A Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company slide that circulated on social media stated that political attire (like “Make America Great Again” gear) was unacceptable in the workplace. President Trump responded by calling for a boycott of Goodyear. Let’s take a close look at Goodyear’s response, and how it could have been better. The visual that…
Boycotts rarely work. But in the face of advertiser boycotts, Facebook just did a U-turn on its policy on labelling or blocking presidential posts. The cause and effect here is a lot more complex than it appears. As recently as the beginning of June, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the right decision on presidential posts,…
Last week, the Hallmark Channel pulled ads for the wedding planning site Zola that featured two brides kissing. Yesterday, it reversed itself. No matter what happened in this episode, Hallmark was going to be at the center of controversy and lose viewers. At that point, you might as well do what you think is right….
The unmoderated site 8chan has hosted some horrifying things, including a hate-filled manifesto that appears to be from the shooter in the El Paso massacre. After 8chan’s cloud network and security provider Cloudflare dumped it, I began to wonder if we’d finally figured out the boundaries of the legitimate internet. The question of what content…
Bob Kraft backed Donald Trump. Then he helped out the teenagers from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who’d survived a school shooting. Which side is he on? Until this weekend, you could put Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots firmly in the Trump column. He donated $1 million to Trump’s campaign. Trump read…
In the wake of the school shooting in Florida and NRA president Wayne LaPierre’s statement that the right to bear arms is “granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright,” a slew of companies from Delta Airlines and Hertz to MetLife have ended discount programs with the NRA. Now people are calling for…
Should companies make political statements? I pondered this when I received a clearly political message in the catalog for the Uline, the company I get my shipping supplies from. Uline’s catalog is over 700 pages long. It’s filled with everything from corrugated cardboard boxes to book shippers, which I use a lot of. You could…
According to The New York Times, five women have accused Bill O’Reilly of sexual harassment or similar behavior and received $13 million in settlements. Some “O’Reilly Factor” advertisers have pulled their advertising; others haven’t. But what these advertisers share is their mealy-mouthed, platitudinous statements. Here’s what they are actually thinking — and how they should permanently…
Shopify, a commerce platform, supports thousands of online stores, including Breitbart’s. Tens of thousands of people have called on the company to dump the alt-right site, but Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke says anyone who isn’t breaking the law can use his platform. I agree with his position. As I previously wrote, the boycott war has descended…