Against hate on the net: 90 US companies stop Facebook advertising

The initiative #StopHateForProfit, which was launched by civil rights organizations in mid-June, listed a good 90 companies on its website on Sunday that are stopping their advertising on Facebook in the USA for the time being. Some want to extend this measure to the Facebook subsidiary Instagram as well as Twitter. Facebook now wants to take stronger action against hate messages and false news, as chief Mark Zuckerberg emphasized.

Unilever, Honda, Coca-Cola and Co.

Big names added to the list since Friday include consumer goods giant Unilever and carmaker Honda. Drinks giant Coca-Cola also announced it would suspend its advertising on all social platforms worldwide for at least 30 days. However, it is not joining the boycott, spokespeople stressed in various US media. The coffee house chain Starbucks also announced on Sunday that it would suspend all advertising on social networks until further notice.

"There is no place for racism in the world and none in social media," Coca-Cola Group CEO James Quincey said in a statement. During the advertising break, the company now plans to review its advertising strategies and determine if changes are needed. "We also expect more accountability and more transparency from our social media partners," he stressed.
Hershey, one of the world's leading chocolate producers, confirmed to the newspaper USA Today on Friday to join the boycott call and not run ads in July. In addition, the company wants to cut its spending on Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram by a third for the rest of the year.

Advertising boycott to drive change

The wave of protests in the U.S. against racism and police violence in the wake of the death of African-American George Floyd had reignited criticism of Facebook for being too lax in dealing with controversial posts. Group CEO Zuckerberg also made a significant contribution to this, refusing to intervene against controversial statements by US President Donald Trump. There was even criticism from his own employees for this. #StopHateForProfit's call for an advertising boycott is intended to hit the company in a sensitive spot - Facebook makes almost all of its revenue from advertising.

For Coca-Cola alone, the 2019 U.S. advertising budget was an estimated $22 million (just under 21 million euros), reported the New York Times citing data from industry analyst Pathmatics. At Unilever, the figure was around $42 million.

Shares in Facebook and also Twitter came under heavy pressure on Friday as the boycott widened. Facebook lost a good 8 percent, which corresponded to a loss in value of 56 billion dollars (about 53 billion euros), according to the Bloomberg news agency. Zuckerberg had thus lost 7 billion dollars of his private assets.

Facebook wants to take action

Probably under the growing pressure, Zuckerberg announced in a livestream on Friday that he would take stronger action against hate messages in the future, delete false reports immediately before the U.S. presidential election, and raise standards for advertising. "I stand against hate and anything that incites violence," Zuckerberg said at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, announcing his company's planned measures.

In addition, derogatory and hateful messages regarding ethnicity, religion or sexual preferences are also to be blocked in advertising, Zuckerberg went on to say. In addition, some Facebook content that actually violates the social network's guidelines but is newsworthy, for example due to a prominent sender, will be flanked with notices in the future.

Company doubt

But some companies subsequently expressed doubts about it, according to media reports. "We do not believe Facebook will effectively manage violent and divisive speech on its platforms," Hershey wrote in a statement published by U.S. newspaper USA Today quoted statement. "Despite repeated assurances from Facebook to take action, we have not seen any meaningful changes."

Honda announced that it would no longer place ads on Facebook and Instagram in July to send a message against "hate and racism. Unilever even wants to do without paid advertising for the entire rest of the year - not only on Facebook, but also on Twitter. The short message service, on which Trump prefers to publish his frequently controversial messages, has also been the subject of criticism for some time. The Dutch-British company does not want to cut its US advertising budget, but redistribute it to other companies.

Previously, a number of other companies, including U.S. mobile giant Verizon and well-known outdoor brands The North Face and Patagonia, had joined the #StopHateForProfit initiative. Unilever - whose Ben & Jerry's ice cream brand has also been involved - is now going one step further. Actually, the campaign was initially only about an advertising boycott in July. (dpa/Angelika Engler/Hannes Breustedt/Benno Schwinghammer)