Facebook boycott leaders slam Mark Zuckerberg for doing 'just about nothing' to remove 'hate speech' after 'disappointing' meeting full of 'spin'
- Leaders of a Facebook advertiser boycott met with Mark Zuckerberg Tuesday
- They say he failed to agree to any demands, and 'expected an A for attendance'
- 'We heard just about nothing' about plans to remove hate speech, they said, and accused the social network for trying to distract people with 'spin'
- Facebook said it had listened and 'reaffirmed' its commitment to removing hate
- A scathing audit of the company's civil rights practices was released Wednesday
- It said there were 'serious setbacks' in the company's progress on matters such as hate speech, misinformation and bias
- Facebook is not required to act on the audit
Organizers of a Facebook boycott campaign that has the support of thousands of major advertisers have slammed Mark Zuckerberg for doing 'just about nothing' to remove hate speech from the site.
Leaders of the #StopHateForProfit campaign lashed out after a 'disappointing' meeting with the social media CEO and other top brass which they said showed Facebook 'is not yet ready to address the vitriolic hate on their platform'.
Anti-Defamation League CEO Johnathan Greenblatt, who was at the virtual meeting on Tuesday, said 'we saw little and heard just about nothing' about how the social network is planning to remove toxic content.
Jessica Gonzalez, from activist group Free Press, added: 'This isn't over. We will continue to expand the boycott until Facebook takes our demands seriously. We won't be distracted by Facebook's spin today or any day.'
Campaigners have slammed Mark Zuckerberg (left) and Sheryl Sandberg (right) for doing 'almost nothing' to remove hate speech after a 'disappointing' meeting
The hour-long meeting included CEO Zuckerberg, his chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and other Facebook executives in discussion with the Anti-Defamation League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Color of Change and other groups.
It was seen by Facebook as an opportunity to hear from boycott organizers and 'reaffirm' a commitment to combating hate on the platform, a spokesperson told AFP.
'They want Facebook to be free of hate speech and so do we,' the spokesperson said, noting steps the social network has taken to ban white supremacist groups and fight interference with voting or the census.
'We know we will be judged by our actions not by our words and are grateful to these groups and many others for their continued engagement.'
The activists, who have backing from the likes of Coca-Cola Unilever and Starbucks, are demanding that Facebook implement ten new policies to combat misinformation and hate content on its site.
They include submitting to independent audits, refunding advertisers whose products appear alongside extremist content, and to stop recommending hate groups to users via algorithms.
Yet campaigners say that Zuckerberg and Sandberg failed to agree to a single demand and instead fired up a 'powerful P.R. machine' in an attempt to placate the other groups.
Activists who are leading an advertiser boycott of the social media giant say Zuckerberg failed to agree to a single one of their ten demands for removing hate speech from the site
'The company’s leaders delivered the same old talking points to try to placate us without meeting our demands,' Gonzalez told the New York Times.
Derrick Johnson, chief executive of the N.A.A.C.P., added that the meeting had been a repeat of the 'same conversation from the past two years'.
'We’ve watched the dialogue blossom into nothingness,' Johnson said.
The only demand they even considered was hiring a top-level civil rights expert to advise the company on best practice, but failed to agree a timeline for when that might happen or how much of a say that person would get in the company.
Rashad Robinson, president of the activist group Color of Change, told reporters that the meeting was 'a disappointment.'
Robinson said the executives 'showed up to the meeting expecting an A for attendance,' but that 'we did not get answers to questions we put on the table.'
Later on Tuesday, Facebook also met with a second group of civil rights experts that included Vanita Gupta from the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights.
She agreed that misinformation on the platform was 'still not being adequately addressed'.
The meetings took place during a boycott which has grown to nearly 1,000 advertisers pressing for more aggressive action from Facebook on toxic and inflammatory content which promotes violence and hate - spurred by the wave of protests calling for social justice and racial equity.
Money from the eight million advertisers who spend money with Facebook accounts for 98 percent of its annual $70.7billion revenue, according to the New York Times.
Despite the increasing number of companies joining the boycott, shares in the company continue to increase.
They suffered a slight dip after a two-day slide starting June 26 but quickly bounced back again, hitting a record high on Tuesday.
Some of the activists say Facebook should do more to curb disinformation from political leaders including President Donald Trump, and limit his comments which critics say promote violence and divisiveness.
Among posts which particularly roiled activists was Trump's comment during widespread protests that 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts,' which critics said was an incitement to violence.
Competitors such as Twitter and Snapchat have been more proactive, moving to label untruthful or incendiary posts from the president.
Facebook has steadfastly refused to fact-check political speech and has a largely hands-off policy on comments from world leaders.
But it has said it will take down comments that could lead to imminent harm, and recently updated a policy to label a post which violates its rules, even if it is allowed to remain online for being 'newsworthy'.
This decision was an about turn from Zuckerberg after he said that as a private company Facebook should not intervene in what is posted on the site.
It came as executives began to use a more conciliatory tone toward the demands and more and more large advertisers joined the boycott.
In a private meeting with employees last week, Zuckerberg allegedly said he believes advertisers will eventually dismiss the boycott and return.
Some of the companies pledge to the boycott have only done so for the month of July while others have pledge to stay away until major changes are made.
Earlier Tuesday, in an apparent olive branch to the boycott organizers ahead of the meeting, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg also pledged further steps to remove toxic and hateful content ahead of the discussions with the boycott organizers.
'Facebook stands firmly against hate. Being a platform where everyone can make their voice heard is core to our mission, but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable for people to spread hate,' she wrote in a lengthy Facebook post. 'It’s not.'
She added that the Silicon Valley giant would be announcing policy updates as a result of discussions with civil rights activists and its own audit of civil rights practices.
'Facebook has to get better at finding and removing hateful content,' Sandberg wrote.
'We are making changes - not for financial reasons or advertiser pressure, but because it is the right thing to do.'
Sandberg said the final report of the independent civil rights audit would be published Wednesday following a two-year review, and that this would be used to guide Facebook policy changes.
'While the audit was planned and most of it carried out long before recent events, its release couldn't come at a more important time,' she said.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in a lengthy post Tuesday that 'Facebook has to get better at finding and removing hateful content' ahead of a meeting with civil rights groups
'While we won't be making every change they call for, we will put more of their proposals into practice soon.'
In the release of the report Wednesday morning, auditors issued a scathing criticism of Facebook, and said they had found 'serious setbacks' that have marred the social network's progress on matters such as hate speech, misinformation and bias.
Its 100-page report outlines a 'seesaw of progress and setbacks' at the company on everything from bias in Facebook's algorithms to its content moderation, advertising practices and treatment of voter suppression.
'Unfortunately, in our view Facebook's approach to civil rights remains too reactive and piecemeal,' it says.
'The Auditors do not believe that Facebook is sufficiently attuned to the depth of concern on the issue of polarization and the way that the algorithms used by Facebook inadvertently fuel extreme and polarizing content.'
Campaigners - who have the backing of Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Unilever - vowed their fight is 'far from over' and said they would not be distracted by 'spin'
The audit recommends that Facebook build a 'civil rights infrastructure' into every aspect of the company, as well as a 'stronger interpretation' of existing voter suppression policies and more concrete action on algorithmic bias.
Those suggestions are not binding, and there is no formal system in place to hold Facebook accountable for any of the audit's findings.
Boycott organizers agree that Facebook still has to act on the audit results.
Color of Change's Robinson said that the audit will be 'only as good as what Facebook ends up doing with the content'.
He added that otherwise 'it’s like going to the doctor, getting a new set of recommendations about your diet and then not doing anything about it and wondering why you’re not getting any healthier'.
Facebook's position has angered not juts its advertisers but its own staff who staged walkouts in June to protest against Zuckerberg's position on labeling hate speech.
A black employee also filed a lawsuit against the social media giant last week. Navy veteran Oscar Veneszee Jr., 46, accused the company of widespread bias against black people.
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