George Floyd, a black man, was killed in the US by a police officer on May 25, 2020.
This led to Black Lives Matter protests, which began in Minneapolis, US on May 26th but eventually spread nationwide and then to over 60 countries.
At some places, the protests turned violent and on the evening of May 28-29, Donald Trump used the phrase, “when the looting starts, shooting starts” in his tweet and cross-posted it on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
This phrase is said to have a ‘racial’ history – it was first used during the 1967 civil rights campaign (against racial discrimination) by the police chief of Miami, who said he didn’t mind being accused of police brutality against protestors.
Twitter flagged the tweet by Trump with a ‘public interest notice’ for ‘glorifying violence’; so while the tweet remained visible, the user had to acknowledge a notice of violation before reading it.
But Facebook took no action, despite requests from media and its own employees (leaked posts show many employees requested action).
On May 29, Mark Zuckerberg said that while he personally found the post offensive, it didn’t violate FB’s policies as it wouldn’t cause harm as defined in its policies.
All this was happening while companies such as Nike, Twitter & Citigroup were aligning themselves with Black Lives Matter movement, despite the risk of offending a certain segment of audience.
June 2 was observed as Blackout Tuesday, where advertisers posted images of black boxes instead of paid ads on digital platforms.
Mid-June, six civil rights groups organized a social boycott of FB, calling on media planners, buyers and advertisers to stop advertising on the platform in July.
These groups demanded FB to stop generating revenue from hateful content & use some of its $70 billion ad revenue (from last year) to provide for victims of hate and racism.
98% of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising by 8 million advertisers, which include all small, medium and big advertisers.
Many of the boycott-participants have been small advertisers but lately plenty of big brands such as Coca Cola, The North Face, Starbucks & Levi’s have also decided to distance themselves from FB, at least for some time.
