ice cream Ben & Jerry’s (Unilever), clothing outdoor The North Face or Patagonia, and the list could be longer… All these brands, these long-time on Facebook and Instagram, two networks are essential to ensure a wide online visibility, reflect or have already announced that they would boycott the two platforms of the group’s subsidiaries Facebook until at least the end of the month of July. During this period, they are considering not to buy advertising space to show their indignation.

The campaign, launched a week ago in the United States at the initiative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the most ancient and powerful associations for the defence of persons of color, in association with Color Of Change, the Anti-Defamation League (combating anti-semitism), FreePress, and Sleeping Giants, gave a word of advice: Stop Hate-For-Profit (#StopHateForProfit, “Not to the hatred of the profits”).

Initiated by these associations, a movement of advertisers, who all have large communities of fans as well on Facebook than on Instagram, echoed the criticisms made to the two networks the most visited on the planet (respectively a and 2.6 billion monthly active users), which wouldn’t do enough to fight against fake news or incitement to hatred, including racial.

The position of Facebook on political ads is up here to let rather than to intervene to moderate its content. The group led by Mark Zuckerberg, however, has slightly changed its policy of moderation on this topic. Last week, after fifteen days of time of procrastination, Facebook has for the first time broken with its position of neutrality: it has removed from its platform to a spot of the campaign team of Donald Trump in which there is a red triangle reversed, notoriously a nazi symbol.

Competition between networks

Facebook is under the pressure of a surrounding of its “competitors”, including Twitter. Its founder, Jack Dorsey, has expressed on several occasions its disagreements with Mark Zuckerberg about the moderation. Since the end of last year, Twitter has particularly banned the advertising policies of its network. More recently, at the end of may, the platform is stepped to reduce the visibility of tweets from Donald Trump. A first. Without removing the message – having regard to the dimension of “public interest” that are supposed to represent the tweets of an american president, the platform was placed behind a notice explaining that it had violated its code of conduct on the “glorification of violence”.

TikTok, which now has 800 million active users, is also entered into the dance with a position of ambivalence. On one side, the platform of music videos has become a hotbed of political activism. Thousands of fans of K-pop, and of users of TikTok have admitted to having booked hundreds of seats in a meeting of Donald Trump. The application is also considered to be one of the main voices of the movement Black Lives Matter.

Accusations of censorship

on the other hand, TikTok is accused of censorship by activists in hong kong. In September 2019, the british newspaper The Guardian had revealed that the chinese social network asked his moderators to delete the videos making mention of the massacre of Tiananmen, or questions about the independence of Tibet. ByteDance, the mother house of TikTok, refutes these accusations.

The context requires platforms to have a clearer position. As in France, for example, the attempt of accountability of networks by law Avia – which, in particular, was impose on them an obligation of removal within 24 hours of the content and nature of hateful or sexual – has been deemed to be unconstitutional, the constitutional Council has pointed to a violation of the freedom of expression.

The movement of boycott of advertising will he take? If other brands in the United States, as the job listings site Upwork or on the Internet company Mozilla, well known for his activism, speaking of the join, others stand behind. The automotive group General Motors by the voice of a spokesman has said they do not want to ‘engage in lofty declarations on platforms”.

The editorial team conseilleFacebook has minimized internal initiatives designed to weaken the content extrémistesCoronavirus: the efforts of the social networks against the fake news begin to payerSujetsJack DorseyMark ZuckerbergFacebookTwitterModérationboycottpublicitéaucun comment

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