Perhaps you have heard that many companies will be boycotting Facebook this month in an effort to push the company to better manage its platform.
The latest revelation is that ads with white supremacist language and hashtags were allowed on the platform in droves.
In *droves*.
Not an accident.
Approval.
At scale.
Meanwhile, did you know that romance authors (mostly women) can lose their ad accounts if they use the word kiss or romance in an ad? Bare shoulders, a light embrace...all denied and flagged and occasionally used to justify shutting down author ad accounts. Sometimes Facebook flags our links to book retailers and shuts us down for that.
I and other authors have had ridiculous amounts of harassment from Facebook over ads for romance and fantasy books.
The harassment is constant.
(Clearly authors should've been creating products for white supremacists, that's the green light apparently.)
I've learned to work around it, (and I even teach authors how to do that too), but it's weird since Zuckerberg is a self identified free speech absolutist.
On Facebook, women can't write about love, but men can pimp white supremacy.
Let me say that again, but louder...
ON FACEBOOK, WOMEN CAN'T WRITE ABOUT LOVE, BUT MEN CAN PIMP WHITE SUPREMACY.
I actually didn't ever think all the ad harassment was sexist until I realized that white supremacists (largely men) were allowed to trade on hate undeterred. I can't unsee it now.
So I absolutely support the boycott, but as a small business I can't afford to join it. Not yet. (Okay, and no, Facebook would not even notice if I stopped giving them money. I'm so tiny compared to the big brands pushing the boycott.)
But I did want to say, Black Lives Matter and NAACP receive monthly donations from me and those are directly funded by the work I do on Facebook. Weaponize their mistakes, right?
However, I will be working to grow other marketing outlets so that I can participate in a boycott like this in the future. It'll take some time, but this is a major priority now. I can't be subject to another company's crappy problems without recourse. I need to build my own lifeboat.
It's really frustrating though to see this happening. Facebook built an amazing platform that has been a boon to small business unlike any other in the modern era, but then they filled their operating system with systemic racism and misogyny.
If they don't change, I won't be there.
COMMENT POLICY: Keep it civil. This is my house. I don't come spew things on your feed, right? No memes. Comments will be moderated because there's always someone who doesn't get it and doesn't want to get it and wants to be sure we all know it, but I'm not hosting that.
