Brand boycott: what's the future of ads on social media?

“Brand boycott: what’s the future of ads on social media?” is a video news report conducted by Lucy Handley and published on the website of CNBC in August 2020. 

Information in this source

The information presented in the source deals with the July 2020 Facebook ad boycotts, which were organized under the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign started by ADL.

Companies need to work on dealing with hateful content on social media platforms

In July 2020, over 1000 major companies took their ads off Facebook and its adjacent social media platforms because their ads were shown next to harmful and hateful content (00:34-00:47), which meant that they were effectively funding such posts, even though they did not want to. The movement was part of the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign launched by ADL.

The video shows that companies are aware of hateful and harmful content being published on social media and work on dealing with these issues. As early as 2013, companies have pulled off their ads from Facebook because of this issue (01:16-01:32). In 2020, the death of African-American George Floyd led to extremist content being published on Facebook – including by then-president Donald Trump – which made companies aware that something needs to be done. While Twitter responded to Trump’s extremist viewpoint by hiding the content, Facebook “declined to act” (02:14), claiming that people should be made aware of Trump’s comments.

The news report suggests that brands removing their ads from social media platforms might be a fi...