German sports equipment manufacturers Adidas and Puma will stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram in July, joining the list of brands taking a similar break in the name of combating hate on the networks.
“Racism, discrimination and hate speech must have no place in our business or in our society,” said Adidas in a statement sent to AFP on Tuesday.
This suspension also concerns its American subsidiary Reebok.
Rival Puma made the same decision because “it is essential for us that all of our partners defend our core values and oppose hate speech,” said a separate statement.
The cougar brand says it is part of a “global effort to create positive change” and “improve the Facebook platform by demanding the removal of inaccurate, hostile and harmful conversations,” the statement said.
Nearly 200 brands, including Coca-Cola, Levis, Starbucks and Unilever, have decided to boycott Facebook.
NAACP, the large African American civil rights organization, an anti-Semitism organization, the Anti Defamation League, and other associations called for a boycott of Facebook advertising during the month of July .
All social networks, but Facebook in particular, are criticized for not doing enough to eliminate racist or hateful publications on its site.
These criticisms – which are not new – have grown since the death of George Floyd, a black man asphyxiated by a white police officer in Minneapolis and whose video shocked the whole world and started anti-racist demonstrations in the States -United and elsewhere.
Adidas had rejected accusations made by employees in the United States two weeks ago, pointing to racial problems in their workplace.
The brand with the three bands indicated on Tuesday that it would develop within 30 days “criteria for the creation and the maintenance of a cosmopolitan and safe environment” which it will have to apply to itself and which will have to respect his partners.
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