During the past week, more than 500 companies, like The North Face and Rei, joined the campaign of boycotting Facebook ads with the intent of placing pressure on Facebook to take a stronger stance against hate speech.
The current boycott is like nothing Facebook has experienced before. The Anti-Defamation League launched a #StopHateForProfit campaign asking companies to stop their advertising. “Let’s send Facebook a powerful message: Your profits will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence,” the campaign’s site reads. Hundreds of companies joined in. “When we re-engage will depend on Facebook’s response,” Levi Strauss CMO Jen Sey wrote in a blog post.
This began in June after advocacy groups and others began pushing for Facebook to refrain from sharing hateful content such as ads featuring nazi symbols from President Donald Trump and white nationalist content from Red Ice TV. More specifically, calls were spurred by posts from President Trump responding to the demonstrations against police brutality and the death of George Floyd, including one in which he suggested the “THUGS” protesting should be shot.
Owner & Co-Founder, Katie James, shared that,
“Facebook Ads have long been censored. The reason that they state is that the content is too controversial or divisive. In my experience, this has been for an inter-faith group meeting after a church received white supremacy flyers posted onto their church in October 2017, and most recently, an article about Beacon’s Mayor giving his decision about moving a memorial bench. Both were declined to be paid.
So for Facebook to say that they are not into censorship is false. They do censor. And they should censor. All media publications should and do censor. One cannot possibly publish everything, so natural censorship happens all of the time when left on the cutting room floor. But to not censor hate speech of the president of the United States is bias and wrong. Clearly they support it, if they will not censor it.”
Tin Shingle has always advocated not to put all of your eggs into one basket. Right now, Facebook is not only controlling the levers with which you can reach people, but it is developing the feeling of a bad taste in your mouth. They’ve had that stigma for years, but their recent lack of censorship added to the amount of frustration that people unleash on that platform, leaves it all gross. Do you really want your brand to be there?
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees: "My guess is that all of these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough," according to The Information.