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Starbucks suspends social media ads over hate speech

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Daily US Times: The coffee giant Starbucks has announced it will suspend advertising on some social media platforms in response to hate speech.

The company joins global brands including Unilever, Coca-Cola and Diageo which have recently removed advertising from social platforms.

A Starbucks spokesperson told that the decision would not include YouTube, owned by Google.

Starbucks said in a statement that they believe ”in bringing communities together, both in person and online.”

The brand said it would “have discussions internally and with media partners and civil rights organizations to stop the spread of hate speech”. But the company will continue to post on social media without paid promotion.

The announcement came after Coca-Cola called for “greater accountability” from social media firms.

Coca Cola said it would pause advertising on all social media platforms globally, while Unilever, owner of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, said it would halt Facebook, Twitter and Instagram advertising in the US “at least” through 2020.

The announcements from big corporations follow controversy over Facebook’s approach to moderating content on its platform – which is seen by many as too hands off. On Friday, Facebook announced that it would begin to label potentially harmful or misleading posts which have been left up for their news value. Starbuckes’ decision came after that.

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company would also ban advertising containing claims “that people of a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status” are a threat to others.

The organisers of the #StopHateforProfit campaign said the “small number of small changes” would not “make a dent in the problem”. The campaign has accused Facebook of not doing enough to stop hate speech and disinformation.

More than 150 companies have paused advertising in support of #StopHateforProfit, but Starbucks said that while it was suspending advertising on some social platforms, it would not join the campaign.

Coca-Cola also said its advertising suspension did not mean it was joining the #StopHateforProfit campaign, despite being listed as a “participating business”.

The campaign has urged Mark Zuckerberg to take further steps, including finding and removing public and private groups publishing such content, submitting to independent audits of identity-based hate and misinformation, establishing permanent civil rights “infrastructure” within Facebook, and creating expert teams to review complaints.

One of the campaign’s organisers said it would also call on European firms to join the boycott.

You may read: How social networks responded to Trump’s latest executive order?

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