Brands make mistakes all the time. Some mistakes are egregious, others less so. It’s partially why a public relations industry exists: it promotes the good companies do, and manages and downplays the bad. DMN has covered Facebook pretty extensively, and with good reason: in many ways, how Facebook responds to the accusations levied against them will no doubt influence the choices marketers will make when choosing technology vendors going forward. Whatever path Facebook pursues will signal to marketers how to choose their vendors as automation becomes the standard. Content and consumer privacy will likely be top priority for marketers who need to retain not only consumer loyalty, but brand reputation.
This week at Cannes, media giants such as Unilever and Procter and Gamble announced the formation of a working group in order to better understand and counteract hate speech online, particularly on Facebook where it has been particularly pervasive over the last several years. The idea is to incorporate civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) into the decision-making framework when it comes to evaluating and removing content that could be construed as hate speech. While it’s true that not all cases are obvious – some political opinions are just inflammatory. But other content is clearly beyond the pale. For example, the massacre at the mosque in Christchurch was livestreamed on Facebook and the video of the killings remained on Facebook remained online for several months. In the last few years, many cases have come to light that have damaged Facebook’s credibility: reports of ads advertising illicit drugs, deliberate misinformation campaigns, and livestreamed crimes. Facebook’s response has indicated they didn’t know about these endemic problems (bad) or knew and ignored it (catastrophically bad).
This is beyond a capable crisis communications firm swooping in and saving the day with a few public statements and mea culpas. As a permanent fixture on both the stock market and in the Silicon Valley pantheon, Facebook’s profile means how it resolves these ongoing scandals will indicate how media and technology companies should interact with their users in the future. Disinformation and abusive content are here and aren’t going anywhere soon. It’s time to monitor them more closely, with the ultimate goal of removal.
Facebook is in the unique position of being simultaneously a brand, a technology company, and a media platform. According to AdAge, Facebook’s CEO bristled at the notion that Facebook is a media company, but it’s difficult to say it isn’t. Hundreds of thousands of users post and stream content from Facebook’s platform, including InfoWars, until they were removed for their conspiracy theories. It’s been a decade and a half since Facebook has been an ambitious startup powered out of a Harvard dorm room. Its size and reach require some sort of governmental oversight, and many tech leaders like Tim Cook of Apple agree.
Facebook’s problem seems to be twofold: on one hand, they’ve insufficiently answered for their mismanagement of user data. The most obvious example of this is their inexplicable relationship with Cambridge Analytica in 2016, which had significant sway into the political outcome in the 2016 U.S. presidential election The Cambridge Analytica CEO, due to appear at Cannes this week, withdrew after protests. The second problems seems to be content-related. There are still far too many incidents of horrific content – executions, threats – that remain available for others to consume.
As it stands now, the outlines of a regulatory body are slowly taking shape. Non-profits and non-governmental organizations seem to be at the helm of this effort, with hopefully the private sector and government regulations following closely behind. And that’s good. Facebook is allegedly planning to roll out a cryptocurrency – which, while ambitious, will certainly need some objective body to determine its worth and protect the rights of the consumer.
Every marketer’s goal is to promote growth. But growth cannot come at the expense of privacy and content quality. Hate speech, sloppy or nonexistent privacy policies, unclear responses to the press – all of these things contribute to nearly irrevocable brand damage. You can’t out-market bad company decisions, no more than you can lose weight by maintaining a diet of milkshakes while doing minimal cardiovascular exercise.
