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Facebook CEO’s meeting with advert boycott leaders ‘disappointing’

Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer of Facebook

*Business leaders behind boycott unsatisfied with Zuckerberg’s answers, say ad boycott isn’t over

*Tech giant’s executives merely treated meeting like ‘a PR exercise’ ─Stakeholders

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg participated in a video conference with leaders of the organisations behind the advertising boycott of his platform Tuesday, July 7, 2020, but reportedly did little to prove that he was interested in addressing the advertisers’ concerns.

Rashad Robinson, Executive Director of Color of Change, during a video press conference after the meeting, said: “The meeting we just left was a disappointment. They showed up to the meeting expecting an A for attendance,” says report.

It was learnt that the four civil rights groups that recently began pressuring Facebook to do more to address hateful content on its platform included the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Color of Change, and Free Press.

Together, the organisations launched a campaign urging Facebook to curb the spread of hate speech and misinformation on its site, according to report.

In terms of commitment to making amends and addressing their concerns on issues raised about the tech giant, the leaders of the organisations were said to have disclosed that Facebook executives didn’t commit to changing anything at the meeting.

They stated that the leading social media platform merely treated the meeting like “a PR exercise”.

Jonathan Greenblatt, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the ADL, said he and other leaders presented 10 specific ways to crack down on the issue of hate speech on the platform.

Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives, nevertheless, didn’t immediately commit to meeting any of the demands, report said of participants in the meeting.

Greenblatt related his experience at the meeting, saying, “we had 10 demands, and literally we went through the 10 and we didn’t get commitments or timeframes or clear outcomes.

“We expected specifics, and that’s not what we heard.”

The ADL CEO added: “All Mark (Zuckerberg) needs to do, all Facebook needs to do, is once and for all say ‘White supremacy, racism, anti-semitism, anti-Muslim hate, xenophobia —once and for all, it has to stop, and that stops now,’ ” Greenblatt added.

Stressing ‘this isn’t over’ as regards their boycott of Facebook, Jessica Gonzalez, Co-CEO of Free Press, in a statement, said Zuckerberg and his colleagues “delivered the same old talking points to try to placate us without meeting our demands.

“This isn’t over. We will continue to expand the boycott until Facebook takes our demands seriously.”

Meanwhile, Facebook officials purportedly said the company would not make changes for financial reasons or due to pressure from advertisers.

Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer (COO), in a post stated that Facebook will only make changes because it’s “the right thing to do.”

Zuckerberg recently stated that he believes advertisers will be back sooner rather than later.

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