Pattern Matching
How the Facebook Ad Boycott Will End
Facebook may follow YouTube, which made real changes in response to a 2017 advertiser rebellion — and emerged stronger than ever
Welcome back to Pattern Matching, OneZero’s weekly newsletter that puts the week’s most compelling tech stories in context.
What started as a call by civil rights groups last week for businesses to suspend advertising on Facebook and Instagram has snowballed into a legitimate crisis for the social media company. In a 24-hour period starting on Thursday, corporate giants Verizon, Unilever, and Coca-Cola announced that they would “pause” their advertising on either Facebook specifically, or social media in general, as part of the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign. Organizers hope to pressure Facebook into more actively monitoring, moderating, and demonetizing hate speech and other misinformation.
Crises are nothing new for Facebook, obviously, but this one hits the company where few others have: square in the bottom line. Its stock price dipped 8% Friday as the big-name brands piled on. Whether it will lead to meaningful change in how the company does business, however, is unclear: Facebook’s ownership structure insulates CEO Mark Zuckerberg from shareholder pressure, and…
