If you can think of #StopHateForProfit, think again.
The Walt Disney Company has reportedly joined the long list of corporations pushing Facebook to its platform. A Saturday report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that Disney has “significantly reduced” its advertising spending on Facebook Inc. (including Instagram, which is owned by Facebook).
This comes from “people familiar with the subject” than from a named font, so keep that in mind. But it’s hard to forget the implications of a high-level, widely valued company like Disney that takes such actions.
As the same WSJ report, which brought knowledge from the pathmetrics company, points out, Disney was the first Facebook advertiser in the United States in the first part of 2020. So, while many other giant corporations have already taken similar steps, adding Starbucks, Verizon and Microsoft, this still represents a blow to the social network.
For weeks, teams like NAACP and ADL, as well as the Stop Hate For Profit movement, have encouraged corporations of all sizes to attack Facebook where it hurts the most: the company’s results. This is a component of an effort to push the platform to replace what has been largely a non-intervention attitude in terms of surveillance and user behavior.
“They have allowed protesters fighting for racial justice in the United States to incite violence by following George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks and so many others,” reads the Stop Hate For Profit project statement.
“They named Breitbart News as a reliable source of data and made the Daily Caller a “fact checker” even though any of the publications were published with well-known white nationalists. They turn a blind eye to the bratant suppression of the electorate on their platform.”
Facebook’s July assembly with the boycott organizers went well, and its own self-imposed audit painted the image of a dysfunctional company that made a series of “baffling and heartbreaking decisions.” But for your credit, there are also symptoms that the company is moving towards change.
In early July, the company closed a network of hatred connected to the hate organization Proud Boys and Donald Trump’s ally Roger Stone. In a corresponding move, Stone’s Instagram account was also closed. Facebook is also contemplating a ban on classified political ads in the days leading up to the NOVEMBER U.S. election (although this resolution is somewhat more questionable).
More recently, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg bratly criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in a live Q&A consultation on Facebook with Anthony Fauci. While this is also somewhat questionable, as Zuckerberg has been unable to assume The role of Facebook to reinforce the same incorrect information that Trump and his supporters have continually endorsed.
Disney’s recently reported breakup applies in particular to advertising spending on Disney, the company’s popular streaming service that was introduced in the 2019 expiration. Hulu’s ads on Instagram were also suspended, and the report goes on to note that “other Disney divisions are also reviewing their advertising on Facebook.” ABC ads and the Freeform cable network “have still disappeared from the site.”
With Disney doing all this in silence, we’ll have to consider that this relief in ad spending has as much or more to do with the relative scarcity of TV releases and movies looming in the midst of a global pandemic. But even though Disney chose not to comment on the WSJ report, it’s telling that Facebook did, and the company acknowledged, “We know we still have things to do.”