Study Hall Digest 7/6/2020

Advertisers boycotting Facebook are ruining democracy, shouts local man.

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Advertisers Boycotting Facebook Are Ruining Democracy, Shouts Local Man

In honor of the Fourth of July weekend, everyone horny for free speech is absolutely losing their minds over a boycott of Facebook ads by over 900 companies to protest what activists claim is a permissive attitude towards hate speech and misinformation. The Wall Street Journal editorial board ran an alarmist op-ed on the matter under the headline “Woke Capital Targets Free Speech.” According to the Journal, the boycott is indicative of “a campaign to turn social media platforms into tools of political surveillance and enforcement against conservatives.” (Zuckerberg’s cursed website categorizes Breitbart as a “trusted source.”) Bret Stephens used the controversy to argue that democracy is going to shit in his latest column, which is yet another regurgitation of the same column he writes every week.

Politico did a good job of breaking down in detail how the boycott came about, which is obviously more complex than the Journal’s paranoid ramblings. The catalyst for the action was Trump’s “when the looting starts the shooting starts” tweet in late May (which Twitter flagged for “glorifying violence” but Facebook left unedited), but dissatisfaction with Facebook’s lack of moderation of potentially dangerous speech has been brewing for years. The platform has, in the past, been famously hospitable to white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, who have used the social network to recruit new adherents and spread their ideologies. Zuckerberg has taken gradual steps to correct the website’s reputation, including kicking out white supremacist groups, but critics argue he hasn’t gone far enough. The boycott organizers have issued Facebook a list of demands, including scrapping the current fact-checking exemption for politicians.

First: Facebook is easily the most important social media platform in the world. It has 1.15 billion users that share 4.75 billion items daily (Twitter, by comparison, has 232 million active users who share 500 million tweets a day). This is why what is shared on the platform matters so much — as we saw in 2016, how the platform handles information can sway elections. Its impact on public opinion is not negligible. Reducing content moderation on a platform this powerful to a matter of free speech is an obvious mischaracterization that the Journal’s editorial board should be able to parse. Every website since the beginning of websites has recognized the need for moderators; this is not a matter of who gets to speak, but who is given free reign to post hate speech on a platform with a massive reach.

But also, aren’t conservatives always griping about letting the free market do its thing? I’m not naïve enough to think Coca Cola actually gives a shit about racial justice; companies are cutting ad spending due to the pandemic anyway, and the boycott is an easy way to make their brands look good. But whatever the motivation, why should a company pay to advertise on a platform they do not believe reflects their values or the values of their customers? Isn’t an ad boycott an example of the free market at work, if that’s your thing? To be clear, the revenue Facebook has lost as a result of the boycott is a drop in the bucket — they raked in $17 billion in the first quarter of 2020 alone, and the boycott has cost them a few hundred million — so the campaign doesn’t pose an existential threat to the social media company.

Zuckerberg is between a rock and a hard place: he is a megalomaniac trying to run the world’s largest social media platform, and the president of the United States is spewing hate speech online encouraging real-world violence. What would otherwise be a fairly straightforward matter of removing posts that promote violence is complicated by the fact that to do so would be an inherently political action, and so would anger a significant portion of Facebook’s users — users Zuckerberg has fought to retain by cozying up to conservative pundits. Zuckerberg might have to accept that you simply can’t run a platform that big and have principles!

Venture Capitalists and Tech CEOs Cry About Journalism

On Wednesday, New York Times tech journalist Taylor Lorenz tweeted out some screenshots of Away co-CEO Steph Korey’s Instagram stories, pointing out that Korey — clearly resentful over The Verge’s report on the hostile work environment she cultivated — has no idea how the press works. (Lorenz’s tweet describes Korey as the company’s former CEO; Korey was demoted from CEO after the Verge report to co-CEO. In the aftermath of Korey’s Instagram posts, the company’s president and the other co-CEO have reaffirmed that she will step down from the co-CEO position by the end of the year.)

Korey suggests she was targeted because she is a woman, and suggests journalists are incentivized by clicks. But entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan jumped to Korey’s defense and called Lorenz’s tweets “vitriolic.” This launched a campaign of vicious harassment against Lorenz, apparently fueled by a bitch session in Clubhouse, a social network popular among venture capitalists.

Vice obtained audio of said bitch session, and it’s predictably pathetic. Silicon Valley millionaires whine about being “attacked” and “canceled” by journalists; Korey is depicted as a damsel in distress because she has fewer Twitter followers than Lorenz (Korey is the founder of a $1 billion start-up, and her employees hate her because she cultivated a very unpleasant work environment!) There seem to be two phenomena disastrously colliding here: (1) VCs and tech CEOs are accustomed to glowing coverage that depict them as, in Vice’s words, “innovators and disruptors”; (2) They genuinely do not understand the role of the press (or the meaning of the word “doxx”), but have the inflated confidence to make proclamations about the industry’s inner workings and motives.

But most troubling, this episode suggests journalists who critically cover these companies can expect further backlash for simply doing their jobs. Away has distanced itself from Korey’s ill-advised posts, but Clubhouse has remained silent on the matter.

Food Media’s Reckoning Continues

Los Angeles Times food editor Peter Meehan has stepped down after freelance writer Tammie Teclemariam tweeted about his alleged abusive behavior and sexual harassment. This opened the floodgates for more disclosures about the toxic work environment Meehan apparently cultivated at the LA Times…while earning six figures to do his job from New York. Meehan’s abusive behavior was also allegedly present at Lucky Peach, the magazine he started with David Chang that shut down in 2017, but employees of that publication seem to be muzzled by NDAs (so far, silence from Chang).

Meehan’s resignation is the latest installment in an ongoing reckoning within food and restaurant media over toxic work environments. Adam Rapoport resigned from Bon Appétit after a photo of him in a racist Halloween costume surfaced, a scandal that was just the tip of the iceberg in a workplace that perpetuated racial inequity through pay disparities and tokenizing coverage. (In a statement, BA announced that they will “overhaul our recipe development process to address issues of ownership and appropriation” and audit previously published articles “to ensure proper crediting and contextualization.”)

This is a media industry problem — similar reckonings are happening across other beats — but the details indicate that this is also a food industry problem. Toxic restaurant culture has historically excused or even glorified abusive chefs who perpetuate a culture of fear in their kitchens, so it’s not inconceivable that dynamic would carry over to magazines.

Everything Else

— Vice undertook a lengthy deep dive on what ails the Los Angeles Times, revealing a workplace that has favored white men over journalists of color and been slow to penalize sexual harassment. The piece opens with executive editor Norm Pearlstine yelling “My asshole is clean!” in a meeting! So that pretty much sets the tone.

— Facebook is attempting to combat criticism by revising its algorithm to prioritize original reporting in its News Feed. The feed will still only show users stories from outlets either they or their friends follow, but within that group will boost original reporting.

— Vogue.com editor Stuart Emmrich is leaving the publication for unknown reasons after less than a year on the job, as Anna Wintour admits she needs to hire more Black employees.

— The Spectator chose to publish a piece by Alan Dershowitz defending Ghislaine Maxwell, which…is a choice!!

— There is a huge, esoteric scandal going on in the YouTube beauty community right now called Dramageddon 3. The rabbit hole is here; the relevant information for media workers is that YouTube star Shane Dawson’s channels have been demonetized due to Dawson’s long history of blackface and other racist and misogynistic content.

— Yascha Mounk, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, is launching a new publication/community called Persuasion, aimed at defending the values of a free society, like due process and free speech, which Mounk claims are under attack. Are you…persuaded??