The Facebook boycott is unlikely to drive change. Photo / Getty Images
The Facebook boycott is unlikely to drive change. Photo / Getty Images
COMMENT:
The latest boycott of Facebook, now more than 800 brands strong, has some people asking whether this will be the movement to force change at the social media giant.
Don't hold your breath. This tango has happened before and now we just have a few more bodies crammed intothe dance.
Marketing expert and educator Mark Ritson expects this one to go the same way the others have gone.
"Big brands posture and push back against Facebook's legendary inability to monitor and sanction the content on its site. But then things go quiet. Brands move money back to Facebook. And we wait another few years for another episode to play out."
Facebook's investors certainly don't seem to care too much about the latest boycott. After a small blip, the company's stock price has recovered to be the highest in its history.
Facebook
"People forget that Facebook's DNA is tied to transgression and rule-breaking," says Ritson.
"When Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook's precursor Facesmash, he raided the IT systems at Harvard to steal all the student headshots for the site. He was meant to be expelled as a result, but not only got away with it, but also moved on to create Facebook a few months later. Zuckerberg knows the rules don't matter. And he is probably, unfortunately, right."
One name you're unlikely to see on any boycott list is that of the New Zealand Government – or any local politician for that matter.
This is notable because the Government is one of the biggest advertisers on social media in New Zealand.
Data from researcher SMI, tracking advertising spend before the full force of Covid-19 was felt between January and March, saw the Government ranked as the fourth biggest advertiser on social media (which is 98 per cent made up of Facebook). The only sectors bigger than the Government were the food, retail and air travel industries.
Ad_Spend
This research is limited in that it only tracks the spend bought through media agencies and doesn't take into account the millions small and medium-sized businesses spend buying ads directly through the media company.
What this data does is give us an indication of the willingness of the Government to pour money into an interface so often criticised for its moral compass.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, an avid Facebook user, was this week asked about her position on the social media channel at a post-Cabinet press conference and indicated she would continue to use it.
She said she did not believe that a personal boycott of the channel would drive the changes the public would like to see.
"Do I want it to speed up? Yes. Do I want more work to be done at greater pace around, for instance, algorithms— because this is where civil society continues to have a number of concerns? Yes.
"But at this stage, my strong view is still that we need to keep trying to make progress through those forums, and my decision not to do a Facebook Live is I don't believe going to make that same inroad."
