We don’t stop until hate for profit stops

Did your company join the #StopHateForProfit advertise boycott in July? If so, great! We raised awareness, but Mark Zuckerberg dismissed our demands. The protest must continue until Facebook takes action to stop the real harm to real people.

Join me in asking the executive leaders at your company to commit to continuing the boycott. Here is a template for raising the issue on whatever forum your company uses to address employee concerns.

  1. Is CompanyName committed to continuing its boycott of Facebook advertising until the demands of the Stop Hate for Profit protest are met?

  2. Will CompanyName consider deleting its Facebook Page? And if not deleting its page, stop posting and providing support via its page?

I am grateful CompanyName joined the Stop Hate for Profit advertiser boycott of Facebook in July CompanyName and hundreds of other companies used their brand power to raise awareness and marketing budgets to demand change. Unfortunately, change did not come after July’s boycott.

Mark Zuckerberg was quoted from an internal company meeting as saying the advertisers would come back after July and the revenue they represented would not be meaningful. Thus, no change happened.

Just this Monday, Vice News reported on recent violence in Ethiopia incited by sudden widespread sharing of ethnic hate speech on Facebook. Another report published by BuzzFeed News on Monday summarized a whisteblower report from a fired Facebook data scientist. They disclosed Facebook’s failures to adequately address known widespread election interference in at least 6 countries.

Cutting advertising is not enough. Our company’s mere presence and investment of our employees’ time on Facebook increases the value of Facebook’s network effect.

Some other companies, like Basecamp and Tesla, deleted their Facebook pages. By not posting on Facebook, people have fewer things to engage with and therefore see fewer ads, which is another way of affecting Facebook’s revenue until it changes. By not providing customer support on Facebook, the value of Facebook is lessened. If enough companies do this, people will have fewer reasons to keep using Facebook.

How committed is CompanyName to stopping hate for profit?