Facebook on the ropes as a few celebrities make a small gesture

Social media giant Facebook has been under constant regulatory and governmental scrutiny for years, but now it faces its most fearsome adversary yet.

The StopHateForProfit campaign has been quiet for a couple of months but, with the US election looming it has decided to renew its lobbying for social media to censor President Trump, who it considers to be the primary disseminator of said ‘hate’. Previously it had relied on corporations seeking cheap PR wins to bolster its efforts, but desperate times call for desperate measures and now the gloves are off.

When all else fails it’s time to call upon the power of celebrities to save the day. In a ‘week of action’ StopHateForProfit is urging celebrities to augment their brand with the absolute bare minimum of action they can muster to support the cause. This largely involves them not using Facebook and Instagram for a day which, to be fair, will be very painful for their insatiable egos.

The likes of Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry are among the celebs forgoing one of their many sources of attention for a short time to show how much they hate hate. Of course these are very busy people, so StopHateForProfit has saved them having to put much thought into it by publishing a social media toolkit, which they’ve been only too keen to use.

While StopHateForProfit seems to be taking more care to disguise its political motives this time, the week culminates on Friday with a call for Facebook to ban political ads that tell lies. Since the whole thing started in response to Facebook’s refusal to censor President Trump, it’s safe to assume that’s where they think all the lies are coming from. However we’d be happy to stand corrected when they call out lies from the Democrat election campaign.

Facebook doesn’t yet seem to have issued a public response to this alarming escalation, but Mark Zuckerberg is presumably terrified at the prospect of Katy Perry (who even had the nerve to invoke Orwell in her quest for censorship) being cross with him. Expect some kind of statement agreeing that hate is a bad thing, but insisting that Facebook is doing everything it can about it. StopHateForProfit will respond that it’s not doing enough and then everyone, including the fleetingly activist celebrities, will just get on with their lives as if nothing had happened.