This archive report was first published on 29 June 2020.
Following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by Minneapolis police, the campaign was launched by Free Press and Common Sense, along with U.S. civil rights groups Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League.
On Saturday, Jim Steyer, chief executive of Common Sense Media, said in an interview with Reuters that the campaign will begin calling on major companies in Europe to join the boycott.
Since the campaign launched earlier this month, more than 160 companies, including Verizon Communications and Unilever Plc, have signed on to stop buying ads on the world’s largest social media platform for the month of July.
According to Steyer, the next frontier is global pressure, with the campaign hoping to embolden regulators in Europe to take a harder stance on Facebook.
Facebook has acknowledged it has more work to do and is teaming up with civil rights groups and experts to develop more tools to fight hate speech.
However, the campaign's demands, which include a separate moderation process to help users who are targeted by race and other identifiers, more transparency on how many incidents of hate speech are reported, and to stop generating ad revenue from harmful content, have not been fully addressed by Facebook.
On Friday, Facebook’s 8.3% decline in stock price wiped out $56 billion in market capitalization, highlighting the level of frustration felt by social justice groups and the companies that support them over Facebook’s lack of action on misinformation and hate speech.
