COCA COLA HAS announced it is to suspend advertising on social media for at least 30 days, as platforms face a reckoning over how they deal with racist content.
“There is no place for racism in the world and there is no place for racism on social media,” James Quincey, chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, said in a brief statement.
He said social media companies – which other major brands have boycotted to force changes in how they deal with hateful material – need to provide “greater accountability and transparency”.
Coca Cola will use the pause to “reassess our advertising policies to determine whether revisions are needed,” Quincey said.
The beverage giant told CNBC that the “break” does not mean it is joining the movement launched last week by African American and civil society groups.
The coalition, which includes the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), has been urging companies to stop advertising on Facebook, using the #StopHateForProfit hashtag.
It aims to achieve better regulation of groups inciting hatred, racism or violence on the platform.
Unilever, home to brands including Lipton tea and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, said it would stop advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in the US until the end of 2020 due to the “polarized election period”.
Meanwhile, Facebook on Friday said it would ban a “wider category of hateful content” in ads as the embattled social media giant moved to respond to growing protests over its handling of inflammatory posts.
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook also would add tags to posts that are “newsworthy” but violate platform rules — following the lead of Twitter, which has used such labels on tweets from US President Donald Trump.
The new policy on hateful content in ads will “prohibit claims that people from a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status are a threat to the physical safety, health or survival of others,” Zuckerberg said.
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