Uplift have suspended buying ads on Facebook

By Siobhán O’Donoghue, Uplift director

Uplift has decided to suspend buying ads on Facebook. Here’s why.

Uplift are Ireland’s largest campaigning community with 278,000 members. Facebook has a major problem with hate speech and disinformation. Despite being calling out on its inaction, Facebook bosses are still refusing to change.

In fact, they are making huge profits from allowing the platform to be used to spread hate, conspiracy theories, misinformation, and lies. This is not to mention facilitating far-right actors to organise, recruit, mobilise, and spread their hateful and dangerous ideologies.

Now across the world, civil society groups like Uplift, and businesses have joined a global ad boycott #StopHateforProfit led by US-based civil rights organisations. We’re boycotting because frankly we’re fed up waiting for action.

While this boycott may only represent a small dip in their advertising revenue in the grand scheme of things, our goal is much more ambitious than simply targeting Facebook’s profits. We want to show that actually that we don’t need Facebook as much as we and others think we do.

Many of us think of Facebook as the virtual town square where we share our lives. We stay connected with friends and family, consume news, shop, organise events and so much more. For many of us, its a community space.

But there’s a big problem.  Social media platforms like Facebook appear to be necessary for democracy and the general functioning of daily life.

But the reality is it’s not a public space. We don’t get a say about how it’s run or who can be there. It’s time we remembered that Facebook is a private corporation where decisions are made in the interests of its owners and their profit margins.

And it’s time we remembered that it is our Governments who need to protect us from the hateful and dangerous content we’re exposed to because Facebook bosses want to make more money.

We’ve listened to the promises, read the carefully crafted statements, watched the testimonies given at expert committees, heard about the investigations and special ‘teams being set up’, all trying to convince us all that they are ‘going to do better’ to stop the abuse and sharing of hate content.

It’s classic behaviour from a huge corporation that wants to avoid accountability through ‘regulating’ themselves. But it’s reached a boiling point. Facebook’s history of dodging accusations and failure to protect people from harmful content cannot continue and that’s why as a community we’re taking action.

Not only are we refusing to pay any more money to Facebook, but we’re also doing more to help our members learn what they can do as individuals to spot false information. They also need to be able to deal with harmful content and be a better ally to people who experience racism.

Uplift members are sharing their opinions about the kind of rules and policies the government needs to put in place and we’re proactively working with communities who are the target of hate.

Just a few weeks ago we contributed a people-powered submission crowdsourced from over 750 people to The Department of Business, Enterprise, and Innovation stating how we want to be protected online.

Tech giants often frame these conversations as too complex for the ordinary social media user or even our Government and regulators. But when we allow them to take this ground, we give them permission to make all the rules about our safety when we come together in the community online.

We end up handing over our power to people who do not have our best interests at heart. That’s why the Uplift community doesn’t think tech giants should be making the rules by themselves anymore.

ABOUT UPLIFT

Uplift is a people-powered community of over 270,000 people in Ireland. Each week, thousands of people take action together, such as signing petitions or contacting their TDs, to help build a more equal, sustainable and just Ireland.

For more information visit: https://www.uplift.ie/

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