India
"Advertisers Will Be Back Soon Enough": Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Dismisses Hate Speech Boycott
|The hate speech boycott is costing Facebook millions of dollars and is backed by big firms including Marmite maker Unilever. However, the Facebook CEO has decided not to succumb to the demands of campaigners that aim at making business more accountable.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has dismissed a boycott by some of its advertisers for the company's inability to curb hate speech, claiming that it only threatens "a small per cent" of the company's revenue and that firms will come back "soon enough".
The hate speech boycott is costing Facebook millions of dollars and is backed by big firms including Marmite-maker Unilever. However, the Facebook CEO has decided not to succumb to the demands of campaigners that aim at making business more accountable.
"My guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough," Zuckerberg said.
This remark comes after advertisements for over 400 companies including Ford, Adidas, Coca-Cola and Starbucks disappeared from the social network after talks between Facebook and the boycotters ended in disarray.
"We're not going to change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue, or to any percent of our revenue," Zuckerberg said.
"Usually I tend to think that if someone goes out there and threatens you to do something, that actually kind of puts you in a box where in some ways it's even harder to do what they want because now it looks like you're capitulating," he added.
The protests against Facebook's hate speech policies has increased massively in the past two weeks, spreading from small brands to gigantic ones such as Unilever and US drugs firm Pfizer.
The top companies spent over $548m (£340m) on Facebook advertising in the US last year, according to the activist group Sleeping Giants and data from the ad analytics firm Pathmatics.