- Organizers of the "Stop Hate for Profit" campaign against Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) are preparing to take the battle global, as well as emboldening regulators in Europe to take a harder stance on the social media giant.
- Since the campaign launched on June 17, more than 160 companies, including Ben & Jerry's, Coca-Cola, Hershey's, Honda, Levi Strauss, Starbucks, The North Face, Unilever and Verizon, have pledged to stop buying Facebook ads for the month of July, and some have gone even further.
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Why it matters: Unilever has paused its U.S. spending on Facebook for the rest of the year, but that only represents about 10% of the estimated $250M it spends on Facebook advertising annually. A global campaign would make a dent in Facebook's revenue stream, while the publicity already sent Facebook's stock down 8.3% on Friday, wiping out $56B in market capitalization.
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What does the campaign want from Facebook? Solutions include a separate moderation process to help users who are targeted by racism, more transparency on how many incidents of hate speech are reported and to stop generating ad revenue from harmful content.
- "A more effective way is the continued evolvement of monitoring and regulation in the more sensitive areas," writes Jeremy Blum in a recent Seeking Alpha article, Whether We Should Break Up The FAANG Companies.
- Facebook shares are down another 2.3% to $211 in premarket trade.