Our #BackOffBobbie Campaign Started Working Before We Got Started
Our #BackOffBobbie Campaign Started Working Before We Got Started
Bobbie gave us their answer.
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One week ago, on the first day of National Breastfeeding Month, hundreds of mothers took to Instagram to tell a $142 million formula company to BACK THE 🖕 UP!
Nursing mothers from Berkeley to Newark joined a virtual nurse-in to protest Bobbie’s multimillion dollar predatory ad campaign targeted at vulnerable breastfeeding mothers. Not only did moms bust out their boobs for a righteous cause they also posted an open letter that took aim directly at Bobbie. With one voice we demanded that Bobbie:
Stop disparaging breastfeeding in their advertising
Remove the term “milk” from all advertising and promotional materials, including their podcast and blog “Milk Drunk”
End all current and future partnerships with online influencers.
Disable affiliate links
Put $10 million dollars towards an online advertising campaign that highlights the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding.
It was an inspiring and LIFE AFFIRMING DAY!! It even included some on-site riot girl flyering action:
Many people have asked, “well what did Bobbie say? How did they react after you posted all this extremely moving and beautiful content?”
Bobbie gave us their answer BEFORE we started posting. Our team of organizers (mom-organizers, MOrganizers??) did an excellent job of keeping the details of our campaign largely underground so as not to tip off Bobbie. In the days leading up to the action we went public with explicit instructions to our Radical Mom Nation to use the hashtag #backoffbobbie when they posted their nurse-in shot and open letter.
In the wee hours before we were set to kick off, a Radical Mom in Australia messaged me at 2am to say that Instagram had ‘hidden’ our hashtag:
At this point, the radical Aussie mom was the only person, IN THE ENTIRE WORLD WIDE WEB to use our hashtag. When she went to look to see if others had posted she got that hidden advisory. Why would Instagram hide the phrase “backoffbobbie” before anyone had used it? It not like this phrase was instantly recognizable as something that needed to be censored. We weren’t telling people to post #PUPPYINCESTMURDERVIDS
What guidelines did the tag #backoffbobbie violate?
Why would Instagram agree to hide it?
Who would want this phrase hidden?
I spent four hours manically refreshing to see if it was just a glitch. It was not. By 6am local time moms were posting but the hashtag was still censored. About an hour later, the ban lifted and our phones filled up with the glorious latches of chubby bebes.
So what happened?
My years as a PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZER lead me to believe that a Bobbie employee/executive pleaded with someone at Instagram to hide our hashtag. They probably said it was spam or ‘hateful’ or whatever. bullshit. I assume that our posts were held in some type of algorithm purgatory until they could be reviewed by Meta moderator serf or WGA-scab AI bot who deemed our content to be within community guidelines.
Bobbie lost.
In short, BOBBIE IS AFRAID.
They are scared of us.
They are scared of moms calling them out.
They want us hidden.
We were enough of a threat that they tried to shut us down before we even got started and they FAILED.
And that was just DAY ONE of our campaign. Wait ‘til they see what’s coming up next.
I posted a little after midnight and the hashtag was not hidden. So I don't think they hid it before anyone used it.
Back off Bobbie!!!