Facebook’s market value loses $56 billion after Unilever joined ad boycott

Facebook shares fell by 8.3% Friday, after Unilever, one of the world’s largest advertisers, joined a list of brands that decided to boycott ads on its platform.

The share-price drop eliminated $56 billion from Facebook’s market value and pushed net worth of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg down to $82.3 billion after dropping by $7.2 billion, according to “Bloomberg”.

Unilever said it would stop spending money with Facebook’s properties this year.

Calls of boycotting ad spending on social networks, specifically Facebook, came from a number of companies due to the platform’s policies on rooting out misinformation and hateful content.

The Coca-Cola Company was the latest to join the boycott, after it decided to pause paid advertising on social networks, including Facebook, for the next 30 days.

Calls to boycott paid advertisements on social media started online in mid-June, calling brands to realign their spending and stop Facebook ads, before some groups like Anti-Defamation League, Color of Change, Common Sense Media, Free Press, NAACP, and Sleeping Giants, later signed up on another boycott campaign titled “Stop Hate for Profit.”

The “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign began to gain momentum after The North Face pulled out of advertising on Facebook last week and companies including Patagonia, Hershey, Verizon and Ben & Jerry’s followed suit.

It is worth noting that the P&G Company was the first to boycott the social networking giant, “Facebook” in 2017. Although the boycott had little impact on the company’s sales, the savings in advertising funds caused the company to increase its profits.

Zuckerberg responded Friday to the growing criticism about misinformation on the site, announcing the company would label all voting-related posts with a link encouraging users to look at its new voter information hub.

Facebook also expanded its definition of prohibited hate speech, adding a clause saying no adverts will be allowed if they label another demographic as dangerous.