Every day, Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg is losing revenue due to the boycott that several hundred major advertisers announced to his company. These are mainly well-known brands that are unhappy that the Facebook leadership, in their opinion, is doing too little to combat racist groups and fake messages on its platform. The number of those joining the boycott is constantly growing.
Giants such as The North Face, REI, Patagonia, Verizon, Hershey, Honda America, Starbucks, Lego, Levi’s and even Coca-Cola refuse to post their ads on social networks. At the same time, Coca-Cola went the farthest and said that it would stop buying ads not only on Facebook and Instagram, but also on Twitter, YouTube.
“Hatred and dangerous misinformation on the Web should not be left unattended”, – the Volkswagen Group of America said, for example. “We expect our advertising partners to reflect our values”.
In mid-June, several American human rights organizations made an appeal to the business community to boycott the social network: the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Population (NAACP), Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense.
According to Bloomberg estimates at the end of June, Zuckerberg lost about $7.2 billion due to the boycott. The agency notes that we are talking about reducing the total value of the assets of the head of Facebook due to temporarily cheaper shares.
To draw attention to the boycott, activists launched the hashtag #StopHateForProfit. The action itself received the same name, the organizers of which urged brands not to advertise on Facebook and Instagram (the latter also belongs to the social network), during all July.
Human rights activists and advertisers are demanding that Zuckerberg take more decisive measures to remove racist posts, misinformation, threats of violence and other materials from Facebook that could mislead users, for example, due to numerous anti-vaccination groups and conspiracy communities.
Facebook is regularly accused of indirectly contributing to the dissemination of racist, anti-Semitic, as well as fake materials and does not remove communities that openly propagate hatred. Joe Biden, who guaranteed his nomination as a Democratic candidate for the presidency, also blamed the company for allowing the US President Donald Trump to publish knowingly false information. The last high-profile scandal involving Trump occurred when, commenting on the US protests on a Facebook page, the president wrote that “when looting starts, shooting starts”. So Trump actually quoted the words of former Miami police chief Walter Hadley, remembered for the stiff suppression of African-American protests in 1967. Many perceived the message as a call for violence and demanded that social networks delete this entry.
Zuckerberg condemned Trump’s statement, but refused to delete the message, recalling freedom of speech. He also said that any statements made by politicians of this level should be preserved and documented. For this, a flurry of criticism fell on Zuckerberg both from journalists and the public and from colleagues. Some of them even left the company. As the newspaper The Wall Street Journal wrote at the time, Zuckerberg said at a meeting with subordinates that private organizations should not assume oversight functions and point out any violations in the publications of politicians.
In turn, Trump’s Twitter post was flagged as violating the prohibition of justifying violence.
Not all Facebook customers joined the boycott. As CNN analysts found out, most of the 100 largest advertisers of the platform did not break advertising contracts with the social network. Among them are Walmart, American Express, Netflix, Domino’s and others.
Of the 25 largest Facebook advertisers of 2019, only three clients – Microsoft, Starbucks and Pfizer – have publicly confirmed their plans to suspend advertising purchases.
According to Facebook’s financial statements, in 2019, its advertising revenue was about $70 billion, an increase of 27% compared to 2018 (from $55.013 billion to $69.655 billion). At the same time, the bulk of social network customers are small and medium-sized businesses.
Facebook says it’s worried about a boycott and seeks to resolve the issue.
“We take these issues very seriously and respect the opinions of our partners. We are making serious progress in moderating content that is not profitable for ourselves. But, as we have said, we change our policies based on principles, not revenues”, – said company spokesman Tom Chenick.
The fact that the company “does not profit from hate”, was also emphasized by Nick Clegg, Facebook vice president of global affairs, in his open letter.
Also last week, Facebook reported blocking of more than 300 accounts related to the Boogaloo violent, anti-government extremist movement (slang term for civil war). Together with them, about 500 more groups and communities were removed, in which publications similar in content were posted.
In addition, Zuckerberg himself promised to meet with human rights activists who launched the boycott. Facebook CEO Cheryl Sandberg agreed to host Jonathan Greenblatt of ADL on July 7, chairman of the Color of Change NGO Rashad Robinson and NAACP member Derrick Johnson. It is still unknown which issues will be discussed at the meeting.
Moreover, as the number of participants in the boycott increases at the end of June, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will begin to label posts by politicians who violate social network rules, but which are significant for the news agenda. He also added that it would make it easier for users to find reliable information about the election, as well as more actively remove inaccurate messages related to the upcoming presidential vote. In addition, Facebook decided to take additional measures to limit advertisements that could contribute to “hate speech”.
At the same time, the Information Technology website said that despite public pressure, Zuckerberg was confident that advertisers would soon return to the social network.
“I assume that all these advertisers will soon return to the platform”, – the head of Facebook allegedly said at a meeting with his colleagues.
Experts say boycott is unlikely to seriously harm Facebook.
According to the estimates of Pathmatics company experts, even if all of the 100 largest Facebook advertisers take part in the boycott, this will affect only 6% of its annual advertising revenue, which is Facebook’s main income. In addition, experts indicate that many of the major customers of the social network were about to cut advertising costs due to economic problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
According to USA Today, the brands that boycott the social network account for only a small percentage of the company’s total revenue. In addition, they realize that, having stopped buying ads on Facebook, now they will receive more advertising than on the platform itself.
“Although stocks fell when the boycott began to attract large consumer brands, the indicators bounced back in anticipation that this corporate boycott, like the others before it, would end. Analysts even told investors that a short-term drop provides a good opportunity to buy shares”, – writes the publication.
According to a recent Facebook post, today the social network has more than 7 million active advertisers and more than 90 million business pages. The vast majority of them do not participate in the boycott.
The company’s revenue for the first quarter of 2020 increased by 17.6% to $17.7 billion, and net profit more than doubled to $4.9 billion. And even despite the pandemic slowing down ad sales, analysts say Facebook, obviously, will increase its revenues this year, just not so much.
“The 100 largest Facebook advertisers provided the company with only 20% of all its revenues”, – writes Jack Schafer, columnist at Politico newspaper, who believes that such media noise around the social network will only benefit the company’s management.
“Zuckerberg will bow, apologize and make promises to improve, as he usually does when faced with a PR crisis. He has already responded to the current boycott with dubious but noteworthy content that violates his standards (for example, some Trump messages), deleting messages designed to suppress the turnout, and avoiding advertisements calling for violence or expressing open racism (although some of his concessions seem to have been in work even before the boycott started)”, – Schafer writes.
This is not the first time Facebook has faced such allegations.
They have been addressed to the social network over the past few years. It was rebuked because of the attempts of foreign trolls to influence the 2016 American elections, for reports of inciting violence between the Rohingya and Buddhists, as well as for the live broadcast of a New Zealand terrorist during which he shot parishioners in Christchurch mosques. In addition, big questions arise about the dissemination of false information in the social network. Recently, experts found that anti-vaccination pages on Facebook are much more popular than scientific publications.
Facebook has long adhered to a policy to curb hate speech rhetoric. According to the company, it removes 89% of such statements even before users report them. A recent report by the European Commission showed that Facebook responds to hate speech faster than some of its competitors.
Dmitry Belyaev, TASS agency