Accused of Fomenting Hate, Facebook Faces Boycott

FEATURING RAMESH SRINIVASAN – Facebook top two executives, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg this week held a meeting with the organizers of a powerful new boycott campaign against the social media platform. Leaders of the campaign called “Stop Hate for Profit,” say they were unimpressed by the executives’ justifications for why their highly profitable corporation has taken so few steps to curb the flowering of racism on the platform. They said Zuckerberg and Sandberg engaged in “spin” and fired up their “powerful P.R. machine.”

Facebook faces a serious advertising boycott from some of its biggest customers as a result of the campaign. But Mr. Zuckerberg says he thinks the boycott will end soon enough. Among the accusations he faces are the deliberate enabling of hate and racism perpetuated by President Donald Trump and his followers. The newly revealed results of a 2-year long audit confirm that Facebook has fostered attacks on civil rights.

Ramesh Srinivasan is Professor of Information Studies and Design Media Arts at UCLA. His books include Whose Global Village: Rethinking How Technology Shapes Our World and After the Internet and Beyond the Valley: How Innovators around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow.