Ads for more than 400 brands, including Coca-Cola and Starbucks, disappeared from Facebook this Wednesday, after the failure of last-minute talks to stop a boycott of hate speech on the site.
United States civil rights groups have turned to multinationals to help them pressure the social media giant to take concrete steps to block hate speech after the death of George Floyd and in the midst of a national reflection on racism.
Facebook executives, including Carolyn Everson, vice president of global business solutions, and Neil Potts, director of public policy, held at least two meetings with advertisers on Tuesday, the day before the planned month-long boycott, three sources told Reuters. who participated in the calls.
But executives did not provide new details on how they would address the hate speech, the sources said. Instead, they referred to recent press releases, frustrating advertisers who participated in the talks, who believe those plans don’t go far enough.
“It just doesn’t move,” an executive at a major advertising agency said of the calls.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, It agreed to meet with the boycott organizers, a spokeswoman said late Tuesday.
United States civil rights groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League, NAACP, and Color of Change, started the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign after the death of Floyd, a black man who was suffocated to the knee by an officer in the white police last month.
The groups outlined 10 lawsuits for Facebook, including allowing severely harassed people to speak to a social media employee and a refund to brands whose ads appear alongside offensive content that is then removed.
Facebook earlier this week said it would undergo an audit of its controls on hate speech, joining plans to tag newsworthy content that would otherwise violate its policies, following similar practices from other social media platforms such as Twitter Inc.
A digital advertising agency representative who participated in a call Tuesday said Facebook executives repeatedly referred to the audit, without offering additional concessions.
Facebook executives have contacted CEOs, board members and marketing directors of top advertisers to exclude them from the boycott, two people with information about the discussions told Reuters.
All sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the subject.
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