The Center for Child & Family Health is joining hundreds of other organizations and businesses who are pausing their active use of Facebook to protest the company’s insufficient steps to address hate speech and racism on its social media platform.
Because CCFH does not buy ads on Facebook, we believe the best way we can show our support for the #StopHateforProfit campaign is to limit our active use of Facebook in July.
In the meantime, we will examine whether to continue using Facebook as a communications channel once the boycott ends. Along with whatever good it may have fostered, it provides an unprecedented platform for the dissemination of hate, abuse, and misinformation, which has amplified strife and division in our country. While not solely responsible for those outcomes, its power, wealth, and influence dwarfs its peers, and it has aggressively resisted calls for accountability and change.
From our work with traumatized children, we know that connections between people, even if profitable, are not good in and of themselves. To be beneficial, connections should be mutual, equitable, trustworthy, and – above all – safe.