Posted: Jul 2, 2020 at 7:50 am ET
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook Inc., speaks during the Silicon Slopes Technology Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on January 31.
Bloomberg news
Hundreds of companies around the world have joined a temporary boycott against Facebook Inc., but CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is not concerned and has no intention of changing his policies, according to a new report.
Zuckerberg said the boycott is more of a public relations problem than one that will hurt the results of the social media giant, according to a report published Wednesday by The Information, which cited a transcript of the comments Zuckerberg gave at an exclusive virtual town hall. for employees on Friday.
“We are not going to change our policies or focus on anything because of a threat to a small percentage of our income, or to any percentage of our income,” he said, according to The Information.
While generating headlines, the boycott involves only a small fraction of Facebook’s approximately 8 million advertisers. The company generates almost all of its revenue from ads.
Read: These are the main brands that have removed Facebook ads
The #StopHateForProfit campaign was launched by civil rights groups last month, asking major companies to stop spending on Facebook advertising in July to protest the company’s inability to curb hate speech, threats of violence and disinformation on your platform.
A portion of the virtual city hall on Friday was broadcast to the public from Zuckerberg’s Facebook page, where he announced some policy changes to crack down on hateful content and misinformation about voting. But he was reportedly more direct in private comments to employees, saying Facebook would not budge under pressure.
“You know, technically we don’t set our policies because of the pressure that people put on us,” he said, according to The Information. “And in fact, I usually tend to think that if someone goes out and threatens you to do something, that puts you in a box where, in some ways, it’s even more difficult to do what you want because now it seems like you’re capitulating, and that creates bad long-term incentives for others to do that [to you] too.”
Experts told MarketWatch on Wednesday that companies joining the boycott may see more momentum for their brands than Facebook ads would have generated in the first place.
“By pulling the ads, they save money and make a low-risk statement that results in positive advertising and marketing for their brands among constituents,” Gerard Francis Corbett, a communications strategy consultant based in Silicon Valley, told MarketWatch. “The Facebook boycott is a low-risk way for CEOs to make a [political] statement.”
Earlier this week, Rohit Kulkarni, CEO of MKM Partners, wrote in a note to clients that the advertising boycott would affect less than 5% of Facebook’s revenue.
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