Facebook ad boycott includes Ben & Jerry's, REI, Patagonia, North Face, Eddie Bauer

Eddie Bauer, Magnolia Pictures, Ben & Jerry’s, REI, and Patagonia are some of the brands that have suspended Facebook ad campaigns over the platform’s reckless content moderation practices that allow political and COVID-19 disinformation to proliferate.

“What they’ve been doing is not fully right with our values, period,” said Matthew McCarthy, Ben & Jerry’s CEO, on Facebook & toxic content on its platforms. “The reality is, anything that’s right for the business, but wrong for our values, is wrong.”

From reporting by Tiffany Hsu in the New York Times:

In explaining why it would stop advertising on Facebook, Magnolia Pictures said on Tuesday that it was “seeking meaningful change at Facebook and the end to their amplification of hate speech.”

Ben & Jerry’s pushed Facebook on Tuesday “to take stronger action to stop its platforms from being used to divide our nation, suppress voters, foment and fan the flames of racism and violence, and undermine our democracy.”

The freelancing platform Upwork and the password manager Dashlane are also participating in the boycott, which advocacy groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Anti-Defamation League have promoted with the hashtag #StopHateForProfit.

The effort, which began taking shape this month, gained traction Friday and through the weekend as several outdoor-gear retailers, including REI and Patagonia, joined in.

The North Face has stopped posting content and buying ads on Facebook through July, but will continue putting free posts on Instagram, which Facebook owns, the company’s global vice president of marketing, Steve Lesnard, said in an interview. The North Face spends more on Facebook than it does on any other platform besides Google, Mr. Lesnard said.

“The stakes are too high,” he said. “The platform needs to evolve.”

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