Hate Is Too Lucrative
As some organizations unfortunately profit off of dangerous ideologs, the goodness of credit unions is not going unnoticed.
There’s a nostalgia that the world and/or country was a better place decades ago. There’s a thought and potentially a belief that we lived in some kind of Xanadu, free from the meanness and ugliness. We might feel like we were a more polite and kind society, where we respected others and treated people with compassion, care and empathy while milk was delivered to our doorsteps each morning.
That characterization is just a 1950s television show. Scientifically, the only thing that was better was the fact that the polar ice caps weren’t melting yet.
The underlying message of the nostalgia from those wishing we could go back is really a warning that there was a time when not everyone had rights, and they’d like to go back to that time, please and thank you.
This summer has been full of those talking points on news-type talk shows and, indeed, those who wanted less equality for more than half of our population got what they wanted.
By the way, the term Xanadu came from a poem about a beautiful estate owned by the family of Genghis Kahn – the person responsible for the deaths of as many as 40 million people in the 13th century. As a cherry on top, Kahn is considered to have been the wealthiest person to ever live, with a net worth (adjusted to present-day money) of $120 trillion.
Oppression and hate was and continues to be a very lucrative way to live and do business.
The main difference between the business of hate in the 13th century and 1950s to now is that we have the ability to know what’s happening in real or near-real time, as well as learn the opinions of the entire world on every topic, no matter how innocent or toxic those opinions might be.
Want to see someone gunned down and killed on a live stream? Sure, no problem. Want to watch a video from a militia leader in Missouri to learn about what they believe the government is doing with vaccines to monitor our every move, and why you should therefore buy a gun and be terrified? Yep, you can do that. Want to watch competitive slapping? Yeah, that’s out there. Would you like to watch a food cooperative board meeting and hear the complaints from its members concerning the size of the grocery carts? Yes you can. Knock yourself out. And while watching all of these videos, you can find ads sold against them.
All of these things, and so much more, are accessible to our brains and eyeballs every single second of every single day, and the platforms giving us this content are making an obscene amount of money. Let’s be real, no one is really watching that co-op board meeting, but they sure are watching that other stuff.
In the second quarter of this year, Facebook’s parent company Meta reported its revenue was $26 billion. In that same time frame, Twitter reported $1.18 billion in revenue while YouTube reported its advertising revenue brought in $7.34 billion.
Meta announced last year that it would stop serving ads to Facebook searches about white supremacy content. As of this writing and reporting by The Washington Post, it continues to display advertisements in those searches.
According to The Washington Post, it “found that Facebook continues to serve ads against searches for white-supremacist content, such as the phrases Ku Klux Klan and American Defense Skinheads” and whistleblowers inside Facebook say “the company prioritizes profits over the dangerous impact of such content.”
Despite users trying to block offensive content, the Facebook AI program seems to randomly ignore those requests.
Twitter gave users the option to click “Not interested in this Tweet” to help its AI learn what interests you have. Personally, I’ve clicked that countless times on conspiracy theory or racist posts from people I do not follow, only to have them return to my news feed. Blocking the account only mildly works, until another account re-tweets it and it shows up again.
YouTube has attempted to remove accounts trying to monetize on video channels that depict offensive Black stereotypes, dead bodies and offensive content toward women with little success.
I’m not anti-capitalism. I’m simply exhausted by the ease of spreading conspiracies, hate and fear, while these and other organizations massively profit from dangerous ideologs.
Alex Jones and his company are worth $270 million. He has spent more than two decades making millions by saying things like the Sandy Hook massacre was fake and a government “false flag.” He was recently ordered to pay $49.3 million in total damages to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting. He’s still in business.
Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three people and killed two in Kenosha, Wis., in 2020 and was acquitted for those killings, announced he’s releasing a video game where you can shoot “fake news turkeys.” The game will cost $9.99.
I say all of this because today I read a couple of press releases from two credit unions that made me feel better about the world.
The Folsom, Calif.-based SAFE Credit Union ($4.4 billion in assets, 244,724 members) announced it had committed $10,000 to help area kids who are living in foster care with mental health services provided by the local Stanford Sierra Youth & Families organization.
Robins Financial Credit Union ($4 billion in assets, 247,087 members) of Warner Robins, Ga., donated $3,000 to The Bigger Vision of Athens community shelter. The money will cover 182 nights of shelter for one person. Thirty-five people stay at the shelter each night.
It was a moment when I realized I needed some good news and then wondered, why can’t this showing of compassion be the thing we monetize? It absolutely deserves to be.
I’m not trying to solve a problem that we’re not already aware exists. I see what so many credit unions are trying to do locally like SAFE Credit Union and Robins Financial.
Just 1% ($260,000,000) of Facebook’s quarterly profits could not only change the lives of the 8,759 children in foster care in Northern California and build a home for each of the 35 people living in the shelter, but it could do really any number of positive things for so many people.
Like many people try to make better choices for the environment by consciously using less plastic or composting and such, let’s try to refocus our energy, time and money away from businesses and cults of personalities built on the foundation of creating fear and hatred.
To the many of you who are leading and working at credit unions because of an idea that it’s just a better way for the world to financially exist and want to share that with your communities: Your goodness is not going unnoticed.
Michael Ogden Editor-in-Chief mogden@cutimes.com