NORD DDB | The Non-Violence Project Foundation

Insight:

The Non-Violence Project Foundation is an NGO whose mission is to inspire, motivate, and engage people to prevent and reduce all forms of violence, both offline and online. They knew that 90% of extremists are radicalized on social media. To make matters worse, Instagram only removes 18.8% of hate posts from their platform as they claim they don’t have the technology needed to identify and remove hateful content.

However, Instagram’s algorithm can automatically detect and remove accounts that buy fake followers as that threatens their business model. Proving that the removal of hate-spreading accounts is a question of money, not technology.

NORD DDB created Follow Their Leader – a crowdfunding platform where people can buy fake followers for hate-spreading accounts. This triggers the algorithm to shadow-ban accounts and ultimately shut them down.

Impact:

Follow Their Leader gave an NGO the opportunity to hold the world’s largest social media company accountable for the content on their platform by using their own technology against them. And it worked! The campaign reached its goal as Meta has now agreed to meet with The Non-Violence Project Foundation to discuss how Instagram can enforce their own guidelines.