Zuck Bucks the System
Mark Zuckerberg's interview with Joe Rogan brings some hope that our Facebook page will be liberated.
Mark Zuckerberg has been in the news in the last few weeks because he has removed “fact checkers” and will replace them with “community notes.” This move comes conveniently after Donald Trump's 2024 election and the ascendency of Elon Musk and X.
He appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience and explained that the fact-checking initiative was essentially to prevent terrorism and the problems associated with ensuring that bad actors were removed. He blamed the government for its push to limit speech on the social media platform and excused Facebook's actions “because you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater.”
He stated that the issue was that people “felt the fact-checkers were too biased” and realized that trust in his brand had been destroyed because of his fact-checkers ideologically biased actions.
We applaud Mr. Zuckerberg for concluding that Facebook needed a reboot. We sincerely hope that this promise will also include small Christian businesses.
Since March 2018, Ad Crucem has experienced what we can only assume is a shadow ban on Facebook. Our rate of growth of followers plummeted to virtually nothing; our adverts no longer have the impact they had before this. One particular weekend, after we tried to advertise some of our products, someone on Facebook deleted our page. I was fortunate to reach out to someone on Facebook whom Joy Pullmann of The Federalist had put me in touch with, and our Facebook page was reinstated. The reason for canceling us was never given, and she assured us that there was no shadow banning.
These are the images that got us unwanted attention from Facebook. They’re innocuous enough to us, as Christians, but the powers that be at Facebook decided they were offensive and went against community standards. The Cross remains the offensive stumbling block St. Paul described 2000 years ago (Galatians 3).
After the advert was rejected, our Facebook experience was never the same. Up to that point, we were growing by about 1000 followers a year. After that, growth stalled to almost nothing. Numerous family members, friends, and customers-turned-friends were marked as “invited” to follow the page but never marked as followers. Many have told us that they never have my page on their feed despite following it and actively looking for it.
I’ve admitted to my South African humor before, which probably got me in further trouble with the powers that be. Once the advert was rejected, I tried advertising our church banners like this…
It was rejected, too, which makes me think we were not dealing with a bot but that our tiny Christian Facebook page had been singled out for special handling.
It’s not just shadow banning we must contend with. Advertising on Facebook used to be a small entrepreneur’s dream. I could spend ~$20 and get all my products sold. I could choose the niche customer I wanted to reach: a confessional Lutheran with specific interests and patterns. Facebook removed all those categories some years back. Now, there is virtually no way to find or target a Christian, let alone a Lutheran. Twenty times that ad spend furnishes me nothing more than a few Catholics. I know they’re Catholic because they have a rote, almost superstitious response to the advert: “Amen,” but they do not buy.
We met with advertisers from X a couple of weeks ago, but they are not able to target individuals so specifically yet either. Also, we have found the cost of advertising on X is way out of our budget, with virtually no return.
Mr. Zuckerberg claims that the areas they are addressing will be misinformation and hate speech. I would love to know which of those two categories our adverts fit.
Recently, one of our Substacks was removed because, again, “community standards.” Here’s what was said then. I'm not sure what was misleading about a blog post, or what made it spam. Requesting a review produced no better outcome.
At the same time that Ad Crucem is being censored, we almost daily receive fraudulent Facebook messages and comments from individuals or bots pretending to represent Facebook and telling us that we have violated some copyright or other. When we report these, Facebook tells us that they do not go against community standards. I would love for someone to explain the logic.
Mr Zuckerberg has a long hard slog ahead of him to fix his social media empire. Adding Dana White to the board is a good start, I’d like to see him add someone like Fr. Calvin Robinson - a real free speech heavyweight, who has proven to be a champion of those who are truly without a voice: the modern Christian in a pagan world.