For only the second time (that I can recall), I've had a confirmed talk cancelled due to my slides being heavily critical of Google & Facebook.

I won't out the organizer, but I thought I'd share the offending slides here.

I'll go slide-by-slide, so you can get context.

Basic gist: There's 3 reasons to diversify your marketing efforts and expand beyond just Google and Facebook (where the vast majority of marketing dollars and effort are currently spent).

Thanks, Captain Obvious.

I mean, heck, just look at today's new Google feature: https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/status/1389262907284807687

Google crawls our websites, takes our content, aggregates it (without having to sweat copyright or trademarks), and uses it to benefit themselves without credit or clicks to the original sources.

When Google misleads or outright lies, there's no consequences. The digital marketing world seems to uncritically trust & amplify their representatives' statements despite years of bad faith misinformation.

Are they coming for your industry next?

Ha! Remember how we all fell for that in Facebook's first decade? Millions of small businesses still drive traffic to their Facebook pages in hopes they can later reach those "fans" with their content.

Joke's on us.

Marketers and biz owners create wonderful things. Facebook & Google don't do the work, but they do reap most of the rewards. There's a parallel to the eras of deeply abusive banks and consumer investing.

Today, average Facebook organic reach (i.e. your ability to reach the fans who liked your pages without paying FB) is 0.09%.... YIKES.

credit to @RivalIQ's superb annual report: https://www.rivaliq.com/blog/social-media-industry-benchmark-report/

Facebook and Google are (directly & indirectly) responsible for amplifying much of the world's mis and disinformation.

Huge credit to whistleblowers like @szhang_ds, who have the courage to reveal how horrifying this really is: https://twitter.com/szhang_ds/status/1381518041737949185

Big tech isn't just dominant, it's monopolistic.

And as macroeconomics teaches, sectors without strong competition trend toward rent-seeking behavior and negative consequences for the whole of society.

Facebook and Google use their lobbying, political, and economic power in a lot of messed-up ways, much of it in moat-building to prevent any future, potential competition.

Sadly, the EU fell for their naked power grab, and I fear the US might, too.

I end this section with a variety of rapid-fire snippets highlighting the above, issues, and then explain...

... That these aren't the kinds of organizations you probably want to spend money with.

But, even if none of those argument resonate with you, and you're fine w/ Facebook & Google's ethical issues, there's still two more excellent reasons to diversify your marketing investments.

And then the talk goes into building a competitive advantage.

Hopefully, you can see why I felt uncomfortable removing that section. I am 100% a supporter of what "freedom of speech" truly means, though, so:

A) I support the org's prerogative to remove me. I don't feel censored.

B) I'm exercising the choice to not sanitize the topic