Unilever Says It Will Resume Advertising on Facebook
wsj.com
wsj.com
Regardless of how good their policies are (or aren't), it's vastly under-appreciated how difficult it is to enact policies when your users are measured in the billions and single moderation mistakes often get you a lot of heat and make you even more enemies. Meanwhile every government, special interest group, think tank, political party, and so on, are constantly pressuring you with large-scale public campaigns to change your policies in various ways to benefit them.
It's truly a mess that I hope we develop better frameworks for in the future, because the current one seems to be entering some pretty bad areas for everyone involved (And I mean everyone - even Facebook does not want to be the moderator here, because they realize it is an unwinnable position that makes them more enemies).
The press I see here on HN is that they profit off our privacy.
I haven't seen 'profiting off of hate'.
Facebook has gained huge shares of advertising revenue once owned by said members of the media.
Like politicos aren't?
The problem we've allowed to happen with Twitter and et. al is the assumption that individuals in politics may be allowed to operate a "public" persona that then is used to change sentiment in the population using language and strong imagery...as has been done by "those who try to control" for thousands of years.
Gov has no business being on privatized social media, but perhaps they could build their own...
What does the Girardian analysis add? Is mimetic competition different than regular competition? Is a Girardian scapegoat different than a normal scapegoat?
https://maxpolicy.substack.com/p/issue-45-why-everybody-hate...
Philosphize This episode: https://youtu.be/6QJYsSJGR8I
I get that policing billions of users you just gave a voice to is hard but so is counting all those profits they bring. When corporation profits were at stake everybody threw money at solutions that instantly and automatically solve the issue to everyone's advantage but the users' - copyright infringement. Now we get the "policing is hard, man" discourse from one of the biggest companies in the world, with the biggest userbase in the world. Indeed, the solution to this problem may not be technical but they're still miking everything for profit while claiming it's hard to come up with a solution and people are rightfully skeptical of their stance and vilifying them.
Except that the people that are "fleeing the mainstream media" are going to media sources (on the right, and the left) that are even more judgmental, and even more insulting.
That pretty much annihilates his argument.
Retreating into safe spaces (either on the right, or on the left) isn't the answer.
ttfautohint may be able to resolve this issue; another solution would be to use either Source Serif Pro or Vollkorn for the body text (i.e. the class “wf-active”), which, like Gentium Book, have a traditional look to them, while rendering more nicely in Windows 10.
My workaround is to use Firefox’s document inspector to make the font a mixture of Bitstream Charter and Charis SIL, but reader mode is another workaround.
Should be fixed now.
Georgia has a very readable and slightly old fashioned look, is available everywhere (including Linux desktops once people legally add the Microsoft Core Fonts themselves) except on Android phones, but the substitute on Android phones looks quite nice too.
I still wonder if Gentium Book Basic (which, yes, looks great in PDF files; it is a beautiful font) can be salvaged on Windows devices if we run it through ttfautohint.
Tweeter also isn't pretending to be a way to keep in touch with your friends while it actually acts like a propaganda machine. It's much more transparent in that you subscribe to the (propaganda or not) channels all by yourself.
And many users have complained about their tweets getting suppressed, inconsistent banning policies, etc.
Strange. It doesn't show tweets chronologically, so I don't understand what it's supposed to be. Certainly not original twitter.
Beyond a certain size, you really do have no choice but to have an editorial opinion. Even adherance to neutral tone is a choice.
Now that Reddit does have a hate speech policy, I expect we'll start to see them in the same conversations.
Heck, "unsubscribe from all the default subs they're a cesspool" has been the going advice for at least a decade now. If that doesn't say lost cause I don't know what does.
The worst part is that it reverts back to the new UI.
Really? I see it all the time. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit. Even Instagram a lot lately. Perhaps your reading selection is a bit narrow?
let alone any media organization.
Sounds like you missed the whole "Fox News is the devil" thing that's been going on for close to 20 years on the internet. That only changed a few months ago when it stopped fawning over Mr. Trump. Now Newsmax (rightly or wrongly) is the internet's media whipping boy.
It was a huge mistake to not require content filters on the phone network.
The media may be biased by their history with FB, but they deserve an huge part of this reputation.
But there has never been a boycott campaign that wasn't awfully selective, of course.
Probably because being consistent in one's suppose noble ideals would actually compromise one's own well-being, rather than simply not doing business with one giant corporation, of which there are many that do the same to choose from.
Here's what I wrote about the boycott four months ago on HN:
"I'm also a FB advertiser. Here my thoughts on it:
1) Facebook's reach is unique. If you want to share a message that's important to you with groups of people you care about reaching in the world, there's no better way to reach them at scale.
2) Facebook has had a number of negative sounding news cycles in the past few years (Cambridge Analytica, etc.), and data shows that the average American hasn't changed their behavior based on them. 70% of all Americans and Canadians use Facebook or Instagram at least once a month, and 55% of all Americans and Canadians use it at least once per day. Facebook's monthly and daily user counts have only grown, including this last quarter.
3) Very few advertisers ended up cutting spend during the boycott. Many who did so wanted to cut ad spend in a COVID environment anyway. For instance, Unilever and Coca-Cola also paused Twitter ads, which has nothing to do with the boycott.
4) I myself believe that, at least in comparison to other companies like Google, Facebook does try to police hate speech, and it's a hard job."
One of the unspoken trends in pop-culture activism is a seething hatred of large corporations. The current trend is that the only acceptable criticisms are those that are "punching up", meaning they're directed at someone or something of higher perceived social status. Taken to the extremes, the only safe targets for "punching up" are the largest corporations and billionaires.
This mentality is especially prevalent among the younger students I've mentored. They seem highly confident that corporations are somehow taking something from them, but they can't exactly explain it.
For example, virtually everyone is convinced that Facebook is selling their data, yet when pressed they can't explain what "their data" is, or who Facebook might be selling it to (Facebook doesn't sell data, the idea that Facebook is selling people's data is a myth). It's amazing to hear so many people insist that Instagram is listening to their conversations to sell ads (they're not), yet they can't point to any sort of background activity, battery drain, network activity, or reverse engineering reports. The supposed evil of large corporations is treated like magic.
Likewise, many of my mentees will insist that large corporations "don't pay any taxes". Yet when I explain that corporate income tax is only one of many taxes that companies pay and that the corporations they're thinking of are actually paying corporate income taxes on their earnings, they assume I'm somehow misinformed.
In the hyper-connected social media of 2020, it seems the safest and most persistent themes are "corporations are bad". This is easily bolstered by cherry-picking a small number of anecdotes of bad things that were done by corporations, yet it's missing the point that corporations do a lot of things, the vast majority of which are not "bad". It's the equivalent of saying "humans are bad" after reading about a few serial killers. The idea is especially sticky among young people because they haven't yet worked inside of corporations long enough to realize that corporations are just groups of people. They speak of corporations as some sort of sentient alien entity, or as an extension of Zuckerberg and Bezos.
> virtually everyone is convinced that Facebook is selling their data, yet when pressed they can't explain what "their data" is, or who Facebook might be selling it to (Facebook doesn't sell data, the idea that Facebook is selling people's data is a myth)
1. You're playing word games. Yes, Facebook doesn't sell data, they provide access to and use of it with streamlined products and services. The extent to which can be abused and/or used against you. 2. Things like privacy laws would delineate what data someone owns and what they don't. I think this is a great topic for debate, but not dismissal in either direction.
> It's amazing to hear so many people insist that Instagram is listening to their conversations to sell ads
Instagram (and other social media) doesn't need to listen to you when graph theory and it's surrounding algorithms do the correlation way cheaper than real time audio processing ever could. The reality is almost worse than the rumor.
> many of my mentees will insist that large corporations "don't pay any taxes"
Somewhat. Not all corporations dodge taxes or have obtained favorable tax deals, but the ones that do often do so grossly. Even the way various companies have shifted money around to different nations to avoid paying taxes is problematic.
The rest I agree with. The whole concept of punching anywhere is pretty gross, where else in society do we authorize "punching" because you don't like someone or somethings behavior? Nowhere.
Personally speaking, I think someone or something is out there establishing these narratives and making them so cloudy to talk about that they're unfalsifiable. It kind of reminds me of the church. Ironically, the idea of "punching up" comes out of a moral community -- and guess what a religion also is?
>Facebook does try to police hate speech, and it's a hard job."
I actually think they did a pretty decent job before, but now they have harden things up and it is crossing the threshold for some people. The world of political correctness is getting a little insane.
The problem is politics getting into the centre of everything. After seeing and experiencing both side of the spectrum. I will still choose little to no moderation without a second thought. And Mark Zuckerberg isn't a genius in marketing or PR like Steve Jobs, his message isn't working out the way he intended.
These various initiatives and concerned corporations will magically return during future elections.
Yes, it will abate, but I'm afraid otherwise it's here to stay.
This is the confluence of expression, egoism, ideology and capitalism smashing together on the internets.
Only a highly structured social system with 'social rules built in' I think can combat that. See: any 'old world culture' where tons of rules and norms exist 'off the books' which keep civilisation in check. For better or worse.
I am thinking that PR- public relations- needs an interested public for the relationship to be effected.
I imagine, quietly or not, that most of the companies that said they weren’t going to advertise in Facebook will do the same.
I figured it wasn’t going to be until after the New Year that’s the only surprising thing here to me
But then, perhaps the answer is that almost all advertising is really poorly targeted and a waste of money, and CEO's (and their advertising departments) are just not willing to accept that.
Would love to learn more about how "poor" this targeted advertising is, considering most SMBs use digital advertising by Google/Facebook to reach the customers they want.
At the end of the day if you can spend $1 in advertising and make $2 in sales, who wouldn’t press that button again and again and again?
1) Companies should be free to chose where to show their ads, but...
2) ... companies should be punished for blackmailing content delivery platforms with withdrawing ads in response to content censorship.
If you don't want to have ads on Facebook don't have ads on Facebook. But don't take your ads under the condition that some content you don't like is removed, or content you like is added.
Commercial companies should have no say to what I watch, or what news I read, or movies get made, etc, using their advertising dollar.
And whatever the content is pornographic, religious, right wing, left wing, communist, fascist, hate speech, or whatever, should be up to the law and the content delivery platform (but only if they do curation in general, e.g. like a news website or Netflix, not like Facebook or Twitter), to remove - not the whims of some commercial company who advertises there.
> Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have committed to better management of harmful content on their platforms, agreeing to common definitions for 11 harmful content areas, consistent reporting on the prevalence of such content on their platforms and independent auditing, Unilever said in a statement.
If they had stated upfront what their conditions were to return to the platform I would have believed it. But now without evidence of any measurable improvement Unilever suddenly feels like Facebook is "fixed".
More likely is Unilever thinks with the US presidential election over and Trump out there won't be such a big "hate for profit" backlash anymore. They probably don't want to miss out on the revenue the Facebook ad's generated.
Im not buying their products anymore. Protip in the Netherlands: go to another supermarket than AH or stick to homebrands.
Not really, but this depends on two things: what kinds of products you desire, and where you live.
Almost everything in the link you sent is a "novelty" or "luxury" product. I read most of that page, and personally, the items I don't buy because I don't need, or I have alternatives that are eco-conscious or local. I mean look at that list: popsicles, ice cream, bullion, pre-made salad dressing, pre-made side dishes, low-cost ice cream, pre-made sauces... almost none of that exists in my house because I like to cook, so my Unilever surface is apparently non-existant (I bet there are a few things I own because there are a lot of sub-brands, but at first blush, I'm making a subjective plea).
But for that last part, it all depends where you live. I have the luxury of grocery co-ops that are sustainable and I love to cook. My parents live in a food desert in upstate new york, with only one mammoth grocery store within 30 miles, and they hate cooking. They even hate washing dishes: they buy plastic forks and paper plates and throw it all out AFTER EVERY MEAL.
But developed cultures have trouble with "not needing novelty", and convenience seems to always win, which makes the fight all that much harder.
Citation ?
From Wiki -
In September 1929, Unilever was formed by a merger of the operations of Dutch Margarine Unie and British soapmaker Lever Brothers, with the name of the resulting company a portmanteau of the name of both companies.