Verizon, Ben and Jerry’s, The North Face, and Patagonia all said this week they would suspend advertising on Facebook over the social network’s handling of misinformation and hate speech. Today, Honda became the first automaker to do the same thing.
The campaign—called “Stop Hate for Profit” and organized by the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP, among other groups—is an attempt to deprive Facebook of its biggest source of income and stop enabling a social media company that rakes in profits despite being a forum for hate and misinformation.
And while the campaign itself isn’t quite all it’s cracked up to be, according to our sister site Gizmodo, Honda decided this week it wanted in on the action.
From Ad Age:
“For the month of July, American Honda will withhold its advertising on Facebook and Instagram, choosing to stand with people united against hate and racism,” Honda said in a statement. “This is in alignment with our company’s values, which are grounded in human respect.”
The move includes spending for the Honda brand as well as Acura, Honda’s luxury brand.
And while that might seem like a big deal, for Honda it is actually a lesser ask than it might be at other companies, simply because for a company the size of Honda the money they are withholding isn’t that much.
Honda is the nation’s 33rd-largest ad spender, according to the latest figures from the Ad Age Datacenter.
Honda spent roughly $693,000 in the past 30 days on Facebook, according to digital intelligence platform Pathmatics, which tracks where and how brands spend ad dollars. Unlike its rivals, however, the automaker scaled back ad spending on the social media platform significantly in late May, according to Pathmatics.
Still, Honda didn’t have to do this, so there’s that. In completely unrelated news, Facebook also said late Friday that it would start flagging posts that break its rules. That includes posts from President Trump. Better late than never I guess.
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