Civil rights groups behind ad boycott slam Facebook leaders after meeting
The coalition of civil rights groups calling for an advertising boycott of Facebook on Tuesday condemned the company's leadership following a meeting that was meant to address its content moderation policies and efforts to police hateful speech.
Leaders of the NAACP, Color Of Change, Free Press and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in a statement that a meeting conducted on Zoom with CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other members of Facebook's leadership left them unconvinced that the platform is committed to tackling issues surrounding "vitriolic hate."
The representatives said that Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Product Officer Christopher Cox failed to commit to addressing the majority of their recommendations on how to handle misinformation and hate speech on the platform.
"Zuckerberg offered the same old defense of white supremacist, anti-Semitic, islamophobic and other hateful groups on Facebook that the Stop Hate For Profit Coalitions, advertisers and society at large have heard too many times before," they said.
The meeting on Tuesday came as Facebook faces escalating pressure to ramp up its content moderation efforts surrounding incendiary posts, including those shared by President Trump. In the weeks ahead of the meeting, a campaign calling for an ad boycott of the company had gained commitments from hundreds of businesses, including Verizon, Starbucks and Coca-Cola.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/506259-civil-rights-groups-behind-ad-boycott-slam-facebook-leaders-after-meeting