The #stophateforprofit campaign aims to hold Facebook accountable for its ethical failures, but if no progress is gained, it may leave nonprofits with a more difficult choice than before. Staying on the platform and paying an organization that refuses to enact any real policies against the promotion of hate, violence, and disinformation doesn’t sit well for most, to say the least. But leaving isn’t necessarily the right move, either. So that leads us to ask: What should nonprofits and allies do if there is no change come August 1st?
For years, nonprofits have been feeling the Facebook algorithm erode their organic reach, leaving no choice but to pay for boosts to reach their owned audiences, and pay again for ads to attract new ones. It’s unclear how much, if at all, Facebook values the nonprofit community; yet it broadly remains the most effective social media platform for advocacy and fundraising campaigns. Nonprofits can’t necessarily afford to drop Facebook, and Facebook knows it.
An examination of alternatives reveals a bleak landscape for nonprofits who can’t meet the minimum investment thresholds required for traditional media buys. Substitutes for Facebook such as Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, or TikTok come with a variety of ethical and privacy concerns. And don’t forget; Instagram is owned by Facebook and is included in this boycott — money you spend there goes right into daddy Zuckerbuck’s pockets, too.
Given that there’s nowhere else to go that’s nearly as effective, what about just deleting your Facebook presence altogether? I’m frightened more for our future thinking about what would happen if social good organizations exited the platform rather than spend another dime there. What kind of content or level of accountability would exist on the site in their absence, and perhaps more importantly, who are the casualties we’d be leaving there to perish?
We now have entire generations of people across the political spectrum who depend on social media as their main source of information on news and social issues. They rely on Facebook to inform their participation in social and civic actions, and allow it to influence the formation of their worldview. Progressive nonprofits leaving Facebook could mean abandoning the next wave of civil rights activists, social justice warriors, and global warming crusaders. For nonprofits to stay, it’s a Faustian bargain to be sure, but maybe it’s better to know the devil you’re dealing with than let the forces of disinformation run rampant and unchecked and leave your current and future audiences alone in the darkness.
This is going to be an individualized choice for each organization. We recommend that you think through answers to the following before August 1st to inform your decision about continuing to both participate in and advertise on Facebook and subsidiary platforms:
- Assess benefits: Do we see real results right now from Facebook and Instagram? Is increasing awareness of an issue part of our mission delivery strategy? Does our presence help to counteract the opposing narrative or provide an otherwise unheard perspective?
- Review risks: Consider our values as an organization and where the friction points exist as a result of a presence on Facebook and Instagram. How much will it cost our integrity to stay, or to leave? What do the lost opportunities look like?
- Consider alternatives: Are Facebook and Instagram crucial to communicating with our current audiences, or could we effectively re-platform them to a safer place, such as email? Is there a different, more ethical method we could invest in to reach new audiences?
- Do nothing: What happens if we do nothing and just go back to operating as normal? What if Facebook hasn’t changed anything at the end of the boycott?
While it might be enticing — and you would be 100% justified if your organization simply walked away from Facebook — it is also worth a second look at how you might leverage Facebook to further your mission, while simultaneously working through other channels to hold Facebook accountable. There is still a lot of good that does and can continue to come out of the social network to raise awareness of and manage the narrative around issues like climate change, workplace sexual harassment, and racial injustices against the Black community. And while Facebook may be more a symptom than the root cause of what’s broken in our society right now, using our leverage as a progressive community to fix it would go a long way toward easing the pain.
