The “most substantive, wide-ranging executive order” on LGBTQ+ rights ever signed by a U.S. president
How we lost control of what we see and read
Pandering of the week
A struggle to remove the goods
Quote of the week: "Stop the politics"
1. Tune in tomorrow!
I am going live with the best-dressed man in the business of customer experience and marketing… Jay Baer is my guest on episode 7 of Experience TV. I’ll ask:
Will 2020 growth be only a blip for some brands?
How have organizations rewired their CX during COVID?
Why does Jay believe 2021 is the "single great opportunity since the advent of the internet?”
Global purpose communications firm Porter Novelli has brand new research on the impact of cancel culture on businesses.
Social media has transformed the impact of a single voice – it has allowed stories to grow, opinions to become trending topics and movements to solidify into hashtags. Social media has created power. Suddenly, one voice has become many. And these voices can no longer be ignored.
Importantly, cancel culture is not about truly “cancelling” a brand. 88% of consumers are more willing to forgive a company for making a mistake if it genuinely tries to change.
The research shows this age of sunlight and access to social media creates a key lever of accountability for organizations. As I continue to work on Woke-Washed, this is a critical part of the story.
Among the 17 executive orders signed on his first day in office, the 46th president issued an order instructing federal agencies to fully implement the Supreme Court’s historic June 2020 ruling on discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in the workplace. In Bostock v. Clayton County, the nation’s highest court found in a decisive 6-3 ruling that queer and transgender employees are protected from workplace bias under 1964 civil rights laws banning sex-based discrimination.
“All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation,” the order concludes.
Note: While this is a massive change, our community is still not equal under the law everywhere.
In 30 states, LGBTQ people are at risk of being fired, refused housing or denied services simply because of who we are.
HRC President Alphonso David says passage of the Equality Act “would extend protections to LGBTQ+ people in virtually all areas of public life, including everything from loan applications to jury duty.”
What you see in your feeds isn’t up to you. What’s at stake is no longer just missing a birthday. It’s your sanity—and world peace.
She covers the algorithms that control what content appears in your Facebook news feed, or recommended content on YouTube which serve to
maximize the reach of the incendiary - the attacks, the misinformation, the conspiracy theories. They pushed us further into our own hyperpolarized filter bubbles.
It’s a tale of confirmation bias, and one of alternative realities:
The worst-case scenarios are no longer just hypothetical. People are shown things that appeal most to them, they click, they read, they watch, they fall into rabbit holes that reinforce their thoughts and ideas, they connect with like-minded people. They end up in their own personalized version of reality. They end up inside the U.S. Capitol.
Joanna provides some suggestions for solving this - none of which seam plausible in the face of what’s projected to be $95B in ad revenue for Facebook in 2021.
Despite this, as I’ve said before, improving awareness and literacy among social media users and bringing consciousness of how they’re being manipulated is a starting point.
After all:
It’s the funnel through which many now see and form their views of the world.
5 Pandering of the week
Comes from the NFL (again) for their MLK day tweet:
The day after the violent attack on the Capitol, Shopify declared that it had removed e-commerce sites affiliated with President Trump, including his official campaign store. The sites had violated a policy that prohibited the support of groups or people “that threaten or condone violence to further a cause.”
The move was initially lauded but it soon became clear that the technology company, which powers more than one million online shops, was still fueling plenty of other sites with merchandise promoting the president and goods emblazoned with phrases like “MAGA Civil War.” Apparel with similar phrases and nods to QAnon conspiracy theories also remained available on e-commerce sites like Amazon, Etsy and Zazzle…
…Just as the violence put new scrutiny on how social media companies were monitoring speech on their platforms, it also highlighted how e-commerce companies have enabled just about anyone with a credit card and an email address to sell goods online.
How are these marketplaces responding?
“While an item may be allowed today, we reserve the right to determine based on evolving context that it is a violation at a later date, for example if it is deemed to cause or inspire real world harm,” a representative for Etsy, said in a statement.
Via Dan Price, Founder/CEO of Gravity Payments on LinkedIn:
As a CEO, people keep telling me to "keep politics out of business." If we did that, America would still have:
*Slavery *Child labor *Women banned from work *Mandated 80-hour work weeks *Legal discrimination *No weekends *No minimum wage *No holidays, vacation days or sick time *No employer-sponsored health insurance or retirement plans
"Stop the politics" means "keep the status quo."
Have a great rest of your week - and hope to see you tomorrow at 3pm ET live on social channels.
