"Facebook is changing a number of policies relating to hate speech and voter suppression on the platform, the chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a surprise live video on Friday.
The announcements were made in a hurried appearance by the executive on his personal Facebook page shortly after Unilever announced that it was pulling advertisements for the next six months – which sent Facebook stock tumbling more than 7%.
More than 100 brands have joined a boycott of advertising on Facebook due to its failure to address hate speech and violence on the platform – most recently the major advertisers Verizon and Unilever. Facebook makes about 98% of its $70bn in annual revenue from advertising. Zuckerberg did not directly address the boycott in his statement Friday.
Unilever’s joining of the boycott put significant pressure on Facebook, said Nicole Perrin, the principal analyst at market research firm eMarketer. As one of the largest advertisers in the world, its moves could influence other brand advertisers to follow its lead, she said. It also pulled spending for longer and on more platforms.
“That suggests a deeper problem with user-generated content platforms, as divisiveness is to be expected on any such platform that allows political expression,” she said.
Facebook will now take on an approach similar to that of Twitter, labeling posts that may violate its policies but are allowed to remain on the platform because they are deemed newsworthy.
The platform will also include a link to its voting information center on any post with information about voting, including by politicians: “This is not a judgement of whether the posts themselves are accurate,” Zuckerberg said."
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