San Francisco (AFP)

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has told his employees that he will not be swayed by the massive advertising boycott against his platform, led by organizations and advertisers, including Coca-Cola and Starbucks, who are calling for more regulation. strict racist and hateful content.

"We are not going to change our rules or our approach on anything because of a threat against a small percentage of our income, or against any percentage of our income," said the billionaire during a business meeting last Friday.

These words were reported by the media The Information, and confirmed by the group.

Adidas, Puma, Levis, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Ford, Unilever (Lipton, Magnum, Dove, etc.) ... More than 400 companies have suspended their purchases of ads on the social network to 1.73 billion daily users .

"In my opinion these advertisers will be back soon enough on the platform," added Mark Zuckerberg, who sees a problem of "reputation" more than economic.

"We take these questions very seriously and respect the feedback from our partners," assured a spokesperson for the group to AFP.

"We have come a long way to prevent hatred on our platform and we do not benefit from this kind of content. But as we said, we make our rules evolve according to our principles, not the pressure on our income ".

Originally, the call for a month-long boycott was launched by associations, including the NAACP, the large African American civil rights organization and an organization fighting anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League, in the context of a vast movement against systemic racism in the United States.

Facebook has met with these civil society organizations "because they have made specific requests about our products," said the spokesperson.

Without turning around, the Californian firm, which has invested a lot in moderation of content in recent years, had seemed to show goodwill in recent days.

In particular, it has banished groups claiming to belong to the American far-right movement "Boogaloo", whose heavily armed supporters have repeatedly tried to disrupt anti-racist demonstrations.

The platform will also now remove more types of "hate speech" advertising, and hide messages considered problematic from policies, so far tolerated.

© 2020 AFP