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Is Standpoint's Facebook Advertising Targeted Harassment?

The responsibilities of social media are running around media circles and headlines right now, as well as questions asked in Parliament and on The One Show. Well, consider this another data point to consider.

Take one old drinking friend of mine, Derek Des Anges. He's trans, he's written for Bleeding Cool before, and while we often find ourselves disagreeing with all manner of stuff, I always find his take on things informative and of interest. He helps keep me out of my own echo bubble. Hell, that's what drinking friends should be for. But when he shared the following ad he'd seen in his Facebook feed a lot this week, I was totally on his side.

He wrote "Facebook has been angrily advertising Freeze Peach publications at me for a week now from what I can only assume is spite but this is taking the piss."

Standpoint is a British cultural and political monthly magazine, ten years old last year with a…limited circulation. Politically centre-right, it describes its core mission as being "to celebrate western civilisation", its arts and its values – in particular, those of democracy, debate and, freedom of speech, at a time when it believes that they are under threat.

Now, that cover headline is intended to provoke. "Boys will be girls" is counter to the common trans experience that the trans individual has always been their identified gender, even if physically that wasn't as clear to others, or even to the person themselves. And headlines such as this that suggest otherwise–as well as a phrase that can be thrown around by anti-transgender folk online–and can be unnecessarily hurtful.

It certainly pissed off Derek. But why did he see it on his feed? Well, he asked…

It's one thing to commission the provocative and tone-deaf twatbadger Toby Young to write such an article, and for the editor to choose such a headline for the cover, where someone might come across it in a newsagent or online. For many, it would give people a good reason not to pick the magazine up, as much as it entices others to do so. There's probably no reason to massively object to it running as an ad, broadcast out into the world. No one has a right not to be offended in life.

But it seems to be a very different thing for Facebook to take money and to specifically push that ad at the transgender community. Which is likely to be a significant percentage of those who Facebook have decided are interested in 'transgenderism', as they choose to describe it.

Some may see that as paid-for-and-got targeted harassment. Others, see it as being an utter dick. Either way, is that really what Facebook wants to be seen as doing right now?

This may also be as a result of Facebook not having a differing advertising category for trans-friendly and transphobic interests. But then they really don't want to be in the position where someone can buy a 'transphobic' ad tag either. Not anymore, anyway.

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