The boycott launched by Facebook employees to protest Zuckerberg’s inaction on Trump’s ads and posts that fuel violence and racism, has escalated.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and continuing calls to quell racism,a number of civil rights group have banded together and organized the StopHateForProfit. The goal is to pressure Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to institute policies that ban and automatically block hate messages and fake news. .
The StopHateForProfit group sought the support of big companies, many of which were already considering slashing down on advertising costs. The request was not hard to grant since that would also mean positive publicity for their brands. Instead of announcing budget cuts, they will be making a political statement in support of calls for social and political reforms.
Zuckerberg Buckled Down While More Companies Continue to Remove Ads
At first, only 300 companies committed to withdrawing their ad on Facebook, and the number has now reached more than 500. Although Zuckerberg had buckled down through a response posted in his Facebook account, billions in dollars of advertising revenues had already been withdrawn.
Facebook employees had said before that the FB CEO had vowed not to support ads and posts that incite violence, and those that suppress voting, regardless of from who or were they came from. Yet Zuckerberg’s principles bended when the hate messages came from Trump. This time, as a show of sincerity to his commitment, he approved the taking down of accounts found linked to the so-called “boogaloo movement”, one of which organized the killing of a California police officer last May.
Some of the companies who immediately gave support to the StopHateForProfit movement include Microsoft Corp,Verizon Communications Inc, Starbucks Corp, Ford Motor Co., Coca-Cola Co, PepsiCo Inc, and multinational companies like Unilever US, US:F, US:SBUX,. US:KO, US:MSFT,. US:PEP, US:VZ, SAP US and UL, which is just to name a few.