Eight major Canadian banks said on Thursday that they had joined Facebook's boycott of the advertising boycott to demand that the world's largest social network tighten regulations on racist and hateful content. Banks Scotia, RBC, CIBC, TD, BMO, Nationale, Desjardins and Laurentian confirmed to AFP their support for the movement #StopHateForProfit (“No to hate for profits”) which requests to suspend all advertising on Facebook in July and on Instagram.
"We have temporarily stopped paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram," said a spokesperson for TD. “We must work to eliminate systemic racism and unconscious bias, to improve diversity, equity and inclusion. One way to do this is to oppose disinformation and hate speech which only exacerbates systemic racism, " said an RBC spokesperson.
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More than 400 companies, including Adidas, Coca-Cola and even Starbucks, have suspended their purchases of ads on the social network to 1.73 billion daily users. Originally, the call for a month-long boycott was launched by associations, including the NAACP, the large African American civil rights organization and an organization fighting anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League, in the context of a vast movement against systemic racism in the United States.
"We are not going to change our rules or our approach on anything because of a threat against a small percentage of our income, or against any percentage of our income," said Mark Zuckerberg, the boss from Facebook at a business meeting last Friday. On Tuesday, the Californian firm banned groups claiming to belong to the far-right American movement "Boogaloo", who "are actively seeking to commit violence".
Read also: Under pressure, Facebook bans the far-right group "Boogaloo"
