The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Facebook is working to persuade advertisers to abandon their boycott. So far, they aren’t impressed.

More than 750 advertisers are boycotting Facebook, asking for better policing of hateful content. Facebook’s concessions so far haven’t won them over.

July 3, 2020 at 11:45 p.m. EDT
(Sascha Steinback/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Facebook has spent the past few days in round-the-clock conversations with advertisers, trying to persuade them to come back to the platform with the promise of modest changes to address concerns that the social network profits from hate and outrage.

But advertisers and the agencies they work with say they are still negotiating. And they say they are so far unimpressed with promises to better police hate speech, including labeling some politicians’ posts when they break the company’s policies. On Tuesday, when the civil rights groups that organized the efforts expect to sit down with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, they plan to push for a rash of changes, including adding a C-suite-level executive dedicated to ensuring that the company’s policies don’t contribute to racism and radicalization.