Don’t follow us
These days, social media serves as one of the main places to get news, whether it’s true, partial, misleading, outright fake, or otherwise.
As a news source that prides itself as being a purveyor of absolute truth, The New York Times is standing against social media half-truths by logging off of social media completely. Don’t follow us. Join us.
NYT BUILDING ANNOUNCEMENT
To launch, we’re completely blacking out the side of the NYT building and asking the world not to do the one thing they’ve been conditioned to do for the last several years. If it means you’ll take a step back from social media news, please, don’t follow us.
TIMES SQUARE TAKEOVER
There’s nothing more New York City than taking it to Times Square. We’re making our statement on the big screen for passersby to read as they stroll through the city.
GOODBYE INSTAGRAM
As our goodbye message to social media, we’ll turn our Instagram into a billboard showcasing our message and head out. That’s the last you’ll see of us on social media for a while.
Well, except our message finding you in your feed. Throughout the duration of the campaign, the only activity you’ll see from us on social media is an ad reminding you to think twice about the news you’re getting in your feed.
NYT DISRUPTION
For the first week of our announcement, when you head over to the NYT website, you’ll see only a blacked-out version of the front page explaining exactly why we’ve deleted our social accounts.
When the best news source takes a stand, you call it a…newsstand. We’re blacking out all newsstands across the city to make it clear that New York’s very own news source has something to say.
For the whole week, every NYT paper you can get from a newsstand will also feature a blacked out front page with our stance on social media, with more info on how to join us on page 2.
FAKE NEWS TRACKER
We know it’s hard to discern what’s real from what’s fake or misleading on social media, so we’re not leaving you to do it yourself. We’ve created a tracker that crawls social media, analyzes news stories, and feeds into a real-time dashboard.
Your feed can’t tell you the full story. But we can.
✍🏽 Endia Turney