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If you notice social media execs looking a little pale today, this news might be why: Starbucks is “pausing” ads on “all social media platforms” — minus YouTube — until those platforms can get their hate speech problems under control.
Verizon, Coca-Cola, Unilever, and other heavyweights have already halted their ad spending.
But Starbucks’ entry into the fray is important because it comes after Facebook — the main target of the big ad retreat — tried to brew a fix.
On Friday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that he would slap warning labels on posts from politicians that break Facebook’s rules about misinformation and violence.
Sound familiar? That’s because it looks a lot like Twitter’s approach.
But Starbucks took one look at those changes and sipped its tea. Labels aren’t enough: The coffee kingpin is calling for tighter moderation of hate speech.
The New York Times has some estimates on how much each boycott might cost Big Blue (One example: Unilever spent ~$42m+ on Facebook ads last year).
The numbers might look measly compared to Facebook’s $17.7B in revenue — and that was just last quarter. After all, most of Facebook’s advertisers are small businesses that can’t afford to boycott.
But high-profile drop-outs do matter — Facebook’s stock price tumbled 8.3% on Friday, erasing $7B of Zuckerberg’s personal wealth.