FIR #425: Stand Up, Stand Out, or Shut Down?

The desire to stand out has declined significantly over the last 20 years, according to a new study. That has serious implications for society, business, and communicators. Meanwhile, shutting off comments on your social media channel could have worse repercussions than putting up with comments you don’t want to see. Also in this episode, The fediverse is gaining traction, which leads one commentator to wonder if it’s time for governments to set up their own instances. Corporate boards are bracing for more anti-DEI backlash, but does that mean they’re backing away from their goals? Gen Z’s enthusiasm for Kamala Harris’s U.S. presidential bid is no accident, as her campaign cracks the content code, notably on TikTok.  Generative Artificial Intelligence is changing the search engine optimization (SEO) game. In his Tech Report, Dan York reports on new Threads features, Spotify and YouTube taking Apple’s podcast crown, the photo manipulation capabilities of Google’s new Pixel 9 line of phones, and one company’s stand against AI.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 23.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Links from this episode:

• Fediverse for Freedom
• Fewer people want to stand out in public than 20 years ago
• Corporate boards brace for DEI backlash
• DEI efforts may be under attack, but companies aren’t retreating from commitments
• FIR #418: These Are Our Rock-Solid Beliefs – Unless You Don’t Like Them – FIR Podcast Network
• Research: What Happens When Influencers Turn Off Comments
• You’re Wrong, Joel Spolsky & Dave Winer, Blog Comments Have Incredible Value
• Inside the Gen-Z operation powering Harris’ online remix
• Content is king at the DNC
• Kamala Harris’ Campaign Is Launching a Twitch Channel
• How the Harris Campaign Beat Trump at Being Online
• US election: Meet the Kamala Harris influencer army
• Kamala Harris’ Campaign Is a Windfall for Influencers
• ‘Hottie’ Dems and Chappell Roan stans: meet the 200 TikTokers who scored access to the convention
• 57+ MILLION VIEWERS: Massive TV and Online Viewership for Night One of Democratic National Convention
• The Evolution of Search: 5 SEO Trends in 2024 and 2025 [+ New Data]
• Ethan Mollick on LinkedIn: I have said it before, but marketers need to think about how to advertise

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report:

• Meta’s X rival Threads gains multiple drafts, audience insights and more
• Meta lets you cross-post from Instagram and Facebook to Threads. Here’s how to do it.
• Threads confirms it is experimenting with ephemeral posts
• Apple Loses Its Podcasting Lead to YouTube and Spotify
• No one’s ready for this
• Procreate takes a stand against generative AI, vows to never incorporate the tech into its products

Raw Transcript (from Riverside.fm)

Neville Hobson:
Hi everyone and welcome to episode 425 of Four Immediate Release. This is the long form monthly edition for August 2024. I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz (00:18)
And I’m Shel Holtz. We have six fascinating stories to discuss over the course of this episode. We’re going to be talking about some interesting activity in the Fetiverse. Whether or not people want to stand out is a fascinating research report that could have serious implications on communication. Great stories beyond that. Dan York is here with a tech report talking about

some activity on threads, among other things. Before we jump into all of that though, Neville, let’s review the episodes that we’ve recorded since the last monthly episode.

@nevillehobson (01:02)
Yeah. Yeah, we have recorded not as many as the previous month. We recorded three episodes since the last monthly episode 420 from July. So let’s start with that one. That one was the lead topic in that episode was that company CrowdStrike and that dreadful internet outages that occurred that had significant consequences around the world.

We asked how well did CrowdStrike handle its crisis? And we looked at their response and shared what some crisis experts have said and had that discussion ourselves. And we have a comment, don’t we, Shale?

Shel Holtz (01:46)
We do from Michelle Garrett, who goes by PR writer gal on threads, where we shared the episode on threads and asked whether CrowdStrike has handled their crisis communications well. She said, I haven’t listened yet, but I’m going to go out on a limb regarding did CrowdStrike deliver by saying no.

@nevillehobson (02:08)
That would, I would say, be a valid view at the time she made the view. I think they’ve actually, it’s turned out where they’ve actually done quite well in terms of crisis communication, wouldn’t you say?

Shel Holtz (02:21)
I think in terms of how they have handled this from a communication standpoint, yes, I think they’ve done an admirable job. They’ve made a couple of missteps, the gift cards, as the coupons as a mea culpa, I thought was a misstep, but overall they have been candid and open and accessible and honest about what happened and what they’re gonna do to fix it.

@nevillehobson (02:32)
coupon.

So episode 421 that we published a week after that, Gen .ai is paying off individual employees. We dug into a Gartner report along with a Washington Post study that ranks how individuals are using generative AI. And we have a comment for that too, don’t we?

Shel Holtz (03:08)
We do. Steve Lubeckin wrote that it seems like it’s reminiscent of the early days when companies wouldn’t let you use certain software and employees figured out ways to bootleg the software they needed to get the job done. I’m even seeing this with companies that block business units from using video platforms like Riverside FM but allow vendors to use it on behalf of the employees.

@nevillehobson (03:31)
good comments, Steve. So 422, we recorded that one and published it a week after that, 14th. Could AI be the nail in the coffin for the billable hour model, we asked. We examined the state of consulting in the AI age. And really it was to do with killing that model.

We had some slightly different views on that, think, show that we’re broadly in agreement that something is shifting, moving from time based fee structures to outcome based fee structures that are based on what the client, let’s say, as an example, estimates the value the work you’re going to do would give to his or her company and you work out a fee on that basis.

I’m not seeing, you know, a stampede to change, but you this is change and people don’t like change. It might take a while, but an interesting idea. We don’t have any comments to that one. And then 423, which we published just a week ago, titled as op -eds fade into history, where does thought leadership belong? And we discussed the state of thought leadership and the channels communicators may not be considering. And we do have a comment.

Shel Holtz (04:47)
from Frank Strong, who said the statistics were interesting. I certainly find Wall Street Journal opinion pieces are ungated. It’s not all of them, but maybe the ones they think everyone should read. That probably helps with the visibility, which is probably true. It’s not that op -eds are going away entirely. It’s just that a number of publications are either eliminating or shuttering the opinion sections. So there are fewer of them, but the Wall Street Journal…

Op -Ed space is prime real estate and I’m sure it’ll be with us for years to come.

@nevillehobson (05:21)
I noticed that in UK mainstream media too, opinion pieces, many, in newspapers like the Times, the Daily Telegraph sometimes, The Guardian tends to be completely open. They don’t block you, they kind of nudge you to sign up for free so you can access all the content. But the Times, the Sunday Times have started doing that.

which is, think, a good move. I subscribe to US papers like the New York Times, which give you the option to gift an article. But I’ve noticed too, like you said, the Wall Street Journal recently, I don’t subscribe to the journal. And of course, you get disappointed when you go somewhere and presents you with the login or register. But recently, there’s a couple of things I’ve been looking at, which are open completely. Bloomberg’s another one. They’re the gatekeepers par excellence of Bloomberg. But recently, I’ve seen a number of opinion pieces.

that are open. So maybe they are looking at the way the land is lying in this regard.

Shel Holtz (06:22)
Yeah, and it’s important to note that publications, media outlets that publish opinions don’t necessarily publish op -eds, which are opinions from people from outside the organization. Now, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, they’re going to publish op -eds. In fact, some very noteworthy politicians have been publishing op -eds lately as we’re in our endless presidential cycle.

But that doesn’t mean that all of those publications that used to do it, which would be the prime targets for a lot of thought leaders out there. And this includes, by the way, trade publications and industry publications that just don’t have the financial resources to maintain those sections anymore. Those are drying up. So I think it’s still important for communicators that work with thought leaders or manage thought leader efforts in the organization

find alternative channels for that content that produces the same kinds of results, gets the same kind of visibility.

@nevillehobson (07:25)
sense. So I’d also like to mention that we are restarting or kickstarting, let’s say, the FIR interviews podcast. This is a separate podcast. So if you subscribe to this podcast, you won’t get the interviews, you need to subscribe to that one separately. But we started the interviews in July 2006, long time ago.

Shel Holtz (07:50)
you

@nevillehobson (07:52)
It’s a separate podcast I mentioned to present conversations we host with newsmakers and influencers from the online technology and organizational communication worlds. That was the description we had back then. I think it’s still largely accurate now. I mentioned we’re kickstarting it anew with new episodes planned on a monthly basis. Our first was on August 12th, mid August with Pete Paschal, founder and CEO of the Media Co -Pilot. We explored the intersection of AI and media with a focus on how

Generative AI Influencers, Social Media Journalism and Brand Engagement. Next month, September, we’ll publish another episode, this one with Esri Karlovaak, a UK -based consultant on international multidisciplinary projects in business innovation and stakeholder engagement with clients that include UN and EU agencies, arts and cultural institutions, non -profit organizations and a wide range of businesses. I first met Esri about 15 years ago when we were both active in IBC volunteerism.

He’s also a keen advocate for science fiction as the literature of new ideas. And that’s the focus of our discussion in that interview coming up. While it doesn’t predict the future, he says, it can improve how we think about and prepare for the future. He’ll expand on that thought in our conversation. He’ll also tell us about applied SF and how a genre typically associated with entertainment can work in other ways. So don’t miss out on FI interviews. Sign up or…

to subscribe to the feed, go to firpodcastnetwork .com slash fir dash interview so you won’t miss a thing. You should be able to pick it up too on wherever you get your podcasts, whatever app you’re using or platform you’re using. But it’s definitely good. We’re keen to get this going again because we’ve got a list already of some really interesting people, including ideas we have to revisit some of the folks we interviewed back at that time.

from 2006, say to 2016, and a bit later, perhaps, who’ve got updated stories to tell, I’m sure. So look out for more news on that. But like I said, FIRpodcast .net, sorry, FIRpodcast.

Shel Holtz (10:04)
firpodcastnetwork .com slash.

@nevillehobson (10:06)
Yeah, that’s the one. FIRpodcastnetwork .com slash FIR dash interviews. That’s where you go.

Shel Holtz (10:14)
And you say that we’re going to do this monthly and that’s the plan. But if we have the opportunity to talk to somebody, it arises and it’s just too good to skip, then we may end up doing more than one a month. You never know. That wait and see. We did record an episode of Circle of Fellows in August. This is on the

@nevillehobson (10:27)
We may, you never know. Stay tuned.

Shel Holtz (10:38)
topic of raising AI, which focused on getting AI up and running and thriving in your organization. So we had a great international panel, Adrian Cropley, Sue Heumann, Mary Hills, and Robin McCasland. It was really an invigorating conversation. We had a lot of people participating in real time. So we were able to incorporate their questions and comments into the conversation. So.

If you are working with your IT department or in the IT department and trying to get people to adopt AI in the organization, this is a good episode to listen to. The next one is coming up on September 19th at noon Eastern time. I am going to be away for that one. So Brad Whitworth will be the moderator and it’ll be talking about mental wellness and how communication leaders can maintain their mental wellness amidst all the stress.

of the job. Participating in that one will be Amanda Hamilton Atwell, Ginger Homan, Andrea Greenhouse, and Mark Schaeffer. So that will be a good episode too, and a bit of a divergence from the topics that we usually look at on Circle of Fellows. I’m happy to see mental wellness being addressed more frequently and in more forums these days.

@nevillehobson (12:00)
Terrific. So I guess we dive into our conversational topics now. So I’ve got the first story, which I find this really fascinating, Shell. Last week, I wrote a post on my blog that discussed the unraveling of X, I described it, suggested by a large migration of UK users from that platform, mostly to threads and blue sky. The trigger.

was the riots in the UK in early August that have made headlines globally, where social networks, X in particular, played a major role in stoking the unrest. Elon Musk’s supportive comments of the rioters stimulated disgust among many people here, which directly influenced the migration and included a number of members of parliament. The post prompted some discussion, mostly on threads, including one comment from my friend Andy Piper, a technologist, writer and podcaster.

He was a developer advocate at Twitter for nine years, leaving in early 2023 after Elon Musk finalized his acquisition in 2022. Before Twitter, he spent 10 years as a technical consultant at IBM and was involved in various open source projects. Today, he supports the Mastodon open source projects with developer relations and community building tasks. Andy’s comments suggested the idea of creating a sovereign owned and operated Mastodon instance for the UK parliament.

He then followed up on that with a blog post on his blog titled Fediverse for Freedom, in which he discusses in detail the importance of governments owning and operating their own social media platforms, such as a Macedon instance or any Fediverse compatible activity pub based service. He argues that relying on privately owned platforms gives corporations undue control over national communication and data.

He speaks of growing interest in Fediverse platforms and technologies like Mastodon from several national governments in Europe and the EU itself. Many of these institutions are already running their own social media instances, he says, and actively encouraging their politicians to use them. He highlights how the EU has already embraced decentralization through Mastodon and emphasizes that the UK should follow suit to ensure digital sovereignty, protect democratic processes.

and maintain control of a public discourse. He says, if governments are concerned about the dominance of privately owned online platforms, they have a responsibility to run and own their own. Andy acknowledges the challenges and considerations to this idea, including the financial and technical resources required to maintain these platforms and the need to ensure wide discoverability and engagement. Additionally, there are complexities in determining who should be allowed to have accounts.

on these sovereign platforms. For example, while it makes sense for members of parliament to have accounts, would it be extended to political parties or other entities? He underscores that while these challenges are significant, the importance of maintaining democratic integrity and avoiding corporate chokeholds on communication channels outweighs these concerns. So what next? To take Andy Piper’s idea to the next level, a feasible course of action could be to form a coalition of UK government officials

digital policymakers and technology experts to initiate a pilot project to establish a sovereign Macedon instance for parliament. This would involve securing funding, setting up the infrastructure and defining clear guidelines for participation. The goal would be to demonstrate the benefits of digital sovereignty and expand the model to other public institutions, ultimately creating a decentralized government operated social network that safeguards democratic communication and public trust. Could a call to action like this happen?

As Andy notes in a comment in his own post, I’m just staking out the ground that an open standards based decentralized and not privately owned set of capabilities is better than handing over those channels to a private third party. So it seems to me that this is worthy of greater discussion if a pilot project is reaching too far at the moment. As the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Shel Holtz (16:15)
think this is an outstanding idea and I fully support it. I would love to see it implemented elsewhere around the globe. think, I mean, it solves a lot of problems. And the fact that we have the Fediverse available now is what makes this feasible because not a lot of people are going to add a new social network.

@nevillehobson (16:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shel Holtz (16:39)
to the ones that they are already engaged with. They’re not going to say, the UK government has a social network. I think I’ll go sign up there and make sure I can check that every day in addition to Facebook and threads and whatever other networks are already following. But here, because it’s in the Fediverse, they can see it where they are and stay on top of this information. And presumably the information would include things like, please be aware of this misinformation.

that’s being shared. This is the official instance of the UK government. And we’re telling you that this is not for real. This is a deep fake or this is Russian influence or whatever it might be. having that authoritative voice coming from an own service in the peso model, what they’re doing right now by being on threads or what have you is it’s shared.

just like any social media, you’re sharing somebody else’s space, but suddenly you’re doing the same kind of engagement in the same kind of platform, but it’s now owned media. And I think that’s a big deal. I think there are a lot of questions that have to be addressed. Not only does the party participate, what about staff? For example, I think about the US maintaining a mastodon instance or setting up an instance of one of the

other services that accommodates the Fediverse and is every Senate aide going to be able to participate? Every House committee employee, not the elected officials, but the employees who work there. So, I mean, they’re the ones doing the research. They’re the ones writing the legislation and writing the reports. So they have a lot to contribute. On the other hand, nobody elected them. So, I mean, there’s…

these types of issues that I think would have to be overcome and dealt with. And it would obviously be instance by instance that those things are considered. And you also, of course, have, are you going to have states with instance and within the states, are you going to have cities with instances and counties? You could end up with an awful lot of instances, but for people who care about what that particular entity is doing legislatively, regulatory wise,

I think they’d be thoroughly pleased to be able to follow them just like they used to follow on Twitter, but know that what they’re looking at is authoritative. So I love the idea.

@nevillehobson (19:14)
Yeah, I find it extremely appealing, I must admit. Here in the UK, of course, I’ve already anticipated what’s likely to come with this idea in some quarters. we have this big thing in the UK that people call the nanny state interference from government, know, too much interference in your daily lives and rules and regulations and stuff. So I can imagine the calls call outs on this. Yet, you’ve you’ve mentioned something I think which is

Shel Holtz (19:31)
Yeah, yeah.

@nevillehobson (19:43)
probably three levels up, i .e. this then becomes a huge entity that has got all these different people and groups on it. That may well be where it goes to. But starting out though, and the pilot idea would make it very straightforward, I think, to prove the point or not, or disprove it even, that this is worthwhile and address the critics.

So you’re not rolling it out suddenly to all at once. This is, you know, everything everywhere all at once kind of approach. This is actually a pilot where you might start with a group of MPs, but your point, I think, is a valid one. This should also include the staffers, the support infrastructure for those members of parliament and others, the, you know, the people who work behind the scenes in government, particularly in central government. And that’s where it sits for a while, until you prove the value of it.

I think the key thing about it, which Andy does take pains to point out, is the trust aspect to it, which is totally aligned with addressing misinformation, disinformation and fakery at large, where because it’s on the Fediverse, anyone who has an account to handle at the Fediverse location at the instance, is still able to engage and talk to anyone else out there, anywhere else on the Fediverse.

And now as we see coming, and indeed, Dan York is going to talk about this in his report about the developments at threads to connect things more with the Fediverse, that we now have the opportunity, and it didn’t exist until now, as an easy means to do something like this that is private on one hand, but at the other hand is very open because it’s connected to.

public feds of us, but you’ve got the safeguards there. It’s almost like a by osmosis, you got a transparent two way process to it, but you control in a way that people have belief in the authenticity and the trustworthiness of the entity that you’re representing. So you’ll have a member of parliament could be you know, I’m not saying this is a domain name, it could be parliament dot social, it could be something dot parliament, whatever, whatever the technical aspects of it.

are that make it worthwhile. I’ve not seen examples, Andy mentions these in his post, of institutions in the European Union who are doing this already, decentralized social network of their own. I’d love to see examples and hear how they’re going with those. But I do believe that, you know, I say to myself, why not do a pilot? Talk about it, sure, but get something going, it can be a very small group.

Why not try it out? This seems a great idea. And like you said, Shell, this is not the ideas coming out of the UK and relate specifically to the UK parliament. This could be anywhere. And I think, you know, does it could it suggest perhaps that we suddenly end up with something that would be seen by many to be it was like a parallel internet? Maybe. Is that a bad thing? I mean, the internet is arguably in a precarious

precipitous position of being splintered by state actors, by governments, notably Russia, China, for instance. Would it not be a bad thing if this was somehow embraced that way? again, that’s a bigger argument, perhaps, down another route. But this does have merit. think this idea is definitely worth talking about.

Shel Holtz (23:15)
Yeah, I’ll be accessible over the Internet. It’s not like you’d have to find a different way to connect to a whole different network. But one of the things that I think would be vital to making these things work would be to be very clear about what the role of this network is. Otherwise, I mean, if we had a U .S. Senate instance that had Republican and Democratic senators in it, it would turn into, in short order, some

@nevillehobson (23:42)
Ha ha ha.

Shel Holtz (23:45)
pretty vitriolic back and forth on this or not.

@nevillehobson (23:48)
Or not, or not as the case might be. I’m optimistic here, I’m optimistic here, okay.

Shel Holtz (23:54)
Yes, let’s let’s be optimistic. But I mean, in any country where there are two opposing factions sharing a network, that’s not the point of this. Right. It would have to be clear this is for sharing information and soliciting feedback from our constituents. This is this is not a partisan type of.

@nevillehobson (24:14)
Right, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be just that because you could have private aspects to all of this because you’re behind your own firewall in a sense that so you the rules of engagement you might set out. And maybe the and I’m thinking of taking getting everyone to shift from this toxic place we call X now that is not fit for purpose and looking at some of the comments I’ve read from some of the MPs who have quit.

And more significantly, some of the general folks who’ve migrated away and arrived on threats, set aside some of the rather hysterical comments about things, but some sensible comments. And even some from people saying, you know, I’ve given up 80 ,000 followers on X to come here and I’m starting over. What a sense of relief that kind of comment is repeated everywhere. And I’m thinking this could well be a way to

to kickstart a change in the toxicity that we’re seeing notably on X. It’s not the only place, but X by far is way out there. Even its proprietor is part of the toxicity and maybe and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon unless his investors boot him out. mean, reading in financial press about some of his investors are not happy at all with the 44 billion that they lent him. So who knows what’s going to happen there? But

I’m seeing things that, you know, he’s cancelling, he’s closing down all the operations in Brazil because of some legal rulings down there. doesn’t like it, right? We shut down. So you’re treading on as a user, particularly a business user or a political user on a platform, that treading on very thin ice, it could all suddenly cave in or suddenly restrictions will happen. It’s not a place for the future at all. So this could well give impetus to

people migrating en masse to a better looking place as long as it strikes, hence a pilot to see. This is not a rushed thing. This might take a while.

Shel Holtz (26:14)
And I think that you’re starting to see on threads the formation informally grassroots of a lot of communities. There’s journalism threads. I’ve been posting to internal comms threads and communities are building around these and people are introducing themselves. They’re saying, hi, journalism threads. I’m a reporter with, so that’s happening on threads where I see these instances having some real value is coming out and saying, let’s say we have a US Senate.

@nevillehobson (26:32)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (26:42)
instance on mastodon. It would be saying today, Senate Bill 47 was introduced. These are the authors. Here’s a link to where you can read the whole bill. But in essence, this is what it’s designed to do. We would like your input. Let’s have some public comment. And it wouldn’t necessarily replace other channels for public comment. But you might start getting a lot of engagement from people who haven’t participated.

through the more onerous channels and the more formal channels that are available to people. So I think for listening, this could be a really powerful thing and government could stand some listening.

@nevillehobson (27:09)
Yep, you might.

Yeah, they could everywhere. Absolutely. I think it definitely is a great idea that Andy’s taken the time to write his post. I would encourage you to visit his blog, read the post, we’ll have a link to it in the show notes and see what you make of it and add your voice to is this worth it.

Shel Holtz (27:39)
Well, there are certain aspects of business that depend on people wanting to stand out and be noticed when designing certain types of products. Think fashion or cars, for example, product designers appeal to the desire of customers and prospective customers to stand out from the crowd. Ditto consulting services in a lot of instances, even something as simple as a gymnasium appeals to people who want to look good.

And when we market these products or services, we rely on everything from user -generated content to influencers, all people who have taken steps to distinguish themselves from the crowd. So what would happen if we suddenly learned that people are more interested in being part of the crowd than standing out? That’s a growing number of people, according to a new study that tracked over a million people’s desire to stand out or be unique.

from 2000 until 2020 and found a dramatic decline. This study provides some of the first evidence -based data comparing people’s motivation to stand out in today’s hyper -digital world compared to the early 2000s. The study looked at three dimensions of uniqueness, concern about how other people are gonna react to what you say or do or share, desire to break the rules, and the willingness to defend your beliefs in public.

All three facets declined, but the most dramatic were people being hesitant to defend their beliefs publicly. That fell 6 .52 percent and becoming more concerned with what people think about you, which fell 4 .28 percent. The status suggests that individuals see that expressing uniqueness might compromise their ability to fit in with others or may even lead to being ostracized. The lead author of the study is William Chopic.

an associate professor in the psychology department at Michigan State University. And he says, a 6 .52 % decline is a dramatic population change in as short as 20 years. Our data confirms a lot of institutions, lot of intuitions that people have. It’s not just in their heads that we inhabit punitive spaces. Indeed, people are afraid of drawing too much attention to themselves, potentially because doing so leaves them vulnerable.

or at risk of being ostracized or canceled. This study acknowledges that people have valid fears and concerns about standing out so much so that they’re willing to, they’re less willing to do so. Now the researchers say that this decline in wanting to stand out has major societal implications. According to Chalpik, it’s really important to have people willing to go against the grain, say the occasional unpopular thing, challenge groupthink, highlight the need to compromise with people different than us.

and not cover up the diversity of options and opinions and people because they’re too scared to stand out. Withholding who we authentically are by trying so hard to blend in can ironically backfire and lead to guilt, anxiety, and sometimes even more animosity between people. Now, the societal implications are considerable if people aren’t willing to stand out, but communicators have their more immediate concerns. If you need to encourage people to stand out, what can you do?

Well, you can create campaigns that encourage customers to showcase their unique style or creativity. People may respond to a request more than just motivate themselves to put themselves out there. You can work with your influencers to get them to encourage their followers to stick their necks out. You can share stories from stakeholders that express their uniqueness or how they stand out, even if they didn’t think that was the point of the story. Encouraging reviews and testimonials is another way.

to get people to put themselves out there in a more benign way, contests or another. Neville, I know you’re not too concerned about standing out, but how would you go about getting someone else to, who maybe used to be more willing, but is now being more circumspect about it?

@nevillehobson (31:42)
It’s a good question. think I would start really by saying, what do we mean by standing out in public? I’ve never looked at it this way, I have to say myself even. So I don’t really think about doing something that makes me stand out. I do think about things that I’ve got a point of view, and I’m not afraid to express it, even if it might not be popular, although that’s rare, to be honest, I don’t do politics publicly in public spaces.

rarely, I might comment on as I did at the UK election, talking about poll results and stuff like that. But I certainly tend not to venture opinion about this or that person or this or that policy about a company or a government agency or whatever it might be on a public place. And the last place I’d even consider that is X that’s effect. But I do tend to kind of show my true self if you will, in private groups.

notably on LinkedIn and sometimes on Facebook. Facebook ones tend to be more personal stuff that really does interest me. know, automotive, software, WordPress, a lot of that. And so I don’t see it as standing out. Maybe that’s, I’ve never really looked at that way. And I truly don’t care about what people think of me at all. I don’t, I honestly don’t. I could care less.

in the broad sense, not to sound too kind of arrogant or silly about it. But I don’t post myself on the basis of I hope someone’s going to like this and therefore by some by some some kind of subconscious method, they’ll like me to know that never occurs to be that kind of thinking. So to your point to your question,

someone who’s not doing this, it truly would be a it depends. It certainly isn’t Hey, you need to get out there and expose yourself more to different opinions and so forth and join in conversation online. I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone at all. It would depend on the like the famous it depends answer. What your goal is, what is it that you’re going to engage in conversation with what you expect to gain from it. But the survey is interesting. I have to admit when I was reading it, the

talk about being canceled or being ostracized. mean, really, that to me sounds pretty extreme. I’d certainly see that as probably a good thing if it was to do with someone who did something really bad in others’ eyes or was a jerk or something. good example might be, for instance, currently a hot topping in the news in the UK, a footballer in a Premier League team, now a presenter on one of the BBC shows and the sports.

presenter amongst across a wide range of media outlets. I was fired by the BBC last week. It was all a bit mysterious over complaints made about sexually oriented messaging sent to female colleagues. And he denied it and get lawyers on you. So this made the headlines for three or four days. And now today is all apologizing, say you made a mistake. It was very silly. Then I’m reading online.

that this that company that company three other companies all cancel the contracts the PR agency who handled him have fired him as well and his reputation is gone. He has been canceled without any doubt. But that was because he did something that goes against the norms of accepted behavior everywhere, particularly in this current climate where again, this is the power of social networks that amplify the reaction to someone who does something really bad.

So there’s that and that I see fits definitely in this, but that’s an extreme example. So from a business point of view, particularly, think, you know, I’d say to someone think twice, be careful if you’re going to go out there and put yourself out there as I’ve got an opinion about X and here it is. One reason I tend not to do that is just simply observing what happens to others who do do that on a public channel like X.

that you get the trolls, everyone with a grudge, you name it, or just nasty people pile in. And I think there’s absolutely no benefit to anyone to be part of that situation at all. So I think you need to be really careful doing this.

Shel Holtz (35:54)
One of the things that this study didn’t get into that I could read was the cause for this decline. And I have to wonder if the heightened vitriol in social networks has something to do with it. mean, 20 years ago, 24 years ago now in 2020, when they started tracking this data, you could get out there and talk about how you feel about something, what you think about something, your opinion without

@nevillehobson (36:08)
Yeah, I bet.

Shel Holtz (36:23)
worrying too much about being trolled for it or attacked or vilified for it. On the other hand, I think back to things that were going on in 2020, go, no, that was happening back then. mean, this is not new. And then I remember I was listening to an episode of a podcast. It’s a podcast I love called 99 % Invisible. And they were talking about the paint color for cars. And

the fact that these days there are really only about four or five colors available. And the most popular color, you want to guess the most popular? I think this was in the US, but I would suspect that it might be true in the UK. What’s the number one selling color of new cars? It’s white. And I remember when I was growing up, cars were all colors. It was the full spectrum of the rainbow.

@nevillehobson (37:11)
What? Yeah.

Yeah.

Shel Holtz (37:21)
And now you got white, black, gray, tan, maybe a metallic blue or something, but not a lot of color. And why? It’s because, and they were explicit about this, the experts that they had on this episode, they said, because people don’t want to stand out. They don’t want to be the red car on the road. They want to look like all the other cars on the road. And when I was growing up, everybody wanted to stand out. They wanted their car to be different.

@nevillehobson (37:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shel Holtz (37:51)
So there’s probably something else going on here that is not necessarily to do with trends in social media.

@nevillehobson (38:01)
Yeah, I think it is a societal issue. think it talks about the survey, you know, the facets they talk about declining, the most dramatic people’s being hesitant to defend their beliefs publicly. And then there’s a bit about being concerned about what people think of the hesitant to defend their beliefs publicly is in my example, you don’t do that because you will not have reasonable comments challenging you.

You might get lots agreeing with you, but you’re going to get an awful lot who are in false rage and outrage attacking you to the extent that it’s now common to hear people saying that, know, I’ve canceled my, I’ve shut down my account and so forth because I said this and said that and I started getting death threats or even message people say, we know where you live. mean, God, this has really got to that state. So that, right.

Shel Holtz (38:56)
flat out doxing you and sharing where you live.

@nevillehobson (38:59)
Right, and I think this is likely to be a significant reason for that decline.

Shel Holtz (39:05)
For communicators, again, this is a trend. It’s a 20 year trend. It’s precipitous. The numbers are significant. And if your products and services rely on this, or if your marketing relies on it, it’s just something to start thinking about.

@nevillehobson (39:23)
Well, in episode 418 of this podcast in mid -July, we discussed how a company called Tractor Supply caved into pressure from a politically motivated activist to abandon its values, leading some employees to quit and diverse members of the company’s customer base to speak up. We were quite critical of the company’s U -turn on DEI, that’s diversity, equity and inclusion. Titling the show notes for that episode, these are our rock solid beliefs, unless you don’t like them.

Well, it’s more in a similar vein, according to a report by Axios published on the 22nd of August. The report highlights how corporate executives and boards are intensifying their communication strategies to brace for potential attacks from activists, increasingly linking business performance with DEI policies. This preparation is driven by the growing political and social backlash against DEI initiatives, which Axios says have become a contentious issue in the corporate world.

Many companies are finding themselves under pressure as activists argue that DEI policies may negatively impact business outcomes, leading to more aggressive scrutiny of these programs. Some corporations in the US, such as Harley Davidson and John Deere, have already started to scale back their DEI commitments in response to the pressure. Axios says this trend suggests that the business community is increasingly concerned about the potential risks associated with maintaining robust DEI initiatives.

in the current polarized environment. Axios’s report suggests that for many public companies, the question is not whether they will face attacks related to their DEI policies, but when. As a result, there is a heightened focus on how these companies communicate about their DEI efforts, both internally and externally to mitigate potential fallout and maintain stakeholder confidence. But does this reflect a complete picture, I wonder? DEI efforts may be under attack.

But companies aren’t retreating from commitments, according to the results of a survey reported in USA Today in July, that you discovered, Shel. So maybe the overall picture is more complex than it appears.

Shel Holtz (41:32)
Yeah, I think what you get is a lot of reporting by anecdote when a company the size of a John Deere, a Harley Davidson, Microsoft is another one that has announced that they were closing up some of their DEI departments and shifting their focus. A lot of it based on their claiming that they have achieved some of those goals. I don’t know if that’s necessarily accurate. I think if you ask some of the…

protected classes in the organization. they’ve achieved equity, they might push back on that. But the study from USA Today was conducted by the Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals and your cause from BlackBod and shared exclusively with USA Today found that 96 % of corporate social impact professionals in 125 major companies

say DEI commitments have either stayed the same, that’s 83%, or increased, that’s 13%. So across the business spectrum, it doesn’t seem that this anti -woke backlash that has led these companies to retreat is having that big an impact on that many businesses. However,

Nearly a third of the executives that were surveyed say they are describing DEI work differently now. 17 % said they talk about it less with people outside the organization. So I think people recognize that this is a contentious issue and how they frame it externally in conversation. They’re being a little more cautious about it, but they are continuing to pursue.

pursue those DEI goals internally. And the reason is, I am convinced this isn’t what is reflected in this report, but I have to believe it’s because it’s good business. It’s because you get better results when you do this. Your company performance is better. Your productivity is up. Your culture improves. I’ve never heard an organization say,

that we got better business results. I’ll take that back. know Tractor Supply actually had their stock price go up when they did this. I’m not sure what that says about their investors. So there are outliers and anomalies in this case, but mostly what you see in the data is that diversity pays off. And that’s why I don’t see this as a woke issue or an anti -woke issue. It’s just a good business issue.

@nevillehobson (43:54)
You

Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I was reading the USA Today story that you’re referencing, and I’m actually a bit surprised Axios didn’t didn’t didn’t take in some of the stuff in this survey that the USA Today is, is commenting on their report came out in July accidents came out just a few days ago. So it’s puzzled me a bit, because USA Today does go into detail, for instance, about john Deere, talking about what they are now doing. What

What is the backlash producing? That’s quite interesting. It’s missing from Exos’s report. So maybe they just plucked that bit out, which seems to be what they’ve done, I think. But it does mention, though, that in the examples of those who are changing behavior as a result of the backlash, that they’re stepping away from being open and talking about their DEI initiatives.

that were all a big deal until very recently. So they are worried about this kind of publicity, I suppose, and activism that is going on. That’s reflective, I suppose, think about what we just discussed in the topic prior to this, that it’s kind of fits into that too, about the concern about you be attacked for something. And it’s noble what you’re doing, and it’s worthy, and yet there’s a pile of people externally who will hound you because of it.

and come up with all sorts of statistics and support articles to show why you’re bad. That’s new, I suspect, in the sense of it’s now completely scalable and global. Anyone with an internet connection can read all that kind of stuff. So it is a backlash. And indeed, USA Today talks about DEI policies were rushed into existence in 2020 and 2021, and they’re now increasingly out of the microscope. So maybe there’s something in there about, these rushed out too fast?

The interesting thing though, I think in the USA Today report as well, I mean, it’s all very interesting, is the alarm bells that I see, as opposed to hear, I I see alarm bells in what they’re saying, is what’s going to happen if Trump wins the US presidential election. The headline in their subhead piece talks about Trump and Vance talk about dismantling DEI. And he’s promised to reverse

as he calls it, the Biden administration’s woke equity programs, as Trump describes them. Every institution in America is under attack from this Marxist concept of equity. Good grief. So that’s what’s coming if this guy wins. And so I think this is possibly also a factor in organizational behavior to the activism, perhaps. don’t know. It’s probably more complex picture than that, Shell, but it certainly isn’t good.

Shel Holtz (46:50)
Yeah.

I suspect if you ask Donald Trump to define Marxism, he wouldn’t be able to give you a coherent answer. But this is an interesting

@nevillehobson (47:04)
Which is worse if he wins because he’ll be in office having a clue what he’s doing, right?

Shel Holtz (47:08)
That’s right. But this is an interesting tightrope to walk because on the one hand, you do have these forces that have framed this as an anti -woke activity, trying to put an end to DEI. They have framed all kinds of negative outcomes from DEI that I don’t believe are accurate or even honest.

@nevillehobson (47:13)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (47:33)
But it has led organizations to want to be more quiet about it. On the other hand, who are organizations recruiting from right now? The answer is Gen Z. What is the number one most articulated value of Gen Z, diversity and inclusivity? So it seems to me that at least for your employer brand, you want to be out there touting these things because that’s what matters to the generation.

that is graduating from college and coming into the workforce in droves right now. So it seems to me that if we’re going to try to avoid being the subject of kid rock blowing up our products with high powered weapons by a lakeside on X, and on the other hand, we want to appeal to the best and the brightest coming out of universities, you’re gonna have to talk out of both sides of your mouth and it’s.

@nevillehobson (48:15)
Thank

Shel Holtz (48:27)
going to be interesting seeing how we manage to do that. My recommendation is if these are your values, stand up for them. Screw the anti -woke mob.

@nevillehobson (48:40)
Well, interestingly, again, in the USA Today piece, they have this interesting little paragraph here. They say last week, and this is July, so it’ll be in July, the Society of Human Resource Management said it was dropping the word equity and would use the acronym IND. Their CEO, Johnny Taylor, told USA Today in May that his organization planned to lead with inclusion going forward. So inclusion, not diversity.

that could be significant that shift in perception and behavior. So factor that into what’s going on.

Shel Holtz (49:12)
Well, they each mean different things. the idea that D, E, and I are all synonyms is ridiculous. Otherwise, it would just be D.

@nevillehobson (49:15)
Right. They do.

That’s part of the argument, isn’t it? mean, this isn’t helpful though, it seems to me, to the overall picture of it all. So it’s under a threat. So yeah, there we have it.

Shel Holtz (49:27)
No.

@nevillehobson (49:42)
So can say, well, before we continue, I need to go to the loo. So let me just put you on pause on the audio and I’ll be back.

Shel Holtz (49:46)
Go for

@nevillehobson (51:19)
Okeydokey.

Shel Holtz (51:22)
So you’re gonna pick up on Dan’s report, right?

@nevillehobson (51:24)
yeah, yep.

Thanks, Dan. Great report. In particular, what you talked about on threads and the Fediverse. I’ve been experimenting a bit in the past week, actually, on seeing what happens to threads posts when they get spread out across the Fediverse via Macedon in particular. I’ve still got some work to do on that. It’s still very much technically focused. And so most people aren’t going to want to get involved in that.

The big deal, think, is that the lack of being able to reply to anyone who comments on your threads post they see out there in mastodon somewhere. You see the fact that someone on the Fediverse has commented. That’s all it can tell you. And finding the comment and your original post is really a challenge, as I’ve discovered. So that needs to get better, and I’m sure it will. So I think when I see people criticizing all of this, just be patient because Meta are working at this.

And as you pointed out, Dan, they’ve been adding a lot of functionality recently. So this is not a standstill project. There’s nowhere near finished yet. And more good things are coming. A big one to me is Fedover sharing of WordPress posts via threads that takes that will be doable from the 28th of August, so it’s in a few days time. So that means you publish a post on your WordPress blog and set up the function that does this.

It’ll post it to threads. can do that now, in fact, but then it will then send it on its further journey out to the third of us from threads, which currently doesn’t happen. Now, that could be a big deal that gets your content out there automatically. You don’t have to do an awful lot. The only worry I’ve got about some of this stuff, such as being able to simultaneously post messages to, you know, multiple channels such as buffer introduced on threads, blue sky and Macedon simultaneously.

Do you really want to do that? I often think about, I’ve got Fedover sharing enabled on my threads account. It’s only available in a handful of countries, if I recall correctly, UK being one, the US has always been available. And it’s a useful feature, but sometimes I wonder, is that what I want to be doing? Here’s my post on threads and there’s that same post that’s then out there on Macedon somewhere. I have a plugin for Macedon on my WordPress blogs, I end up with two, I got to switch one off, but things like that.

You need to have a better choice on how to deal with that. It needs to be more easy for users to use. But it’s all coming and it’s really good hearing what you had to say about ThreadStand, so thanks.

Shel Holtz (54:07)
Here’s a fun fact. Disabling social media comments can negatively impact the reputations of online influencers and public figures. First off, let’s acknowledge that public figures, Oprah Winfrey, Selena Gomez, they’ve restricted access to their social media comments in response to online criticism. This decision makes sense. Those in the public eye are often highly scrutinized and disabling comments can be a first line of defense.

just to protect their mental health. But the influencers you’re working with, whether they’re internal, like an executive thought leader, for instance, or external, you should think twice before agreeing to let them shut off comments because they don’t like hearing what people think. We know about the unintended consequences of disabling comments from research. It was shared in a recent Harvard Business Review article.

Across seven studies, it was found that online influencers ranging from digital content creators to celebrities turned influencers are perceived as less sincere, less likable and less persuasive when they disable their social media comments. Participants in these studies who saw the posts with disabled…

time codes too.

Participants in these studies who saw posts with disabled comments rated the influencer on average as less sincere, likable, and persuasive compared to those who saw the same posts with enabled comments. What’s more, it was found that participants were less willing to engage with influencers’ affiliate marketing when comments had been turned off. That means they’re not going to click to buy whatever it was that that influencer was pitching. So how should influencers manage their comment sections?

The article identifies three important considerations. First, understand the importance of being open to audience feedback. Consumers tend to feel like they have personal relationships with influencers, and some even come to regard them as friends. Establishing a perceived sense of intimacy with their followers allows influencers to gain their audience’s trust and increases their persuasiveness, but these benefits come with greater expectations from their viewership. Second,

disabling comments is worse than leaving comments publicly visible, even if they’re horribly negative. While you may be trying justifiably to shut down the onslaught of negative feedback, especially after a personal transgression or a public humiliation, doing that just produces the opposite effect. Finally, if your influencers find themselves needing a break from the feedback they’re post produce, advise them to be transparent about that.

It’s worth noting that online influencers disable social media comments not only to avoid negative feedback following a specific incident, but also just to protect their wellbeing. Fortunately, the article shows that consumers can be empathetic to those needs. In fact, two of the experiments show that the backlash against disabling comments is