Honda and Unilever: Facebook boycott is expanding

Honda announced that it would no longer place ads on Facebook and Instagram in July to send a signal against “hate and racism”. For Unilever, corporate press spokesman Luis Di Como announced that advertising on Facebook would stop in the “Wall Street Journal” (“WSJ”, Friday edition). According to Di Como, the giant company will stop advertising until the end of the year and expand this stop on Instagram and Twitter.

More needs to be done against hate speech, especially with the current polarization of society and the upcoming US election. The fact that the group, which produces and sells numerous well-known consumer goods brands, is now following the boycott is a great success for the campaign. The boycott hits Facebook at its most sensitive point: Almost all of Facebook’s revenue comes from the advertising business.

Other companies join

Civil rights groups have called for the advertising boycott under the motto “#StopHateForProfit”. Because of protests and demonstrations against systemic racism in the USA that have been going on for weeks, the call for boycotts has received a strong upswing. More and more companies in the US are under pressure to position themselves clearly against racism in general and specifically in their own company.

The list of companies boycotting Facebook is getting longer. Previously, the ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, the mobile phone company Verizon and the outdoor clothing companies Patagonia and North Face had announced that they would no longer advertise on Facebook. Overall, according to the BBC, more than 90 companies have already joined the call.

“We will delete all advertising on Facebook and Instagram with immediate effect,” said Patagonia recently. The ad stop initially applies until the end of July. Facebook has failed to act against the spread of “hateful lies and dangerous propaganda” on its platform, the Patagonia statement said.

“Let’s send a message to Facebook”

With the “#StopHateForProfit” campaign, the activists want to protest Facebook’s inaction towards “racist, glorifying violence and demonstrably wrong content”, as it was said on the website of the League against Defamation (ADL).

The activists criticized that incitement and calls for violence on the internet platform were not moderated. In addition to the ADL, supporters of the campaign include the groups Color of Change, FreePress and Sleeping Giants. The ADL estimates Facebook’s annual advertising revenue at $ 70 billion. “Let’s send a message to Facebook: Your profits aren’t worth promoting hatred, intolerance, racism, anti-Semitism and violence,” the statement said.

Zuckerberg’s three-day concession

Zuckerberg reacted almost immediately, whose company also came under pressure on the stock exchange. Now Facebook wants to act more against hate messages and false reports. Posts with incorrect content should be removed before the US presidential election, Zuckerberg announced. However, this only applies to the last three days before the election.

In addition, the standards for advertising would be raised to block derogatory and hateful messages about ethnicity, religion and sexual preferences. Zuckerberg also announced that some Facebook content that actually violates the guidelines of the social network, but is relevant to the news for example due to a celebrity sender, will be flanked with information in the future. It remains to be seen whether these measures are sufficient to take the wind out of the boycott’s sails.

For those who initiated the boycott, that is not enough. That was still evident on Friday. Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change civil rights organization, said Zuckerberg’s announcements were an “admission of failure” to recognize the “damage done to Facebook to our democracy and civil rights” by Facebook. “If that’s his answer to those advertisers who pull millions of dollars from the company, we can’t trust him,” Robinson said on Twitter. He called for a “complete review of his decisions”: