Stop the Hate for Profit

Over the past few weeks, hundreds of companies and brands have joined the Facebook ad boycott #StopHateForProfit. On Tuesday, civil rights groups met virtually with Facebook executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to discuss the platform's handling of hate speech. Among the groups attending where the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Anti-Defamation League and Color of Change.

Leaders of the civil rights groups have stated that the meeting was "very disappointing," with the head of Color of Change, Rashad Robinson saying: "They showed up to the meeting expecting an A for attendance. Attending alone is not enough."

Facebook issued a statement, promising to take steps to "keep hate off of our platform" and that they were aware that they would be "judged by our actions not by our words and are grateful to these groups and many others for their continued engagement."

Ford, Adidas and Clorox have joined a growing list of companies pausing social media advertising to take action against hate speech. Ford will not advertise on either Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Twitter in the U.S. for the next 30 days. Clorox is pausing advertising globally on all Facebook-owned platforms until the end of the year, Adidas through July.

Starbucks has announced to halt advertising on "all social media platforms", though the company is not joining the #StopHateForProfit boycott campaign. The coffeehouse chain further stated it would hold "discussions internally and with media partners and civil rights organizations to stop the spread of hate speech" but would continue to post on social media platforms without paid promotion.

"We believe in bringing communities together, both in person and online, and we stand against hate speech," so the company in a statement on Sunday. "We believe more must be done to create welcoming and inclusive online communities, and we believe both business leaders and policy makers need to come together to affect real change."

Multinational consumer goods company Unilever announced it would halt advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the U.S. for the rest of 2020. The company's portfolio includes brands like Ben & Jerry's, Dove and Axe.

Unilever's EVP of Global Media Luis Di Como said in a statement: "Given our Responsibility Framework and the polarized atmosphere in the U.S., we have decided that starting now through at least the end of the year, we will not run brand advertising in social media newsfeed platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the U.S."

The Coca-Cola Company has announced that they'll join the ongoing "Stop Hate For Profit" campaign where companies stop advertising on Facebook over the missing moderation of hate speech.

Coca-Cola will not only pause the advertisements on Facebook but across all social media platforms globally. The pause will at least go for 30 days and start July 1st. The Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey has also demanded "greater accountability and transparency from our social media partners".

Facebook will start to add labels to posts from public figures if the content is violating the platform's policies but won't remove posts as they might be deemed "newsworthy". This move comes weeks after Zuckerberg criticised Twitter for adding labels to policy-violating tweets of politicians and other public figures. In response to Facebook's inaction on hate speech, many high-profile advertisers started boycotting the social network and pulling their ads.

In a post to his Facebook account, Mark Zuckerberg announced the policy change, stating: "We will soon start labeling some of the content we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy, so people can know when this is the case. We'll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what's acceptable in our society -- but we'll add a prompt to tell people that the content they're sharing may violate our policies."

Verizon has joined companies like Ben & Jerry's, North Face, Pangolia and others in boycotting Facebook and Instagram as a marketing platform. With more and more companies joining in "Stop the Hate for Profit", the campaign is gathering momentum. The companies have voiced concerns over Facebook's policies and inaction regarding the handling of posts with hateful language, namely posts from the United States President Donald Trump.