What’s wrong with Facebook’s advertising business, you might ask? So many things.
Surely most importantly and conspicuously, it’s the fact that together with Google, this (fundamental) portion of Facebook’s business takes up so much space in the global digital market that they form what is pretty much tantamount to a duopoly, while both giants unabashedly feed on their trillion-dollar business off of their users’ personal data, routinely sold to the highest third-party ad bidder.
But – that’s not exactly what Prince Harry and Meghan Markle worry about. When they criticize Facebook’s ad business, they somehow utterly unsurprisingly go for the skin-deep, or even non-existent problems with the platform – certainly not merely as relevant as the deeply ingrained problems that have plagued the social media giant for more than a decade now.
So, meanwhile, in the shallows where the socialite world of today meets massive corporations, Harry and Meghan have decided to hitch a ride on the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign bandwagon.
Stop Hate for Profit might just be the most perfect (and therefore, many will no doubt say, the most despicable) example to emerge from the current racial and social upheaval in the US of massive corporations virtue-signaling to keep themselves a safe distance from social media “cancel mobs” – while at the same time taking aim at their super-competitor, Facebook.
But outrage over real or perceived racism that is supposedly allowed on Facebook aside – many of these corporations are truly just getting the “mob” off their back, as their “boycott” of Facebook as an advertising platform will only last for the symbolic time of one month.
But let’s see what Harry and Meghan are up to – at least as reported by the ever-tech industry-savvy (not) Town and Country magazine.
“As we’ve been developing Archewell, one of the areas The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been keen to address is online hate speech, and we’ve been working with civil rights and racial justice groups on it,” a source familiar with Harry and Meghan’s plans said. “Over the past few weeks, in particular, this issue has become even more vital and they have been working to encourage global CEOs to stand in solidarity with a coalition of civil and racial justice groups like the NAACP, Color of Change, and the Anti-Defamation League, which are calling for structural changes to our online world.”
It’s “hate speech” they don’t like, and the announcement said “they are developing Archewell” (some new non-profit) – to contribute to countering such things online.
More than that, a source has been quoted as saying that the pair are working to spur more corporations to join the campaign, and that means “urging globals CEOs” in tech, media, consumer goods, food, beverage, apparel. In other words – everywhere.
