Facebook’s Fact Problem, Media’s Future, & Why Nothing’s Certain

This summer, a group of nearly 100 brands from Patagonia to Coca-Cola are boycotting highly targeted ad machines on social media platforms like Facebook. 
It’s an effort to put their money where their PR statements are—by withholding ad spend on Facebook, these brands are attempting to force Mark Zuckerberg’s hand to do something about his platform’s highly contentious fact-checking and hate speech standards. 

The question remains...will it work? If you ask CNN, “It would likely take tens of thousands of them, acting over a significant period of time, to put a big dent in Facebook's bottom line.”
But what if, instead of focusing on dollar value efficacy, we consider that the medium might be the message here? Sure, those 100+ brands might not dent Zuck’s retirement account. But they’ve brought important attention to the fact that we’re slaves to the big tech ad targeting machine.
That’s why this week on Business Casual, we’re navigating the intricate movement of ad dollars from local news outlets to social media and big tech platforms...plus taking stock of how, exactly, the everyday media consumer is suffering.
And we’re doing it with someone who’s seen it all in the media world—Joanna Coles. She’s been an executive, a producer, an editor...basically everything from heading up Cosmo to sitting on Snap’s board. 
In this episode, Joanna explains the importance of local journalism, why it evaporates when big tech wins ad dollars, and how conglomerization widens the access gap to good, fact-checked journalism. 
And arguably most importantly? Joanna helps us understand what there is to be done to fix today’s misinformation problem—a problem of incredible scale.
Listen now. 

This summer, a group of nearly 100 brands from Patagonia to Coca-Cola are boycotting highly targeted ad machines on social media platforms like Facebook. 

It’s an effort to put their money where their PR statements are—by withholding ad spend on Facebook, these brands are attempting to force Mark Zuckerberg’s hand to do something about his platform’s highly contentious fact-checking and hate speech standards. 

The question remains...will it work? If you ask CNN, “It would likely take tens of thousands of them, acting over a significant period of time, to put a big dent in Facebook's bottom line.”

But what if, instead of focusing on dollar value efficacy, we consider that the medium might be the message here? Sure, those 100+ brands might not dent Zuck’s retirement account. But they’ve brought important attention to the fact that we’re slaves to the big tech ad targeting machine.

That’s why this week on Business Casual, we’re navigating the intricate movement of ad dollars from local news outlets to social media and big tech platforms...plus taking stock of how, exactly, the everyday media consumer is suffering.

And we’re doing it with someone who’s seen it all in the media world—Joanna Coles. She’s been an executive, a producer, an editor...basically everything from heading up Cosmo to sitting on Snap’s board. 

In this episode, Joanna explains the importance of local journalism, why it evaporates when big tech wins ad dollars, and how conglomerization widens the access gap to good, fact-checked journalism. 

And arguably most importantly? Joanna helps us understand what there is to be done to fix today’s misinformation problem—a problem of incredible scale.

Listen now.