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Nonprofits and Advocates Can’t Rely on Social Media Giants. Here’s How They Can Adjust.
Given all the upheaval in today’s landscape, organizations must ensure they can reach their audiences in a multitude of ways, without relying on a single platform.
May 04, 2025
Nonprofits and advocacy groups are in the midst of a mounting crisis: Social media giants are growing more chaotic, untrustworthy, and dangerous.
Just consider what’s happened in the past few weeks. Without warning, explanation, or human review, Meta suspended the Instagram account of Presbyterian Outlook—a progressive, well-established news outlet for the Presbyterian Church. The outlet noted that it had thoughtfully invested in the platform to expand its reach, but would not return given the possibility of another abrupt cancellation.
Then, weeks later, X—which has been plagued by reports of increasing misinformation and amplifying far-right accounts—was hit with cybersecurity attacks that downed the platform.
Just as social media platforms revolutionized our world decades ago—we are in the midst of another pivotal technology movement.
And Meta recently announced that it would draw from X’s technology to employ “Community Notes” on its platforms—which are purportedly meant to fill in the gaps left after the company fired its fact-checking team. Experts have warned that such a system could easily be exploited by groups motivated by their own interests.
These events are just the latest in a growing pile of evidence that organizations and advocates can’t count on social media giants like they once did. They’re fueling misinformation, inflammatory perspectives, and partisan divisions—all in the name of profits.
To continue to be effective in our increasingly digital world, organizations will need to adjust to this new landscape.
Unquestionably, charting the path forward is challenging. Many organizations and advocates have spent years investing in and building profiles on established media platforms. These groups depend on this technology to share their messaging, organize, provide educational tools, fundraise, and more. It’s difficult to shift all these resources.
Other organizations have yet to build up a robust digital presence, but don’t know where to begin, especially in today’s chaotic climate.
Wherever nonprofits and advocates fall on this spectrum, they can and should invest in technology. Here’s how they can be most effective.
First, organizations must recognize that—just as social media platforms revolutionized our world decades ago—we are in the midst of another pivotal technology movement. Given all the upheaval in today’s landscape, organizations must ensure they can reach their audiences in a multitude of ways, without relying on a single platform.
As such, they should build out opportunities for subscription-based data creation. That means reinvesting in collecting more traditional contact methods—like emails and phone numbers. It also means investing in technologies that allow them to share their messages without censorship from outside sources. Blogs and newsletter platforms can be powerful tools to communicate with audiences and provide rich discourse free from external interference.
Protected digital communities—which are only open to certain groups or are invitation-based—can also help strengthen connections between an organization’s supporters. We’re starting to employ this strategy at the Technology, Innovation, and Digital Engagement Lab (TIDEL), which is housed at Union Theological Seminary. Right now, we’re working with a cohort of faith and social justice leaders to deploy new technology to advance their missions.
We’ve recommended a platform called Mighty Networks, which uses AI to help creators build and manage online communities. Two of our fellows are using this service to support Black clergywomen through education and practical application, focusing on mental health awareness and balance. Another pair of fellows is aiming to use the platform to deliver digitally-based educational programming and sustain a community of care professionals committed to improving access to spiritually integrated, trauma-informed care.
Make no mistake: Nonprofits and advocacy organizations need a digital presence to be effective. But they’ll have to adjust to shield themselves from the chaos and malice of social media giants.
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Today's Social Media Are No Longer Safe for Journalism
This existential moment calls for a global social media platform for independent news media.
Mar 21, 2025
Hannah Arendt, the German-American political theorist who studied totalitarian regimes, noted in 1974 that “The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed?”
Fifty years later, we have nearly reached that moment. This is existential for all independent (i.e., not allied with a political party or authoritarian regime) news organizations and their ability to reach audiences in the social media space.
Social media like Twitter (now X) and Facebook became important environments for the news media to enter two decades ago because they are where millions of people congregate online. For journalism organizations, the goal has been to post interesting stories and get referrals—those users who click through to the news site and boost web page views.
Yet, that relationship has fallen apart. Ultimately, tech companies are not interested in helping journalism or aiding civil discourse. The annual Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism digital news report for 2025 notes “big falls in referral traffic to news sites from Facebook (67%) and Twitter (50%) over the last two years.”
The even bigger problem for independent news media is that most social media platforms are increasingly antithetical to freedom of the press.
There are millions of people in the social media space, and journalism shouldn’t leave them behind.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and turned it into X, it’s become the disinformation-drenched social platform of the Donald Trump administration. This year, genuflecting to Trump, Meta (corporate parent of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp) announced it would drop its independent fact-checking program in the U.S. in favor of an anemic, crowd-sourced “community notes” system, which has already been a failure at X. Another popular news platform, TikTok, has serious disinformation problems, security liabilities and an uncertain future.
Several news organizations around the globe decided they won’t take it anymore. NPR stopped posting on X in 2023, after the platform insisted on designating it as “U.S. state-affiliated media.” More recently, The Guardian announced it would stop posting on X, concluding it is “a toxic media platform.” Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish newspaper of record, Le Monde, the French newspaper of record, and La Vanguardia, the leading newspaper in Barcelona, quit X, too. The European Federation of Journalists, representing about 320,000 journalists, did the same. “We cannot continue to participate in feeding the social network of a man who proclaims the death of the media and therefore of journalists,” EFJ president Maja Sever wrote.
But, simply quitting X only eliminates the worst option and settles for the slightly less bad options that remain.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
There are millions of people in the social media space, and journalism shouldn’t leave them behind. For example, 54% of Americans get their news often or sometimes from social media. Adults 18-29 are the heaviest users of social media platforms. They deserve a social media platform that respects and informs them.
That’s why legitimate news media should band together and regain the autonomy they ceded to third-party social media. Independent news organizations–large and small–should cooperatively create and control their own social media platform that amplifies news and public information, encourages links to member news organizations, and excludes misinformation and disinformation.
Journalism has been so beaten down by big tech that it’s hard to imagine a different way of doing things.
The model for this is something almost as old as modern journalism, too: The Associated Press, an international cooperative nonprofit news agency. As the AP tells its founding story, “In 1846, five New York City newspapers funded a pony express route through Alabama to bring news of the Mexican War north faster than the U.S. Post Office could deliver it.” The problem with social media is similar–if it’s not working, work collectively to build another way. And, like the AP, it could be a global cooperative.
Journalism has been so beaten down by big tech that it’s hard to imagine a different way of doing things. But, a news-controlled social media platform could develop features that would demonstrate the multimedia ability of news organizations and enable the audience to create social connections in new and entertaining ways. Users could adjust their feeds to focus on local, regional, national, or international news, or whatever mix and topics makes sense to them, so all legitimate news organizations of any size get to be part of the platform.
Which news organizations and journalists could be part of such a social media cooperative?
Reporters Without Borders, the international journalism nonprofit, already has a powerful statement for fostering global information spaces for the common good, where “information can only be regarded as reliable when freely gathered, processed and disseminated according to the principles of commitment to truth, plurality of viewpoints and rational methods of establishment and verification of facts.” This would enable a broad range of journalism organizations to participate, and draw a bright line to exclude media propagating disinformation.
The challenge of creating a social media space for journalism is bigger than any single news organization can handle.
From a business perspective, journalism organizations, not third-party social media, would retain analytic data and any advertising revenue. The social media app could be free for any person with a subscription to any member news organization (e.g., a local newspaper, a national magazine of opinion, or digital news site), or with a nominal subscription fee, to provide built-in authentication and help prevent bot accounts. There are also strong global standards for content moderation through the International Fact-Checking Network, which was formed in 2015 and has a nonpartisan code of principles and more than 170 fact-checking groups around the world.
What would such a social media platform cost to create?
Clearly, $44 billion is too much. Bluesky, which has gained favor as an X alternative in recent months, offers a case for comparison. It started internally with just a handful of workers at then-Twitter in 2019. In the past two years, it’s received $23 million in seed funding to get it where it is today.
Bluesky may be the current favorite of many journalists, and has many advantages over other social media platforms, but its worthy purpose to encourage a less toxic space for public conversation does not primarily serve the goals of globally disseminating independent journalism.
Collectively building a nonprofit, cooperative global news-based social media platform would put verified news back in the center of public discourse.
The challenge of creating a social media space for journalism is bigger than any single news organization can handle. There has been talk for several years about Europe having its own social media platform to highlight democracy, diversity, solidarity, and privacy, and to avoid “foreign information manipulations and interference” from platforms based in the U.S. that have fallen into Trump’s power orbit and China-based platforms as well.
But, a nongovernmental platform, with a consortium of democracy-minded news organizations, may be most resistant to nationalisms and authoritarianism. The project could be built on an open-source structure like ActivityPub (the infrastructure behind Mastodon) or the AT Protocol (behind Bluesky), which would give more power to users.
Collectively building a nonprofit, cooperative global news-based social media platform would put verified news back in the center of public discourse. The alternative is the independent press’s passive acceptance of whatever social media ecosystems Silicon Valley plutocrats or authoritarian governments decide to make, which is bad news for a free press.Keep ReadingShow Less
The 'More Sinister' Reason Behind Musk's Attack on Consumer Agency
Recent days have seen a full-frontal assault on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Trump's favorite billionaire has much to gain personally if the agency no longer has the ability to operate effectively on behalf of the American people.
Feb 09, 2025
The Trump administration's multi-pronged attack on the CFPB continues.
President Donald Trump's new acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Russell Vought, told the agency to cease nearly all its operations in a series of orders on Saturday night and the move is not just a gift to the broader financial industry and large Wall Street banks, say critical observers, but also a major potential gift to billionaire Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest person, who has a major vested interest in the agency's demise.
Vought, the right-wing architect of the anti-government Project 2025 who also now heads the powerful Office of Management and Budget, confirmed Saturday night he had taken control of the agency in an email to staff that called on them to halt most of their work.
"Musk wants to use the government to put more in his pockets. This is a blatant conflict of interest." —Sen. Ed. Markey
According to reporting by NBC News, which obtained a copy of the email,
Employees were instructed to "cease all supervision and examination activity," "cease all stakeholder engagement," pause all pending investigations, not issue any public communications and pause "enforcement actions."
Vought also told employees not to "approve or issue any proposed or final rules or formal or informal guidance" and to "suspend the effective dates of all final rules that have been issued or published but that have not yet become effective," among other directives listed in the email.
He said in the email that the directives are effective immediately, unless he approves an exception or a certain activity is required by law.
The agency has been a target for Republicans for years and the party has contested in court its source of funding, which unlike most other agencies is funded by the Federal Reserve as opposed to regular appropriations by Congress. That mechanism, however, was established by Congress when the CFPB was created—an approach that was designed to shield it from political interference—and has withstood all legal challenges, including one before the U.S. Supreme Court last year.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), credited with bringing the CFPB to life, said the orders from Vought make clear the Trump administrations intentions.
"Vought is giving big banks and giant corporations the green light to scam families," Warren said Saturday. "The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned over $21 billion to families cheated by Wall Street. Republicans have failed to gut it in Congress and in the courts. They will fail again."
Vought, in his online post, said he also informed Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Saturday that the agency would be requesting $0 for the upcoming draw period, claiming that no additional funds were needed to fulfill its work.
"The Bureau's current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment," Vought claimed. "This spigot, long contributing to CFPB's unaccountability, is now being turned off."
Critics point out that Musk, who has been appointed by Trump to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has serious conflicts when it comes to the Trump administration's targeting of the CFPB.
DOGE is not a real department but has claimed sweeping authority to access the sensitive workings of federal agencies—triggering an avalanche of legal challenges as a result. In addition to Vought's statements, the previous CFPB acting director, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, last week issued an internal stop work order that was challenged by Democratic lawmakers.
On Friday, as Common Dreamsreported, Musk himself posted "CFPB RIP" on social media next to a picture of a gravestone and his detractors have argued his antagonism is not based solely on his ideological opposition to an agency that has returned over $20 billion to consumers over recent years from bad financial actors.
In an appearance Saturday on MSNBC, Lindsay Owens, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Groundwork Collective, explained that while Vought's targeting of CFPB can be explained by well-documented fealty to various corporate interests—and a desire "to destroy the government from the inside out"—Musk's motivations are likely "more sinister" and closer to home.
Elon Musk and Russ Vought have taken over the CFPB. That’s bad news for consumers.
Vought’s aim is to destroy govt from the inside out, and Musk's motive is more sinister. As he partners with Visa on a payment app, he has an interest in ensuring the CFPB doesn't get in his way. pic.twitter.com/C7FAFfG0xI
— Groundwork Collaborative (@Groundwork) February 8, 2025
Diminishing CFPB's ability to operate as well as getting a look at its trove of files, including the inner workings of those institutions it has been tasked with holding to account, said Owens, is a for Musk to "grease the skids for his new business interest."
"We know that Elon Musk is interested in starting his own payment app—he's partnered with Visa to do that," she explained, "and so he has a real interest in ensuring that the CFPB isn't blocking an effort like that."
Owens said that Musk's interest in the agency goes beyond that as well, because the CFPB has "trade secrets from enforcement actions against some of his likely future competitors."
On Friday, The American Prospect's David Dayen reported on the little-noticed Feb. 3 order that Bessent sent out to CFPB staffers which specifically halted new designation of non-bank entities, including "nondepository institutions," by the agency—a policy that could directly impact Musk's peer-to-peer payment venture he hopes to launch on X in partnership with Visa.
According to Dayen:
By stalling designation of nondepository institutions, Bessent ensures that X will not be designated for CFPB supervision, at least in the near term.
The more innocent explanation for the last-minute change is that Bessent was likely uninformed about what the CFPB does, and hastily added supervision later. But the inserted directive specifically bars designation of non-banks in the supervisory process, as a not-so-thinly-veiled shield for Big Tech payment app firms, and in particular the company run by special government employee Elon Musk.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) expressed concerns along these grounds on Saturday night.
"Elon wants the CFPB gone so tech billionaires can profit from apps, like X, that offer bank-like services but don't follow financial laws that keep people’s money safe," charged Markey. "Musk wants to use the government to put more in his pockets. This is a blatant conflict of interest."
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