Facebook is a worldwide social media platform that connects people globally in business and social life. Its owner is known as Mark Zuckerberg. Lately, the platform is facing business threats from protesting organizations. These organizations want to take out their ads from Facebook if it fails to deal with the pending issues of hate speech and misinformation.
This drama started when Facebook failed to take action against the US president after posting debatable posts. Since then Facebook has been experiencing pressure from various parties as they want the platform to take speedy action on the rising issue.
The Civil Rights and Activists Parties on Facebook
The concerned parties have condemned the leadership of Facebook. Initially, they had met with Mark Zuckerberg to talk about the demands of a huge ad shun. Free Press, a media activist group, says that FB has not taken the rising matter to serious and immediate action yet.
Jessica Gonzalez, the Free Press co-CEO says:
“Instead of committing to a timeline to root out disinformation on Facebook, the leaders delivered the same points to try to placate us without meeting our demands. Facebook approached our meeting today like it was nothing more than a PR exercise.”
Other activist organizations such as the North Face and Levi Strauss joined the protest campaign. They are concerned about the platform’s ability on controlling the continuous headaches of disinformation and hate talks. Various companies have promised to remove their ads off Facebook in this month.
Stone’s View On the Issue
Andy is the spokesman of Facebook. He says that Facebook is trying to create new courses of action. Moreover, the company eliminated over 200 white dominating groups from the social media platform.
His statement says:
“This meeting was an opportunity for us to hear from the campaign organizers and reaffirm our commitment to fighting hate speech on our platform. They want Facebook to be free of hate and so do we. We know people will judge us through our actions and not via our words and we are grateful to these organizations and others for their support.”
The Tuesday Meeting and List Of Demands From Campaign Organizers
The meeting on Tuesday was over 60 minutes. Participants participated through Zoom amid the pandemic measures of prohibiting social gatherings. The meeting included FB CEO, Sheryl Sandberg, and Cox. The campaign had brands that asked for more than 8 amends on Facebook’s operations.
The demands were that Facebook needs to employ a C-Suite top official with a great experience on civil rights to go through rules for biasness. Facebook is to perform regular reviews on disinformation and hate speech. The company must also eliminate groups concentrating on hate speech and stop advocating for such organizations.
During the same meeting, organizations expressed their frustrations with what these groups said were the same conversations with fewer outcomes. Derrick Johnson, the president of NAACP, says NAACP has engaged itself in conversations with the social media company concerning the issue but efforts were futile. Moreover, Gonzalez says she is fed up and that her group will not participate in future FB meetings and seminars.
As the meeting was coming to a close end, Sandberg assured that the firm will release the last report today. However, some civil rights organizations show their doubt about the report’s probability of resulting in better changes.
More:
