Big companies in advertising boycott against Facebook

Among the hundreds of companies that decided to withdraw ads on Facebook are giants like Starbucks, Verizon, Unilever and Coca Cola.

Initiators of the boycott include the non-profit organization Color of Change, which works to strengthen the rights of blacks in the United States.

The campaign is another example of the massive criticism that Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg have endured lately. The background is how the platform has chosen to handle posts from US President Donald Trump.

Above all, this is a post where the president wrote "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" (roughly: "When the looting starts, we start shooting"). The term, which many consider to be deeply racist, comes from a Miami police chief in the 1960s who directed the message to the city's black residents.

Facebook chose not to delete the post, nor did it follow Twitter's example by making a mark next to the post, which was declared to violate the platform's rules.

Since then, the requirements have grown for Facebook to change its rules on what content is allowed and in a long post on its own platform earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg announced that posts that are deemed to call for violence should be removed. But the change does not seem to appease his critics.

“What we saw in today's statement from Mark Zuckerberg is a failure to wrestle with the damage Facebook has caused to our democracy and human rights. If this is his message to the big advertisers who are withdrawing millions of dollars, we cannot trust his leadership, ”Rashad Robinson, President of Color of Change, wrote on Twitter.