Dear Facebook, you have effectively killed our democracy by turning a blind eye on fake news and troll accounts. Do we need to start our own Facebook ad boycott in the Philippines to get you to listen to us?

We know you don’t care much when you’re still turning profit from our advertising pesos, but tech giants like yourself need to know your place. Stop messing with how the world operates because if the people get angry enough, we could crush you like the bug that you are.

Facebook is Basically a Military-Grade Weapon

Just weeks ago, something crazy jolted me up from the bed, and into a pool of anger. A lot of my friends and I who had graduated from, or studied in the University of the Philippines, woke up to news that gave me absolute goosebumps. Multiple “duplicate” accounts had been created using our names overnight. These accounts had a default profile picture, which was a huge indicator that they were created by trolls. Oh, and what’s worse is, some of these accounts were sending threatening messages to the real users.

Now, some of you might be wondering why it’s such a scary thing. Well, this happened right at the peak of the #JunkTerrorBill movement that forced a lot of zoomers to speak out online against the government and the Anti-Terror Bill.

With how vaguely the ATB could be interpreted, the writing was on the wall: these duplicate accounts could post something incriminating under your name, like pretending to threaten people for example. If they do that, you could easily be thrown in jail without question.

Later on however, we’d realize that it was not just students and alumni from my school who were being targeted. Most of the victims of this cyber identity thefit situation were those who were vocal about their opposition to the Anti-Terror Bill.

There were a lot of theories as to where the data came from.

It could have been from an algorithm that targets people who had used the hashtag “#JunkTerrorBill” in one of their posts. Another theory is how the trolls targeted users who had signed a Change.org petition against the ATB. One thing is for sure though: with how quickly the accounts were being created, Facebook was once again being used as a weapon by the troll farms.

So after that happened, Facebook said no malicious activity happened, and the National Bureau of Investigation claimed it was a glitch. Pretty sure no one who was victimized believed that.

What kind of Black Mirror episode did I just live through?

How Facebook Killed our Democracy

After that whole thing, I decided to watch The Great Hack on Netflix. It’s a great look into how a data analytics company, Cambridge Analytica, had used our Facebook data to skew elections in different countries with the aid of targeted ads. While that might seem like fair game, they planted fake news and intentionally created dissent in these countries to make their client win. Of course for some reason, they decided to side with candidates who were bigots for these elections.

Here’s the kicker. They were a British consulting firm, but had the balls to test out their strategies on developing countries like the Philippines. Then, once they proved their success in these areas, they then decided to take on the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Brexit next.

Like… are they for real? Why do these people think that they can just swoop in and totally change how other countries operate?

We are not your guinea pigs! If you’re going to pull down your zipper and piss all over the plants, do it in your own backyard!

But besides that, the fact that Facebook is doing virtually nothing to regulate political ads, fake news, and troll accounts shows where their allegiance truly lies: their bank account. Having these things unregulated in a social media-heavy country like ours is tantamount to a dead democracy.

If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth. If you don’t have truth, you don’t have trust. If you don’t have these two things, you don’t have democracy.

Maria Ressa in a 2019 interview with CIGI

So if you’ve been on the political side of the internet for some time now, you’d know how our current government has used Facebook to create chaos. Paid troll armies are the most notorious example, coming to the defense of the president when he is being criticized. As they grow in number, the divide between Duterte’s supporters and detractors just keep getting bigger and bigger by the day.

Which is exactly what they want. And something that Facebook has done nothing about.

July 2020 Facebook Ad Boycott

Since Americans have caught up to Facebook’s role in democracy and elections, lawmakers have been rightfully grilling Zuckerberg for lack of regulation when it comes to fake news. And now that the 2020 U.S. presidential elections are coming up, the anger of the people has been piling up, as Facebook could very well be weaponized to favor a presidential candidate again.

Additionally, the platform has been used to post hateful content against vulnerable communities, primarily those that include BIPOC. They have refused to take down hate-filled comments in relation to recent killings against POC. One such comment was made by President Donald Trump himself, where he encouraged protesters to be shot. Throughout this debacle, Mark Zuckerburg remained silent about the issue, despite a huge backlash from numerous people and groups.

And believe me, this just fueled the fire even more.

As a response to their inaction when it comes to racially-charged comments, a prominent number of big and small advertisers have vowed not to run any Facebook ads in the month of July. Activist groups have been working non-stop for more advertisers to join their call to #StopHateforProfit. Yes, there have been many ad boycotts in the past, but this seems to be the biggest one yet.

Why This Boycott Means Something

Even being a Filipino, you’d be able to recognize names of brands who have agreed to take part in this movement: The North Face, Upwork, Ben & Jerry’s, Rakuten Viber, and probably the biggest fish yet, Verizon Wireless.

To provide context, Facebook was able to to earn a whopping $69.7 billion dollars in 2019, with 46.1% of their 2018 revenue coming from U.S. and Canada alone. From those numbers, you’re probably thinking that this boycott will not do anything in the long run, especially when these brands are planning to resume their ads after July anyway. Great, that’s what other marketers are thinking too.

However, let’s look at the bigger picture.

By participating in the boycott, all these companies are using the reach and influence that they have to spread awareness about Facebook’s problem in addressing racist and discriminatory comments. More than that, these advertisers could very much influence how their customers think and feel. Just by explaining why they refuse to run ads for July, they are already educating people on how dangerous the tech giant could truly be.

As this continues to gain steam, the activist groups and brands who joined the boycott have already made a statement. And now that more advertisers are taking part, this story has continued to gain momentum throughout media and news outlets. The best part is almost all of their content gives context on why this boycott is happening in the first place: Facebook’s inaction towards racially-charged comments. While this won’t put a dent in Facebook’s revenue numbers, this movement has been chipping away at their credibility and reputation.

Plus, the public pressure is probably weighing heavily on Mr. Robot right now. If he’ll finally cave in, we will have to wait and see.

Why We Need a Facebook Ad Boycott in the Philippines

What that in mind, imagine if all the big and small local advertisers could come together to create a Facebook ad boycott in the Philippines. We even have our own, extremely valid concern to rationalize this: the weaponization of Facebook against free speech.

Imagine if the likes of P&G, Unilever, and Jollibee Foods Corporation would actually take a stand against disinformation, troll armies, clone accounts, and other shenanigans, by not running any Facebook ads for a certain time.

Having an ad boycott would be a big step in taking back our virtually-dead democracy that we worked so hard to earn. It’s probably true that the advertising revenue from the Philippines is barely a blip in Facebook’s radar, but a movement like this has a ton of potential to create awareness and educate the masses. Media outlets from all over the world and the country would pick it up and help impart our message about responsible regulation of online platforms.

Then, we could inspire the people and truly make a change. Now that’s what I call a power move.

Unfortunately, this all seems like an unreachable and unrealistic dream.

If someone does start a Facebook ad boycott in the Philippines, we’d probably just have other companies taking advantage of the lighter competition on the platform. I also presume that the gesture wouldn’t be appreciated as much as in the U.S., as most of the population haven’t realized the impact of Facebook has had in our democracy yet. Even so, realistically speaking, the big advertisers here don’t have the guts to take part in something as small as a Facebook ad boycott. I’d literally have to see it to believe it.

But hey, we can always stay hopeful that advertisers will be able to realize that they play a much bigger role in society than they’d like to think. Someday, I know that citizens and advertisers alike can put our differences, fear, and greed aside to slay the Facebook dragon once and for all.

Want to hear more hot takes from zoomers like this one? Take a look at our opinion articles here.

Featured Image: Thought Catalog

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Okay, Boomers and Baby Boomers: we’re turning the tables on you — you’re the reason why we’re living in a hellhole right now. If it weren’t for your dated values and submissiveness, then we’d probably be living in a better world.

If you think the world sucks, take a look at the people running the world.

Well first off, how about we start with the fact that most of the leaders in the world are either from the Boomer Generation or from Gen X, the sneaky little generation who precedes millennials but are also to blame? Some of the powerful men ruling right now include United States’ Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and of course, the Philippines’ He-Who-Must-Be-Named (literally, because of the Anti-Terror Bill). What do they all have in common besides the fact that they’re men? They are all part of your generation.

If you live in one of those countries I mentioned and you do support your leader, then you really have no right to think lowly of the other ones. One is not better than the other, and trying to play that game is like deciding between eating cat piss or horse manure for lunch.

They shove their old-fashioned values down our throats where it’s actually become questionable if their decisions were actually made using a brain. And unfortunately, this has led to more chaos than anything. The only response they know are ad-hominem attacks, underhanded diversion tactics, and violence. All this while suppressing the voices of the minorities, critics, and dissenters.

You settle for scraps. We don’t.

There was this really heartbreaking Twitter video that I couldn’t finish because it hit too close to home. It shows a girl named Marissa, who couldn’t hold back her crying because her mother kept on telling her that it was hopeless to protest, and that she couldn’t change the world. Do you really think we’d want to spend our time fighting for basic human rights, when they should have been given to everyone in the first place? This is just one of many instances that shows how people from your generation are hammering us with the idea that we should just sit down and eat our food. Our idealism is being scoffed at for being unrealistic when history has shown that what we’re asking for is within reach.

As a Filipino, I actually don’t know where you get the audacity to tell me that collective action is useless when the most important we literally overthrew a dictator as a nation. Look, I get that for most of y’all, it’s your maternal instinct kicking in. You tell us these things because you’re looking out for us. But why not try a softer approach that doesn’t involve destroying what’s little left of our hope? Sometimes, whether or you hate it or not, we actually have a point. And speaking of…

You can’t accept that you’re wrong.

The #HijaAko hashtag trended in the Philippines due to a controversy where 19-year old Frankie Pangilinan, or Kakie for short, spoke against an ill-advised, now-deleted Facebook post by the national police that told women to wear less revealing clothes unless they want to be raped. Kakie fought back by accurately saying that rapists should be to blame for rape, and not the survivors. Of course, heterosexual male boomer Ben Tulfo tells Kakie that she doesn’t know what she’s saying, as he condescendingly calls her hija: a term older Filipinos use to refer to a little girl.

Unfortunately, this is one of the annoying problems that we zoomers face every day. You don’t seem to treat us seriously just because we’re younger than you, and I say this as a working adult who has already graduated college. Sometimes, older people look at me and think that I’m crazy for opposing them even if I do bring up valid points. This is most likely a trait predominant in Asian families, but I can’t get one rebuttal in without being told that I’m fighting back (sumasagot ka na ngayon?). Like, no. I’m merely disagreeing with you and telling you why. Let me speak!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned though, it’s that when a boomer resorts to using age as an excuse to end the argument, it means you have won

Your traditions don’t hold up anymore.

Please retire the line of thinking that the way your generation perceives the world is how everybody else does too. The “issues” you regarded as taboo during your time are most likely just normal for us now. Just take a look at the shows being broadcasted in your television and streaming platforms, then you’ll see what I mean.

It’s normal for homosexuals to be in a public relationship. It’s normal for women to get abortions. It’s normal for teenagers to have sex. It’s normal for women to raise a baby by herself. It’s normal for people to smoke. It’s normal to get into open relationships. It’s normal to be atheist. It’s normal to get into an interracial relationship. It’s normal. And the only people making them abnormal is you!

The only reason why they get depressed is because of judgmental and pretentious members of society who think that their morals and virtues are spotless. If you’re a Catholic or a Christian, then even better! Can you stop using Bible verses to rationalize your hateful behavior? You’re not much different from the people who partook in Jesus’ suffering. Here’s a reality check for you: God told His people not to use His name in vain, which in simple terms, means that you should not use God in arguments to justify actions and words that go against His teachings of love.

Stop dragging God’s name through the mud, ya weirdo. I went to a Jesuit high school for twelve years, so I think I know what I’m talking about.

So I know my tone wasn’t particularly friendly here, but I grew up in an environment where I was discouraged to speak up. Regardless, I still do not feel comfortable saying my opinion in front of boomers and baby boomers, because time and time again, they wouldn’t listen. And that’s all I want you to do: listen. It just so happens that most of you don’t listen when we say it calmly.

If your kid or student isn’t telling you these things, then it’s probably because you’ve groomed them into submissive, obedient members of society. Is that something you should be proud of? I don’t know. But if the world is still alive (no thanks to climate change) in forty years, I don’t want my grandchildren thinking that we just went with the status quo.

And to all my fellow Gen Z folks & zoomers reading this, I hope you become better than me and continue standing your ground.

Featured Image: Alev Takil on Unsplash

The post Boomers and Gen X are Ruining the World: An Open Letter appeared first on Zoomers Corner.