So it's justifiable to selectively ban someone who spreads "potentially harmful info" or "incites a riot" even when you virtue signal free speech?
Perfectly reasonable…. Just telling he didn’t think of this when he was saying he wouldn’t ban this type of information.
Folks just need to admit they wanted to troll teh libtards…. And stop with all this principle nonsense. Y’all ain’t fooling anyone.
To prevent woke virtue signaling by corporations we need to install a communist economic system so corporations don't follow market trends that may be woke. Communism will save us from capitalist Wokeism.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-help...oardrooms-eb6a7795?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s I Helped Make Corporations Woke, and I Regret It The politicization of everything is too high a price for the gay-rights advances of the 2010s. By Gregory T. Angelo April 12, 2023 at 11:56 am ET I sat in the Washington office of a major airline’s head of government relations, where we were joined by the top lobbyist for one of America’s largest hotel chains. It was 2013, and I was president of the gay conservative group Log Cabin Republicans. I had come to secure corporate support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Pressure from leading corporations, I correctly assumed, would push waffling Republicans to vote for the legislation. What business did airlines and hotel chains have weighing in on gay-rights legislation? None. In fact, doing so could even be bad business, as the lobbyist explained: “We already have a longstanding LGBT nondiscrimination policy, which actually puts us at a competitive advantage as a more appealing employer for gay people.” “But count us in,” the hotel rep sighed. Avoiding the public flogging the company would take if it failed to support the bill was worth the cost of losing an edge in hiring. Months later, ENDA passed the Senate with the votes of 14 Republicans. (It never made it through the House.) If the gay-rights movement in the U.S. didn’t ignite the trend of corporations taking stands on cultural issues, it was definitely a prime accelerant. And I was there writing op-eds that declared corporate backing for gay causes was “a sign of success.” It was also completely unnecessary. Market forces organically shaped a culture in which almost every American now believes in equal job opportunities for gay people. And we’d have same-sex marriage in all 50 states today with or without 379 major corporations filing friend-of-the-court briefs with the Supreme Court. The trend I helped begin, I now realize, was a disaster. In the past three years, major U.S. corporations have weighed in on everything from abortion and Black Lives Matter to election laws—even as the American public overwhelmingly wishes they wouldn’t. A 2021 report by the Brunswick Group found that 63% of corporate executives felt “unequivocally” that companies should speak out on social issues, while only 36% of Americans agree. A recent Journal poll found that 63% of respondents wished that companies wouldn’t take public stands on political and social issues. Corporate activism turns off consumers and exposes C-suite hypocrisy. Companies demand “equity” in America while profiting from human-rights abuses in China. Or underwriting abortions for employees while maintaining anemic maternity-leave policies. Or issuing proclamations of “antiracism” by all-white executive teams. Institutions’ obsequiousness to left-wing causes has also had a chilling effect on public discourse. An August 2022 Populace study found an alarming prevalence of self-silencing as Americans conceal or misrepresent their private views to avoid conflict and assure colleagues they hold the approved opinion. Self-silencing “destroys social trust,” Populace co-founder Todd Rose notes. “And it tends to historically make social progress all but impossible.” Overcoming self-silencing requires turning against the forces that brought us here. American consumers need to call CEOs out for the chasm between their sermonizing and the scant public support for it. Decent Americans must unite and deliver an unequivocal message: If you want to get political, run for office—otherwise, focus on the bottom line. My own efforts are no longer spent in boardrooms with executives and lobbyists. Instead, I have been rallying grass-roots activists so we can take on corporations’ double standards and push them back to neutrality. We’re putting companies such as Walmart and American Express on defense for subjecting employees to propaganda and discrimination. We’re supporting student organizations that would otherwise be deplatformed at schools such as Emory University, and we’re playing a role in Facebook’s rule-making process. Holding corrupt institutions accountable is penance for my part in getting America into this mess. These days, I’m committed to getting us out of it. Mr. Angelo is president of the New Tolerance Campaign.
This has got to be one of the worst articles I've seen you share in quite a while. First of all this guy had nothing to do with "corporate virtue signally." I know this because I worked for the first pure play social media agency at a time when most companies barely had a facebook page and used their twitter to just repeat their PR newswire articles back in 2009. Also in many cases it's driven by corporations HR departments who want to be more gay friendly to recruit talent as being gay was and still isn't really great for your career prospects in many corporate jobs. Back in 2009, companies were too afraid to post anything controversial at all on social media, and freaked out by any negative comment. We were part of teaching them that they should stand for their brand belief and values and not worry about criticism because they were going to get criticized no matter what they did on social. The main reason companies started supporting things like LGBTQ rights (and this was not the first cause supported by corporations at all), is because of their employees pushing for it - NOT their customers. The real truth is that what you call "virtue signalling" is something corporations have been doing for decades, but was mainly kept under the rug before social media became a big thing. It really originated with corporate philanthropy which really didn't get a lot of visibility until social media as one of the tenets for how channels were used were to build the brand by showcasing employees engaged in ESG work. This was a big deal not just for the brand, but for employees who got visibility and also put a lot of their efforts front and center where before it was buried on the website and in newsletters. This includes gay activism. Brands have been targeting gay and lesbians for decades - not just fashion but lots of other categories, including yes - liquor companies. Believe it or not, gay people like to drink booze. The other thing happening around then was the advent of gay rights (gay marriage) and greater acceptance of the gay community. There was a big TV show back then called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy that had a huge impact especially in NYC, and that along with the increasing popularity of the Pride Parade pulled corporate sponsor dollars en masse. A lot of that spilled over into social media at its infancy. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Log cabin republicans. This guy did not play a role in this - it's honestly laughable the way people make these claims. Three big movements also contributed to the rise of corporate "virtue signaling" as you call it - one was sustainability which has become an increasing concern because of climate change and high profile environmental disasters such as deep horizon. It started in the auto industry with the introduction of hybrids particularly the prius. That was a watershed event. Brands started to push their sustainability efforts on social media and expand them - not because the drove sales - there's not a ton of evidence they did, but because it was popular with employees and attracting talent. The next big trend was slackerism with people supporting causes through changing visual identity cues - this is probably the closest thing to actual "virtue signalling." Most companies do philanthropy that fits with their brands and is employee driven, not corporate unless it is from the original family - and that has been going on for decades upon decades. If you want to call that "virtue signalling" I'd say that's just an effort to push back against corporate philanthropy for political purposes. Corporations definitely saw it as an easy way to jump on the bandwagon. And finally there was blacklivesmatter and george floyd a few years ago - that was a watershed event for corporations to really take a stake on more political issues. But even that had a lead up before - the whole Nike/Colin Kirkpatrick saga showed a lot of companies could take stances and not hurt sales, and in fact improve them. Truth is that standing for something usually translates to profits. I mentioned before, employees began to feel empowered, they exert their personal causes onto a corporate feed. It's a lot of pressure for a company not to respond to something that a big chunk of its employees care about - even if it might piss off some customers. So a lot of what you see out there isn't coming from the PR department or up top, but being pushed by employees and the executives giving in to placate them, not the customers. I know this because I have seen first hand out it works and we wrote many playbooks on how corporations should handle events, respond to them, and engage employees over them in terms of pushing out narratives. That's how we got to where we are today. You can call it "corporate virtue signaling" - but then you are basically calling most of marketing that because that was marketing from a brand stand point is. It's taking the brand identity - which includes the brand's values (the virtues it wants to signal) and pounding it on people's heads. And that's been the case for the entirety of your life - not started by a gay Republican who is now bemoaning it.
My solution: The state takes ownership of all products and services so there is no need to pander to market forces.
