Hello hello!

Today a bunch of celebrities took on the #StopHateForProfit challenge to freeze their Facebook and Instagram accounts for a day to support StopHateForProfit.org and get the message out that Facebook in particular is profiting off disinformation...

Other social media sites like Twitter, Reddit and YouTube are actively working towards disinformation with warnings, and deletions of hate-filled subreddits and videos... while Facebook has been largely silent.

Traditional social media companies thrive on people experiencing emotional responses from content on their platform, it keeps them engaged and active on the site.

Unfortunately misinformation spreads 6 times faster than verified news because it evokes so many emotions.

[[Source]](https://imgur.com/t/facebook/DwebTgF)

Facebook literally profits off fake news and misinformation...

Our first reaction was 'people are using Instagram every day?' and then our second reaction was 'surely 24 hours is nothing...' and it's true that it's very unlikely to cost them much in revenue.

In July 2020 1000 companies scaled their advertising right back on Facebook to support this protest.

[Source]

The numbers in reduced advertising expenditure were huge, and Facebook definitely suffered a dip, but have essentially averaged out at no real loss...

[[Source]](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/business/media/facebook-boycott.html)

While the protest might not make much financial difference, the amount of exposure that the celebrities has generated for the cause is absolutely huge:

At the very least people may think twice about the information they see on Facebook, at the very most, it will convince people to stop supporting a platform that profits off hate... and maybe move away from a platform doing everything in it's power to influence you into spending as much time as possible on it.

We have no doubt that Facebook has the power to change lives, affect change and even influence democratic elections all around the world... but while they shirk and neglect that responsibility in favour for revenue then it's up to the rest of us to move away from the platform and instead support traditional social media platforms that take that responsibility seriously... or better yet, move to platforms that support creators with #webmonetization like mg.social and gfam!

Thanks for reading!