Facebook's stock dropped more than 8% over the weekend, eliminating $56 billion from Facebook's market value and pushing founder Mark Zuckerberg's net worth down to $82.3 billion as a string of major advertisers announced they would be suspending their campaigns, citing the social media giant lacking policy on hate speech and inflammatory rhetoric.
the move followed the #StopHateforProfit campaign launched on June 17 by civil rights groups, including the NAACP, Color of Change, and the Anti-Defamation League in the wake of the protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in police custody.
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British-Dutch multinational consumer goods company Unilever, the company behind brands such as Ben & Jerry's and Dove, was the first to pull back from the online platform, saying it would boycott Facebook ads through the end of the year. It was soon joined by Coca-Cola, telecommunications company Verizon, the Hershey Company, and Levi Strauss & Co.
We will pause all paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram in the US in support of the #StopHateForProfit campaign. Facebook, Inc. must take the clear and unequivocal actions to stop its platform from being used to spread and amplify racism and hate. >>>https://t.co/7OpxtcbDGg pic.twitter.com/I989Uk9V3h
— Ben & Jerry's (@benandjerrys) June 23, 2020
While Twitter has also been criticized for failing to properly monitor user content, Facebook in particular has been the target of an escalating call to withhold advertising dollars to pressure it to do more to prevent racist and violent content from being shared on its platform.
Zuckerberg has previously refused to take action against user content, including by politicians, arguing that that people deserved to hear unfiltered statements from political leaders. Twitter, by contrast, slapped a "get the facts" label on them.
During a livestream on Facebook, Zuckerberg said he intends to discuss "new policies to connect people with authoritative information about voting, crackdown on voter suppression, and fight hate speech."
The social network will begin adding new labels to all posts about voting that will direct users to authoritative information from state and local election officials, he said, without directly addressing the advertisers' boycotts.
"The policies we're implementing today are designed to address the reality of the challenges our country is facing and how they're showing up across our community," Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page announcing the changes.
Facebook is also banning false claims intended to discourage voting, such as stories about federal agents checking legal status at polling places. The company also said it is increasing its enforcement capacity to remove false claims about local polling conditions in the 72 hours before the US election.
However, Zuckerman qualified his companies response with the claim that due Facebook's "[...]history of trying hard not to alienate right-leaning users, and given how tightly President Trump has aligned himself with voter-suppressing misinfo, it seems likely that Facebook will err on the side of non-intrusive and ignorable labels, which would minimize impact of the campaign."
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