs wrote:
| Whether or not that is true, this boycott doesn't indicate
| that. The boycott was organized by activists, but the boycott
| was advertisers not purchasing ads on Facebook. The reason it
| had little effect on revenue was indicated in the article,
| while the boycott was made up of the largest advertisers in the
| world, they weren't responsible for the majority of Facebook's
| revenue in the first place.
| quotemstr wrote:
| The thing is that it's very hard, psychologically, to do that.
| We evolved our social instincts in small roaming bands. When
| ten or twenty people in such a band attack you, that's
| tantamount to the whole band turning against you --- and in the
| nomadic band context, ejection from the group is death. Of
| course you feel fear when people scream at you and claim you're
| unfit to be a member of society. Of course you try to address
| the criticism. Of course you try to be re-accepted into the
| group.
|
| But now we live on a planet with almost eight billion people
| screaming at each other. The criticism of a few means nothing.
| The old heuristic of counting critics to get a proxy for the
| opinion of the group doesn't work anymore. But we still fear
| the rejection of the group, and at some level, deep down, we
| still interpret an attack from a few people as evidence of deep
| unpopularity.
|
| Rejecting this instinct is essential for participation in a
| global conversation. It doesn't come naturally to us, but it
| can be learned --- just as you can train yourself out of a fear
| of spiders or heights. It looks like at least some corporate
| leaders have started to learn the essential skill of not
| fearing social media loudmouths.
| CM30 wrote:
| Yeah, it's pretty much this in a nutshell. That's what is
| eventually going to shut down this whole 'cancel culture'
| issue, when people realise that the vocal minority screaming
| for someone's head on social media sites is pretty much
| irrelevant on a business level, and can be safely ignored.
| mc32 wrote:
| Trader Joe's reversed their initial reaction to cancel their
| kitschy labels of trader Giottos and Joe-san, etc.[1]
|
| "We do not make decisions based on petitions"
|
| [1] https://www.boston.com/news/business/2020/07/31/trader-
| joes-...
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| That petition made national news at 2000 signatures.
|
| 2000 is virtually meaningless, in a country of 300 million
| people, and yet it was getting significant news coverage.
| paulgb wrote:
| > and yet it was getting significant news coverage
|
| What's funny to me is, at least in my feed, these stories
| are shared most by people who use them to decry cancel
| culture. This in turn drives clicks to these stories and
| creates the demand for them, amplifying the impact of
| those 2,000 people in exactly the _opposite_ way they
| intend to.
| bezmenov wrote:
| This is the real problem. Media is amplifying the voice
| of what constitutes a handful of radicals to the national
| stage.
|
| Those not privy are being brainwashed into kowtowing to
| the whims of the intolerant Twitter mob.
| ars wrote:
| That petition never made any sense anyway. It's basically
| saying "Make sure no minorities are ever on product labels.
| Only white males."
| blahbhthrow3748 wrote:
| "Make sure there's no black people depicted in the media
| by banning blackface". If only there was a way to buy
| ethnic food made by people from the culture and not a
| house brand with a white dude playing dress up.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I worry you haven't thought through the full implications
| of this stance. You're proposing a rule that some grocery
| stores are specifically _white_ grocery stores and
| shouldn 't sell my culture's food; I can't think of many
| things that would make me feel more excluded.
| sukilot wrote:
| There's no need to play dress up with a fake name from
| your culture in order to sell food from your culture.
| (Also, Trader Joe's "imports" aren't food from your
| culture, they are cheap knockoffs.)
| grawprog wrote:
| >The petition posted on change.org by a high school student
| claims
|
| So that whole thing was over something a high school
| student originally posted?
|
| Not to generalize, but basing business decisions based on
| something a teenager posted on a website isn't necessarily
| going to lead to the best decisions.
| sukilot wrote:
| At what age does one's opinion matter?
|
| How old was the person who wrote in response "The
| packaging indicates it's authentic to the country the
| recipe comes from!" ?
| cal5k wrote:
| Companies should be accountable to their customers, not
| activists.
| sharken wrote:
| Tell that to Microsoft who removed the santa hat from Visual
| Studio Code due to one user. Ironically the issue currently
| has 18 down-votes.
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87268
| grawprog wrote:
| >The Santa Hat on vscode insiders and pushing of religion
| is very offensive to me, additionally xmas has cost
| millions of Jews their lives over the centuries, yet even
| if that was not the case, pushing religious symbols as part
| of a product update is completely unacceptable. Please
| remove it immediately and make it your top priority. To me
| this is almost equally offensive as a swastika.
|
| That comment...it's really hard not to take that as a troll
| comment...
| sharken wrote:
| Indeed, waiting a bit would have been a reasonable thing
| to do, instead the change was sanctioned on the same day.
|
| The Santa Hat change most likely also made it so much
| easier to move forward with the renaming of the master
| branch on GitHub. One could also argue that the master
| branch name should have been changed back in 2014 in
| connection with the Ferguson unrest and the killing of
| Michael Brown.
|
| Source: https://github.com/github/renaming
| sukilot wrote:
| Was Michael Brown killed by a master?
| glerk wrote:
| Poe's Law strikes again. It is scary to see how swiftly
| Microsoft acted here, it seems like malicious actors
| could easily weaponize this.
| ballenf wrote:
| Do you really think replacing the hat with a _snowflake_
| was coincidence?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| depends on the nature of the problems those companies cause.
| If they're negative externalities then customer behaviour is
| of little value, say for example environmental damage caused
| by meat consumption, pollution and so on.
|
| The negative effects of social media tend to be environmental
| in that sense, threats to national security, destruction of
| the political climate, negative effects on minorities and so
| on aren't felt by most customers. The negative behaviour of
| companies like Facebook affects the commons, not individual
| customers.
| pvg wrote:
| There's no mention of 'kowtowing', twitter or anything of the
| sort anywhere in the article. You can look up who the
| organizers of the boycott are, they have a web page. Makes you
| wonder who the 'loudest and angriest scolds' actually are.
| outime wrote:
| It's often journalists the ones blowing dumb stuff out of
| proportion because an article about a couple people saying
| outrageous stuff (even if it's the ~0.0001% of the population
| that you state) brings eyeballs and keeps the addictive
| outrageous cycle up. It's the sad state of social networks and
| most of the journalism nowadays. Luckily you're not forced to
| read any of those if you don't want.
| [deleted]
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