December 11, 2023
Studio
BT’s greenwashing influencer campaign
Money talks and it’s spilling the tea on BT. The telecommunications company has spent over £800,000 on social media influence ads that champion its investments in green energy, despite still investing in fossil fuels.
In the past few weeks alone, it has paid nearly £570,000 to Facebook and Instagram for ads that promote its plan to transition to net zero by gradually reducing oil and gas production and investing in more low carbon and renewable energy sources, reaching tens of millions of viewers in the UK, all while continuing to spend more money on climate change drivers.
And get a sip of this. The ads, which also emphasise BP’s contributions to UK energy security, began two days after Labour proposed a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas, and escalated in the weeks before Rishi Sunak announced an ‘energy profits levy’ in May. Interesting timing.
“The green investments they describe represent only a minor portion of the currency energy production and investment behaviour. In that sense, the ads are misleading. They don’t not tell the reader that BP continues to open up new oil and gas fields,” said researcher Gregory Trencher.
Meanwhile, Doug Parr, chief scientist for Greenpeace UK, said “BP are presenting themselves as offering green solutions that are good for the UK, but they’re doing this while making record profits and as millions of UK households are being pushed into fuel poverty.”
Greenwashing is black and white, BT.
Don’t Pay UK Campaign
A new civil disobedience movement is protesting the rise in energy bills as thousands of people across the country risk falling below the poverty line.
‘Don’t Pay’, an anonymous group organising the campaign, has demanded a reduction of energy bills to an affordable level, threatening to gather a million people to pledge not to pay if the government goes ahead with another crippling hike on October 1st.
Gas and electricity bills are expected to reach over £3,000 in October - up from an average bill of £1,400 in October 2021 - causing many people to fear how they’ll make ends meet.
“Even if a fraction of those of us who are paying by direct debit stop our payments, it will be enough to put energy companies in serious trouble, and they know this. We want to bring them to the table and force them to end this crisis,” it writes on its website.
The movement has been condemned by the government, with a spokesperson describing it as “highly irresponsible messaging, which ultimately will only push up prices for everyone else and affect personal credit ratings.”
Sorry, what was that? Can’t Pay. Won’t Pay. Don’t Pay. 🥲
BeReal: The Apostle Of Authenticity
BeReal, the photo-sharing app dubbed the ‘anti-Instagram’ has taken the number one spot in the U.S on Apple’s App Store charts, beating TikTok and Instagram. But what does it mean for the ‘not another social network’ app to top the ‘social network’ app list?
It means it’s full of 💩, according to critics. The app, which only allows users to post one sudden and unfiltered photo per day, at a completely random time, has tried so hard to position itself as the anti-platform that it’s failed to see that they all exist on the same spectrum.
In other words, a digitally native generation, never knowing a world without social media - literally or conceptually - and socialised in the art of strategic self-presentation.
Far from creating something new, the app has fallen into the same narrative of its predecessors - defining itself against its competitors' inauthenticity, peddling a new version, and dangling a promise of realness that is actually deterministic of the evolution of social media.
So enjoy the top spot, BeReal. *quietly chants ONE OF US, ONE OF US*.
