Facebook has long been criticized for the amount of racism and hate speech, misinformation, and even blatant lies by politicians it allows to spread on its platform.
Recently, a coalition of civil rights organizations called “Stop Hate For Profit” launched a boycott of Facebook’s advertising platform that saw Facebook lose $56 billion in value in June. CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself even lost more than $7 billion of personal wealth.
So was the boycott a success? According to organizers, the answer isn’t yet clear.
The timing of the boycott occurred just after a two-year, Facebook-led internal civil rights audit of the company and its platform. The audit revealed that Facebook has made a series of “vexing and heartbreaking decisions" in dealing with hate and misinformation that have "real world consequences that are serious setbacks for civil rights.”
Though the audit’s report hadn’t yet been released by the time of the boycott, Stop Hate For Profit organizers raised similar concerns. But after a meeting between the boycott’s organizers and Facebook leadership to discuss the terms of the boycott, organizers came away frustrated.
“The meeting we just left was a disappointment,” Color Of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson was quoted by CNBC as saying during a post-meeting press conference.
“We had 10 demands ... We expected specifics, and that’s not what we heard,” he lamented. “At this point we were expecting some very clear answers to the recommendations ... and we did not get that.”
Their demands included more diverse leadership, regular audits of content and advertising on the platform, and removal of hate groups and hate-based content. A significant demand, sure to alienate the Trump administration, is their call to eliminate political exemptions to sitewide guidelines.
“[I]t will take far more than an ad boycott around hate speech to curb the economic power of Big Tech,” argues Rana Foroohar in the Financial Times. “[B]oycotters including Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Unilever make up a small share of overall social media ad revenues. More than 70 per cent of Facebook’s $70bn of advertising revenues comes from small businesses.”
Unless a generous billionaire like Jay-Z props them up, most small businesses, incredibly hard-hit by the pandemic and unable to withstand a boycott’s loss of revenue, will likely continue using Facebook for advertising.
The impact on Zuckerberg himself is also negligible: the $7 billion he lost as a result of the boycott is less than 10% of his total net worth. “[T]hese advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough,” he told his staff recently.
The boycott, and the #DeleteFacebook movement, may not create substantive change within the stubborn organization as it continues to rake in billions of dollars. And some activists argue the social network can still be used for good.
"We know we will be judged by our actions not by our words and are grateful to these groups and many others for their continued engagement,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone. Supporters of the boycott will presumably be watching to see what those actions are.