NEW YORK – June 29: The “boycott” of advertisers against Facebook and other social networks continues to gain strength as a result of anti-racist protests in the US and this Sunday the Starbucks coffee chain announced that it will suspend its advertising on those platforms, as a hundred companies have already done, from the giant Unilever to Coca-Cola.
Starbucks said in a statement that it will “pause all advertising on social media platforms” while debating “internally, with media partners and civil rights organizations in an effort to stem the spread of hate speech.”
“We believe in uniting communities, both in-person and online, and we position ourselves against hate speech. We believe more must be done to create open and inclusive online communities, and we believe that business leaders and legislators need to come together to make real change, ”added the Starbucks.
Starbucks was the sixth-largest advertiser on Facebook last year and spent about $ 95 million on advertising, but the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg posted a significantly higher figure thanks to this business of $ 70 billion.
According to the CNBC channel, the coffee shop chain does not support the advertising boycott of Facebook promoted by various civil rights organizations that seek to force the company to be more strict to avoid hate speech and disinformation under the label “StopHateForProfit”.
However, since groups such as the Anti-Defamation League or the National Association for the Progress of People of Color (NAACP) made that call, more than one hundred companies have decided to temporarily or permanently pause their ads in platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
This announcement is in addition to that of the British alcoholic beverages giant Diageo, which indicated this Saturday that it will pause its announcements globally on “the major social media platforms” as of July, and in recent days they have taken the same initiative Coca-Cola , Unilever, Levi Strauss & Co, Eddie Bauer, The North Face, Patagonia, REI or Verizon.