Telecom giant Verizon is the latest company to say it is pulling out from advertising on Facebook. Verizon joins brands like Unilever's Ben & Jerry's, Eileen Fisher, REI, The North Face and Patagonia to join the #StopHateForProfit boycott.
Chief Media Officer for Verizon John Nitti was quoted in a CNN report as saying, “We're pausing our advertising until Facebook can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable and is consistent with what we've done with YouTube and other partners.”
In the wake of the Black Lives Matters movement, advertisers are looking carefully at social media platforms on how ad money is being spent as the volume of political advertising grows. Corporations are avoiding being closely associated with activists of supremacist groups and are holding back from putting their ad money on platforms where hate proliferates under the banner of free speech.
Verizon’s decision follows an open letter to advertisers Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League that highlighted the instance of a Verizon ad that appeared beside a conspiracy-mongering post on Facebook.
“We found an advertisement for Verizon appearing next to a video from the conspiracy group QAnon drawing on hateful and antisemitic rhetoric,” the letter read, “warning that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is planning to bring on the civil war with concentration camps and coffins at the ready and claiming Americans are already quarantined in militarized districts”.
Verizon said that they had strict content policies and no tolerance for when they were breached.
In 2017, the telecom company pulled out advertising from YouTube post public uproar over the platform's handling of hate speech.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in the meantime, spoke to the ad agency that represents Verizon, Client Council, to reassure that Facebook is committed to doing more to maintain its neutrality.
Boycott of such a nature by companies conscious of their image could last longer than that of companies that have joined the campaign organized by civil rights groups. The pressure campaign is being led by advocacy groups including the NAACP, the ADL and Color of Change.
