Haters Gonna Hate:

The Facebook Hate Speech Controversy

The Internet offers a forum for free expression and one billion users use Facebook as that forum. But what happens when free speech takes a darker turn to the degrading, harmful and hateful? What are the larger implications for advertisers whose paid media might appear alongside unsavory content?

Hate Speech on Facebook: The Controversy

Facebook provides Community Standards that outline the forms of content that can be reported and taken down, including any attacks based on “race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition.”
 
In practice, moderation of questionable content on Facebook has not always been effective. For example, a photo of a woman breastfeeding would be promptly removed for violating guidelines, but images promoting rape or other violence against women would not.  Last month, a coalition of women’s groups decided to do something about that.
 
WAM and the Campaign Against Facebook and its Advertisers
On May 21st, a coalition of women’s groups under the banner Women, Action & The Media (WAM), The Everyday Sexism Project, and author/activist Soraya Chemaly launched a campaign against Facebook pages that glorified or made light of violence and sexual degradation of women.  It began with an Open Letter to Facebook calling on the social network to improve moderation on its site to ensure that gender-based hate speech is recognized and taken down in a timely manner. Additionally, the activists urged brands to pull their advertising from Facebook until the offensive content was removed and new monitoring standards were put into place.
 
Within a week of the open letter to Facebook published on May 21, the coalition of supporters grew to over 100 women’s movement and social justice organizations. It also generated over 60,000 tweets and 5,000 emails from participants. Approximately 15 companies removed their ads from Facebook, most notably Zipcar and Nissan UK. Meanwhile brands like Unilever’s Dove, whose ads appeared next to offensive images, have been working with the social network on appropriate solutions.
 
The Response from Facebook
On May 28th, Facebook announced a renewed commitment to improving its approach to hate speech and a promise to revise its best practices and community standards. They agreed to consult with WAM on ways to ensure the prompt removal of gender-based hate speech from the social network. At the same time, the controversy has raised additional concerns about threats to free speech.
 
MRY reached out directly to Facebook, and they have assured us that the situation has been escalated to the highest levels of the organization and outlined the following key takeaways:

• Much, if not all, of the content that has raised initial concerns from activists has been removed from Facebook. 
• There are no ads currently running on the pages or groups that were initially referenced.
• More broadly, Facebook takes the issue of any form of hate speech and violence incredibly seriously, and its teams handle reports of controversial content on the site in a very thoughtful and careful way.
• They have reached out to the relevant community (WAM) to understand their view of controversial content, and have developed thoughtful policies to address/remove/signal such content.
• Facebook works constantly to improve its policies and procedures and strives for transparency in what they do.

Facebook also emphasized that this is as an ongoing process and, with over 1 billion users, a problem that may never be entirely “solved”.  As long as Facebook is a platform where so many people share and connect, controversial content will always be a challenge that has to be managed responsibly and fairly, versus “fixed”.
 
What does this mean for brands?
A brand may not always have full control over the context in which its advertising appears, but measures should be taken to ensure its paid media does not appear alongside content that could damage its brand integrity. This includes monitoring campaigns and brand conversations for negative sentiment as well as having a dialog with the publisher in question when such a crisis occurs.
 
When a site provides a forum for free expression to a large number of people, there is a risk that some of the content created will be offensive and possibly even harmful to others. Developing and executing a policy that distinguishes free speech from inappropriate content and removes the latter is not a hard science and must continuously adapt to the content and context presented.
 
There is a grey area where open expression becomes damaging to others and the best practices on how to handle hate speech on the Internet will continue to be a work in progress. Somewhere between free speech, corporate responsibility and respectful expression is a solution but one that must be continuously refined.
 
 
-Written by Margarita Vaisman, Associate Director, Community Management
 

 “Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot.”
The Hausa of Nigeria

If someone walked in to your store and paid you a compliment about your product, would you turn around and pretend they’re invisible until they finally leave? Unlikely, unless you’re a monetary masochist, which of course, you’re not because you’re reading a post on marketing.

That being said, online relationships are the same as personal; you need to appreciate your friends - i.e. your champions, supporters and loyalists - to ensure community growth. Brands can’t turn a blind eye to their advocates. Here I explore how an update to Google Analytics Social Reports helps you not make that mistake.

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For the full scoop, take a tour with Digiday Inside the Agency: MRY!

Despite a misjudgment of user response to privacy changes earlier in the year, Instagram has recently surpassed the 100 million active monthly user mark. Among a flurry of new changes resulting from the company’s recent acquisition by Facebook, the platform is proving to be a major player in the social space. With the most recent set of statistics citing 40 million photos being posted per day with 8,500 likes and 1,000 comments per second it’s no surprise that major brands are spending big money to leverage the platform.

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Each iteration has thrilled or angered legions of webmasters everywhere, depending on how the update has affected their search traffic – traffic goes up and everyone is happy, but if traffic goes down, sound the alarm.

But Google is not concerned with how your website is going to rank; they simply want to provide the best results within their engine, and this includes Universal Search Results.

One facet of search algorithm updates that I always look forward to is Image Search, and I predict that Google will be investing heavily into Image results based on the trends in the last couple of years. Since 2011, when Image search to me was really only in its infancy, Google has invested a lot of resources towards improving how users find and consume images. Here are just a few of the major updates made within last year:

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As you may have seen in a flurry of social activity, MRY recently had the honor of being mentioned not once BUT TWICE in Buzzfeed’s epic article, “27 Things Advertising People Know To Be True.” We’re holding down spots #12 and #22. Go ahead and check it out, and just try not to let the epic human being featured in #22 make you smile.

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Here is a message from MRY and Eddard Stark to businesses and brands everywhere:

Zuckerberg and Co. recently revamped Facebook’s mobile brand pages with all of the shiftiness of a seasoned ninja, changing their look from one reminiscent of its classic webpages to a new format that allows users to more easily access relevant information, communicate with the company, and consume its content.

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Back on Track

In the 90’s Yahoo! was, to many, synonymous with ‘the internet’. Once accessed, there was no reason to leave the web portal. You would chat, mail and consume all content under the Yahoo! umbrella.

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Now, however, over a decade later, Yahoo! appears to be back on its original course for web supremacy, this time with solid leadership at the helm and a roadmap focused on content and social engagement.

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As we rush to mine ‘big data’ for novel audience insights, we often overlook enduring social behaviors as time-tested as any research. 

It should come as no surprise to any sentient human that we are creatures of habit. The everyday routine, the daily grind, the quotidian—our language is suffused with references to the dull repetitions of life. Urban planners discuss the “reproduction of daily life” in hushed tones. Politicians stage theatrical battles over whether to dispense with time-honored entitlements. And brand planners strategize ways to “repurpose” content on new platforms. Even the stories we tell draw on archetypal myths that we tirelessly rehearse.

Yet the ways in which we appeal to audiences often overlook our most customary habits.

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Facebook emoticons saw a wide rollout this month, but why should brands care? New approaches to EdgeRank may be why.

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I was brushing my teeth the other night before bed and all of a sudden I heard loud unexpected explosions from the Westside Highway near Hell’s Kitchen; some sort of attack raced through my mind.

Reassuring myself that was unlikely, I brushed away, but the explosions kept coming, and coming, and coming.

Not native to these shores, my imagination got the better of me so I dropped my toothbrush and ran through to my living room (which is also my kitchen, hall and dining room, etc. – its NYC!) and looked out the windows – nothing.

With no identification of the source, I took to search to find answers.

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Looking to impact your healthcare professional audience more effectively?  Or maybe you’re simply trying to get their attention and differentiate yourself from the sea of emails, healthcare apps, detail aids, and other educational materials and tools that already exist.  In either case, there are a few basic tenants to follow when it comes to digital marketing to HCPs.

Get To the Point.  It’s no secret that HCPs are short on time.  Increasing bureaucratic and administrative demands and decreasing reimbursements have reduced the time of a typical office visit with a primary care provider to less than 15 minutes.  Physicians are loathe to spend valuable time out of their day having lengthy chats with sales reps and pouring through complicated detail aids and other materials.  Many of those carefully crafted lengthy e-newsletters (often times with valuable content) get deleted before they ever get opened.  In a time-crunched environment of information overload, it’s best to quickly get to the point.  Think of the 2-3 bullet points that you want your customer to remember, and get to those points as quickly as possible.   

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