"Death of Blacks" storm is intensifying. The initial demonstrations and protests have begun to penetrate into various fields such as commerce. Businessmen who are eager to survive have sniffed the signal early and avoided being affected by renaming and removing products. Compared with
, Facebook, which has always been ambiguous, has become the biggest target. Its approach to inflammatory remarks has finally evolved into one of the biggest crises since "Datagate" under constant criticism. I don't know that Zuckerberg is not too late to make up for it.
Facebook (Source: Xinhua News Agency) The stock price of
plummeted by 8.3%.
survived the impact of the epidemic, but Facebook failed to escape the raid by another black swan, just as the race of reflection triggered by the death of the American black Freud As the wave of discrimination is intensifying, Facebook ranks first on the boycott list due to its laissez-faire remarks. What makes it even more difficult for Facebook is that there are more and more multinational giants supporting the boycott list.
On the evening of June 26, local time, the Coca-Cola Company also "officially announced", "Starting from July 1, the Coca-Cola Company will suspend paid advertising on all social media platforms around the world for at least 30 days." Coca-Cola CEO James Kun West wrote in the statement, "We will take time to re-evaluate our advertising standards and policies to determine whether we need to make changes internally. We need to place more expectations on our social media partners to get rid of hatred, violence, and nonsense. Appropriate content."
On the same day, Honda Motor America also issued a statement stating that Honda America will withdraw its ads on Facebook and Instagram in July, "this is in line with our company's people-oriented values."
"StopHateforProfit" is the name of this nationwide advertising boycott. It is organized by civil rights organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, "Change Color", and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Allow racism, violence and verifiable false content to respond to rampant practices on its platform". For a long time, Facebook has been considered to be ineffective in overseeing hateful and discriminatory remarks on its platform. It has not only exposed bad remarks by racial discriminators, but also has not discerned related advertisements and false videos.
Under the waves of appeals, more and more companies have joined the boycott. According to incomplete statistics, as of now, more than 120 companies including Unilever, Coca-Cola, Honda Motor, Hershey, telecommunications giant Verizon, Levi’s, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's, and well-known clothing brand Eddie Bauer have announced that they will suspend their Advertise on Facebook. As
resisted, Facebook's stock price reacted immediately. As of the close of U.S. stocks on Friday, Facebook's stock price plummeted 8.3%, the biggest drop in nearly three months, and its market value dropped by approximately $56 billion. At the same time, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg's personal worth also fell to 82.3 billion US dollars, shrinking more than 7 billion US dollars. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zuckerberg’s wealth was previously estimated at $89.5 billion. After shrinking, he will drop one place to fourth on the list.
Facebook face-changing
"Today, we ask all companies to unite, for our deep-rooted freedom, equality and justice in the United States, stop advertising on Facebook in July." Last Wednesday, advertisers collectively published in the "Los Angeles Times" A full-page advertisement to show your position.
In fact, not only Facebook is criticized for content control, but social media giants are all resisting. Twitter was also affected. At the close on Friday, Twitter's stock price closed at $29.05, a drop of 7.4%; at the same time, Google's stock price also fell by 5.45%.
However, it is only Facebook that has become the target of public criticism, which seems reasonable. Twitter, also a social giant, has always been quite tough in controlling related speech, as illustrated by several rounds of quarrels with US President Trump. As early as a month ago, Trump called the protesters "THUGS" on Twitter.And warned that the army was on its way to Minneapolis. For this tweet, Twitter labeled it to warn users of violent remarks, and at the same time prohibited users from "like" or "repost" the tweet.
In contrast, Facebook has not taken any action on similar posts by Trump. Zuckerberg said that Facebook decided to keep the post because the company's position is to "allow people to speak as much as possible unless there is a clear policy that they will cause imminent danger or specific harm."
In response to Twitter’s repeated “rights”, Trump also signed an executive order late last month to try to restrict social media’s power to review user content. It is worth noting that on May 29, Trump and Zuckerberg had a phone call. The news site Axios said that although it is not clear what Trump and Zuckerberg discussed on the phone, both sides described the conversation as fruitful.
In fact, Facebook’s statement was a bit tougher for advertisers who began to implement boycotts earlier. Caroline Everson, vice president of its global business group, said in a letter to advertisers: “We We will not change policies due to income pressure. We formulate policies based on principles, not commercial interests.”
It is obvious that Facebook’s attitude began to change after Unilever, Coca-Cola and other giants joined in. On Friday, Zuckerberg, who could not bear the pressure, made concessions. According to the new policy, Facebook will prohibit advertisements that claim that people from a particular race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, gender, sexual orientation, or immigrant origin pose a threat to the personal safety or health of others.
Internet analyst Yang Shijie mentioned that as for politics and content control, Facebook has always been criticized. This can only rely on Facebook to purify it to the greatest extent through technical means.
Advertising business injured
Regardless of the specific reasons for Facebook’s concession, at least the loss of interests must be considered. As a well-deserved social giant in the world, Facebook sits on the three platforms of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, with more than 3 billion active users worldwide, and advertising is its revenue pillar.
"For social platforms, advertising is the most important source. Other members, value-added services, etc., have relatively little income and cannot be compared with advertising. Advertising can be roughly divided into consumer products, website apps, and games. Accounted for 20%-30%, in addition, the game category also accounts for a large proportion." Feng Huakui, founder of naughty e-commerce company pointed out. The
financial report shows that Facebook’s total revenue last year was 70.697 billion US dollars, of which advertising revenue reached 69.7 billion US dollars and more than 8 million advertisers. In the first quarter of this year, Facebook’s operating income was 17.737 billion US dollars, of which advertising revenue was 17.44 billion US dollars, accounting for 98.3%. The
figures have shown Facebook's dependence on advertising revenue. Needham & Co.’s industry analyst Laura Martin also found that large brands account for an increasing proportion of Facebook’s advertising revenue, and as smaller advertisers shrink or close down due to the epidemic, large brands have a greater impact on Facebook. It will only become more important. Regarding the latest situation of the advertising business and related data, a reporter from Beijing Business Daily contacted the Facebook Media Contact Center, but as of press time, no specific response has been received. Among the advertisers participating in the boycott, the advertising expenditures of many companies on the Facebook platform cannot be underestimated. According to data from the advertising intelligence company Pathmatics in 2019, Unilever, Verizon, and REI are among the top 100 advertisers on Facebook, and Unilever has invested more than $42 million in Facebook advertising, ranking 30th. Coca-Cola spent $22.1 million on Facebook platform advertising last year and spent more than $18 million on Twitter. According to the "Financial Times" report, in the first three weeks of June this year, Verizon placed $850,000 in Facebook ads.
Regarding the current situation of the advertising industry, Yang Shijie said frankly that socialThe platform relies on advertising as its main income. On the one hand, the impact of the epidemic has affected the company’s revenue. The advertising business has not been very good. Compared with last year, advertising will definitely decline; on the other hand, advertisers may also use this as a Opportunity, to re-negotiate cooperation with the advertising platform, increase some market and operational requirements, in order to save the cost of advertising as much as possible, and further lead to the reshaping of the overall advertising industry.
Beijing Commercial Daily reporter Tao Feng Tang Yitian
