Hypocrisy Abounds as Corporations Participating in the Facebook Boycott are Still Advertising On Russian Social Networks
Corporations got together to provide a massive virtue signal by agreeing to boycott Facebook. According to the agreement
put together by left-wing groups such as the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League, corporations would cease advertising on Facebook in response to Facebook allegedly allowing hate speech on its platform.
They called it the #StopHateForProfit campaign. Many corporations caved to the pressure and announced that they would be pausing advertising on Facebook. This included Coca-Cola, Adidas, Nike, Starbucks, and more.
What do they consider hate speech?
Many things said by President Donald Trump for one. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg refused to take down posts by Trump. There is also complaints that they allowed the right-leaning Daily Caller to be a fact-checker.
However, corporations are continuing to prove that they donโt really care about social causes, they just care about making money and pretending to care about whatever cause theyโre demanded to care about in order to keep their bottom line intact.
As the
Washington Free Beacon reported, various companies are still advertising on Russiaโs social media network โVK.โ Why is this bad? Because VK gives a platform to actual hate groups, not just people and organizations the left labels as โhate groupsโ:
But many of these companiesโincluding Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Adidas, and Reebokโhave been regular advertisers on VK, a popular Russian media website used by many white supremacists and neo-Nazis who have been banned from Facebook. Several of these companies continue to have a marketing presence on the Russian website, raising questions about their recent concern about โhate speechโ on social media sites.
VKโs popularity among white supremacists and neo-Nazis has been documented for years by media outlets and watchdog groups.
Even as they remain mum on VKโs laissez-faire attitude toward online hate speech, major companies have pulled ads from Facebook for not policing speech on its own site.
The list of corporations still advertising on VK while they release statements supporting the boycott and preaching about hate includeโฆ:
Many of the companies that joined the Facebook boycott continue to market their products and brands in posts on their VK pages, including Starbucks, Ford, Unilever, Colgate, Vans, The North Face, and Patagonia. On July 2, two days after joining the Facebook ad boycott, Colgate ran a promotion on VK offering prizes to members who purchased its products and used the VK app to scan the product code.
Coca-Cola has run advertising campaigns on VK, including a controversial 2016 ad in which the company included the disputed territories of Crimea and the Kuril Islands on a map of Russia. Pepsi has also been an advertiser on the site and
reportedly collaborated with VK on a payment app in 2018. Both still have an active presence on the platform.
It needs to be understood that these corporations donโt really care about the causes they glob onto. Not generally anyway. As Iโve explained in greater detail, many corporations are simply looking for easy PR points and virtue signaling is an easy way to go about getting them.
Hypocrisy Abounds as Corporations Participating in the Facebook Boycott are Still Advertising On Russian Social Networks