A small group of Marylanders are launching what they are calling a “Facebook Freezeout” as a tandem effort to intensify the effects of the economic boycott set for Friday, April 18.Thousands of U. S. consumers plan to participate in another economic blackout to protest the massive economic insta bility caused by President Donald Trump and his largest donor, Elon Musk, who runs the “Department of Government Efficiency.”The Facebook Freezeout is being publicized, ironically, on social media — specifically, on Facebook.“We see it like fighting fire with fire,” said Alex Zavistovich, a member of the group spearheading the initiative. While the Facebook Freezeout is not the first call to boycott Meta products, it is the first tied to an economic boycott. It calls for a public shunning of all things Meta, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.The website established for the Facebook Freezeout explains the rationale of connecting the two actions as economic in nature.“We believe in the power of economic boycotts. We also believe that a social media blackout tied to these boycotts could create an added benefit,” according to the website.Furthermore, Zavistovich explained that the most effective protests have a financial impact on the organizations that support what is happening in the country. The group wants a social media freeze to coincide with every planned economic boycott to magnify the action’s impact.“We’re not naïve,” Zavistovich said. “We know a single boycott or social media shutdown is not going to move the needle very far. But it’s a start – an important start. That’s why we hope people will continue to pursue economic boycotts, and avoid social media at the same time.”The organizers of the Facebook Freezeout point to other reasons for a social media day off, as well. ProPublica recently identified at least 95 pages that regularly post false information for the purposes of engagement and stoking political division, which in turn earns those pages money. This came after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg announced in January a reduction in fact-checking on the site, and a revamping of a monetization program for viral content. “It may just be a case of ‘old man yells at clouds,’ but I believe that every so often we need to push the reset button, stop doomscrolling, get out of our echo chamber and simply talk to people again,” Zavistovich said. “Social media can get in the way.”Zavistovich acknowledged those who might consider the Facebook Freezeout effort a modern version of tilting at windmills. He pointed out, though, that in 2019 The Verge reported on the serious financial impact of a nearly day-long Facebook and Instagram outage that year. In October 2021, there was a massive outage for over six hours that CNBC estimated cost Facebook nearly $100 million that day alone, and the company’s stock closed down that day nearly 5%, which wiped out more than $47 billion from the company’s market value.The website asks if a single day would make a difference, and notes that more regular civic action has more impact. An economic or social media boycott is also a form of protest for people who aren’t physically able to show up in the streets.In her Substack newsletter, Ctrl-Alt-Right-Delete, Melissa Ryan looked to Micah L. Sifry for information on digital organizing. Sifry has been reporting on the impact of civic action and organizing in the digital sphere since before Barack Obama was elected. Sifry wrote that according to Harvard researcher Erica Chenoweth, in order for a movement to succeed against authoritarianism, it needs at least 3.5% of the population to get involved in “regular, public, nonviolent acts of opposition. In the U.S. that would mean at least 11.5 million people turning out on a daily to weekly basis.”The Feb. 28 economic blackout registered what one economic analyst considered a “mild impact,” with e-commerce traffic down around 6%, and foot traffic at Target down 9.5%, Walmart down 6.3%, and Starbucks down 3.2% on that day. The Facebook Freezeout organizers are hopeful that attaching a social media blackout to the economic boycott, the impact will be more than mild. ...read more read less