Here’s a enjoyable thought experiment. Let’s say you, like several first rate, law-abiding web consumer, are feeling enraged by the current slew of Wall Street Journal reports detailing Facebook’s myriad failures. Maybe you’re indignant over Facebook’s incapability to reckon with anti-vax content, otherwise you’re indignant at its gradual response to known criminals abusing its platform, or, properly, any of the different missteps detailed by the Journal. The level is, you’re pissed, and also you need Mark Zuckerberg to know. What do you do?

You may stress Facebook to place extra muscle behind the interior groups tasked with researching the platform’s ugly underbelly, solely to seek out, because the Journal did, that this work has a history of both being downplayed or ignored solely. You may attempt to get lawmakers concerned, solely to seek out them wholly unequipped to get a single straight reply out of Zuck and Co.

Or you possibly can attempt to hit the corporate the place it hurts: in its advert funds. At the top of the day, in spite of everything, Facebook is generally an promoting firm, incomes 98% of its billions of {dollars} from focused advertisements. If researchers and regulators can’t make Zuckerberg see purpose, you’re pondering, perhaps a blow to profitability would. It is sensible! It makes a lot sense, actually, {that a} group of nonprofits is reportedly arranging a platform-wide advert boycott in response to the Journal’s investigations, the identical approach they organized a comparable boycott final 12 months. Under the moniker “Stop Hate For Profit,” the group satisfied greater than 1,000 manufacturers and companies to bravely pause their advert spend throughout Facebook for the full month of July, 2020 in a last-ditch try to get the corporate to reckon with its complete “rampant-hate-speech” downside.

In response, Facebook didn’t change a damn thing, and the corporate raked in record amounts of advert income anyway. Unless we wish that to occur once more, these organizers—and any advertisers they wrangle—might want to run issues a bit approach in another way than they did two years in the past. Here are some issues that want to alter.

Step one: Define what “Facebook” we’re boycotting

This could appear frivolous, however failing to ask what a “Facebook boycott” really means is arguably one of many causes that the primary boycott fell so flat. Back in 2020, we assumed that when a model stated that they’d cease pouring cash into the Facebook advert machine, that they’d… cease pouring cash into the Facebook advert machine. That isn’t what we noticed. Instead, the overwhelming majority that we’d spoken with appeared far more snug diverting their budgets from one a part of that machine into one other, much less scrutinized half.

In many instances, these firms had been nonetheless paying Facebook to run advertisements about why their deodorant/seltzer/t-shirt model was the bee’s knees. They simply shunted Facebook’s big blue News Feed from operating these advertisements, since that’s the place loads of the icky hate speech and racism appeared to coalesce. That distinction left big-name manufacturers loads of leeway to get good PR for his or her position within the boycott whereas additionally paying Facebook to advertise their merchandise… in all places else.

At the naked minimal, we have to minimize that shit out. We can’t give manufacturers brownie factors for “boycotting” Facebook whereas they proceed to pay the corporate to run advertisements throughout Facebook-owned Instagram, Messenger, or the numerous third-party apps that run Facebook-powered advertisements utilizing the corporate’s “Audience Network” tech.

Step two: Small companies have to get on board

The first advert boycott satisfied main names (Verizon! Unilever!) to take a stand in opposition to Facebook; however as the corporate loves reminding us all, its huge advert machine primarily runs off the backs of small companies throughout the nation. Small companies have backed up these stats themselves, with one recent survey discovering that roughly two-thirds of small companies say Facebook is their major social media advert avenue—greater than Snapchat and TikTok mixed.

There’s a slew of nuanced reasons that mother and pops simply can’t cease pouring their cash into the platform, however they largely boil all the way down to what many people already know: Facebook is actually efficient at monitoring us in all places we go, which implies it’s equally efficient at focusing on us with advertisements… in all places we go. As one among these small companies concisely told Marketplace on the top of the 2020 boycott, tv advertisements are costly, and no one’s newspaper advertisements anymore. Facebook is basically the best choice for affordable, focused advertisements at scale—actually, many will say it’s their only option.

In order to get them on board with the boycott, we have to show that there’s folks spending time… away from Facebook. Which means…

Step three: Everyone to be on board

It’s a testomony to Facebook’s monopoly energy that the platform can really feel so, so shitty to make use of whereas feeling deeply inescapable on the identical time. But if we wish this new advert boycott to be value a rattling, we have to at least try to untangle ourselves from our Facebook feeds and Instagram accounts. In different phrases, it’s not sufficient for the advertisers to boycott Facebook—customers must boycott Facebook (and Instagram and WhatsApp and all the pieces else the corporate controls). When Zuckerberg has fewer end-users underneath his thumb, which means fewer Facebook advertisements being seen and clicked on. Fewer advertisements being seen and clicked on means fewer ad dollars being spent by Facebook’s advertisers general. In different phrases: When we boycott the corporate, we’re giving advertisers an excellent purpose to do the identical.

The solely challenge right here is that Facebook is, based on the FTC, a monopoly, and monopolies are kinda sorta not possible to flee by design. In the wake of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, for instance, the cry to #deletefacebook didn’t simply appear to be a rallying cry to chop again on time spent browsing Instagram, however an all-out civic obligation for end-users in all places.

It’s additionally a privilege. Vox eloquently pointed out on the top of #deletefacebook-mania that asking somebody why they refused to go away the platform was on par with asking why they refuse to leave their home earlier than a hurricane is about to strike. Even when you’ve got the assets to go away, taking that step may go away you stranded indefinitely. Call it “network effects” or “weaponized FOMO.” Whatever the case, #deletefacebook didn’t work: The firm reported record numbers of each day energetic customers (188.6 million!) within the U.S. in the course of the top of Facebook’s largest scandal so far. Needless to say, that development hasn’t stopped since.

So, the place would an efficient Facebook exodus go away us? The probably reply is stranded on different platforms with different focused advertisements and different foibles that will or could not undercut democracy as we all know it. Some of those firms have began closing in on Facebook’s small enterprise strongholds in the course of the pandemic, with names like Google and TikTok and Roku rolling out a bevy of concessions aimed toward serving to Facebook’s captive lots bounce ship. The draw back to leaping ship is the place you land: both within the grasping arms of one other tech big or alone within the woods just like the Unabomber.

So if most of us assume logging off to combat the large blue monster is an insurmountable ask—or when you really feel kinda icky about copping way of life ideas from Ted Kaczynski—cheer up! Sure, you is likely to be resigning your self to being caught on a shitty platform. But at the very least you understand we’re all caught right here, being monetized, collectively.