#SecureOurSocials - Human Rights Watch | Clapboard Ad Archive

Human Rights Watch’s #SecureOurSocials campaign, launched in 2024 and targeting the public service market category, is a strategically pointed call for increased safety, transparency, and accountability from Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms for LGBT users at acute risk in the Middle East and North Africa. At its core is a culturally literate, deeply relevant film that enlists Lebanese drag artist Anya Kneez as the tongue-in-cheek steward of Air Anya, deploying the familiar format of an airline safety briefing to deliver vital digital safety guidance to LGBTQ audiences. This creative approach, anchored in what Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#12—Parody or Borrowed Format, intentionally fuses pop culture and advocacy, borrowing the visual and tonal language of in-flight announcements as both a mnemonic and a membrane between humor and urgency. The campaign builds its authority on robust research: Human Rights Watch documents how security forces exploit social media to entrap, harass, and endanger LGBT individuals in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia, resulting in severe offline consequences from arbitrary detention and torture to social ostracism and forced migration. The film serves as a companion to a comprehensive safety guide while also issuing a public demand for Meta to publish disaggregated details on its regional trust and safety investments according to the specific linguistic and risk realities of the MENA region—an ask crafted to expose accountability gaps and galvanize meaningful change both within the tech giant’s infrastructure and among its users. Human Rights Watch’s in-house campaigns team, alongside its creative agency collaborators, integrates expertise from human rights advocacy with production values honed by specialist audio and visual partners, achieving a formidable blend of authority and accessibility. The tone leverages the provocative, disarming power of drag performance to command attention and cut through cultural and political noise, but is underpinned by direct testimonies and investigative findings that cement the gravity and unignorable stakes of digital targeting for LGBT communities. The campaign operates as both public education and an escalation lever, mobilizing Meta’s platform users to demand corporate responsibility and equipping at-risk individuals with practical tools and knowledge in their online environments. Human Rights Watch positions itself as both advocate and industry watchdog, framing platform safety as a human rights responsibility while simultaneously pressuring governments in the MENA region to legislate and enforce nondiscrimination and privacy protections rather than criminalize LGBTQ expression. The campaign earns 69/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. For the sector, #SecureOurSocials is significant because it demonstrates that hybridizing pop lexicon and lived experience in creative formats can enable advocacy communications to cut through algorithmic and political impunity in ways that blunt-force policy messaging simply cannot.