The “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign is gaining momentum in a way that Facebook cannot ignore. In the last couple of months, the social media giant Facebook has been dissecting and creating disharmony by not stopping the spread of hate, racism, and communal swearing on its platform. Irrespective of the concerns raised by public as well as several companies, Facebook, in its greed for growth and engagement, is not acting against racist and hateful content floating on the platform.
What is “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign?
Over the platform’s reluctance to police hate speech and misinformation, several blue-chip brands have joined the #StopHateforProfit campaign launched by six civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League. The goal of the campaign is to have large Facebook advertisers “show they will not support a company that puts profit over safety.” Facebook has repeatedly failed in proliferating white supremacist content and provocations of violence against protesters. The possible reason for the failure is the widespread voter suppression efforts on the platform.
The boycott campaign is the first ever such movement putting Facebook under the scanner for its unethical and biased approach. So far, discussions of policy or regulation efforts in the U.S. haven’t made Facebook radically readdress its hate-speech policies
Here is the list of companies that have already pulled their ads from Facebook
- Adidas
- Ben & Jerry’s
- Beam Suntory
- Blue Bottle Coffee
- Coca-Cola
- Dashlane
- Ford
- Hershey’s
- Honda
- HP
- Levi Strauss
- REI
- Patagonia
- Arc’tryx
- Eddie Bauer
- Rakuten Viber
- Dashlane
- Magnolia Pictures
- Eileen Fisher
- Microsoft
- Puma
- Birch Box
- Lululemon
- Docers
- Mozilla
- Jansport
- North Face
- Pfizer
- Starbucks
- Target
- Upwork
- Unilever
- Vans
- Verizon
- Vertex
Aim of “Stop For Hate Campaign”
Here are the areas that the campaign focuses on:
Accountability: The movement wants Facebook to establish and empower permanent civil rights infrastructure including C-suite level executive with civil rights expertise to evaluate products and policies for discrimination, bias, and hate. It has also asked the social media giant to conduct third party, independent audits, especially for identity-based hate and misinformation.
The group also seeks a detailed report of audit and has asked for shelling refunds to advertisers whose ads were shown next to content that was later removed for violations of terms of service. See examples here.
Decency: Stop For Hate campaign has also asked Facebook to remove public and private groups focused on white supremacy, militia, antisemitism, violent conspiracies, Holocaust denialism, vaccine misinformation, and climate denialism. This requires a change in policies related to the functioning of the platform in order to remove radicalization and hate on the platform.
It also suggests inclusion of an internal mechanism to spontaneously flag hateful content in private groups for human review and to ensure accuracy in political and voting matters by eliminating the politician exemption.
Support – Facebook should hire expert teams to review submissions of identity-based hate and harassment. It is necessary for the team to understand the different types of harassment faced by different groups in order to adjudicate claims.
The campaign also focuses on helping individuals who have been on the receiving end of the severe hate and harassment. Not only should they be able to put in resources to stop the spread of communal disharmony but also work towards the sentiments of securing users interest to uphold the social fabric of the society.