Control the culture, call the tune – Economic Times

Stop hate for profit goes a campaign slogan that has rattled Facebook and made it change its policy on content censorship. In the wake of the powerful, broad-based, anti-racism protests in the US, following the killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in an act of police brutality in Minneapolis, many powerful companies and brands have come under pressure to demonstrate that they, too, stand with the protesters and not with the racist status quo.

Stop hate for profit is an emotive slogan and it is difficult to defy its emotive power without having credible, independent anti-racism credentials of ones own. So, brands like Coca-Cola, Honda, Verizon, Levis, Microsoft and North Face have decided to stop advertising on Facebook for a month.

At one level, Facebook pays the price for not having to adhere to the norms of respect for veracity and social responsibility that traditional media follow. Not being responsible for what others publish on their platform had been deemed a social media prerogative till organising mass murder of the Rohingya in Myanmar through WhatsApp messages, was proved an irrefutable fact.

At another level, Facebook is prey to zealous political correctness, which wants it to deploy its ability to remove posts regardless of whether this curtails freedom of speech. It now seeks government regulation to draw the line that separates responsible publishing from censorship.

The rush of powerful companies to fall in line with the campaign shows the power of popular culture. Commerce and advertising shaped mass culture, it was believed. But when powerful passions are unleashed by ideology that grips the public imagination, whether emancipatory or otherwise, commerce turns fellow traveller. Moulding public culture yields tremendous power.

This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Economic Times.

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Control the culture, call the tune - Economic Times