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PlayStation suspends Facebook advertising until end of month

Jon Silman
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PlayStation will not advertise on Facebook or Instagram for the month of July in solidarity with a worldwide movement by companies against hate speech.

“In support of the #StopHateForProfit campaign, we have globally suspended our Facebook and Instagram activity, including advertising and non-paid content, until the end of July. We stand for working (and playing) together for good,” Facebook said in a statement first reported by gamesindustry.biz.

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Playstation is also going to stop paid promotions on Instagram, which Facebook owns.

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PlayStation joins numerous other companies, including Coca-Cola, Ford, Starbucks, Honda, and many others in uniting against Facebook. The campaign comes as Facebook sees record usage during the coronavirus pandemic.

Facebook “allowed incitement to violence against protesters fighting for racial justice in America in the wake of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks and so many others,” the organizers of the campaign said.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly responded to the growing boycotts in a private meeting last Friday saying, “my guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough,” according to a report by The Information.

He added that participating advertisers only make up a small piece of the company’s revenue.

“We’re not gonna change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue, or to any percent of our revenue,” Zuckerberg reportedly said.

Publicly, Zuckerberg took a different stance, and outlined changes he was going to make. The company said that it would ban ads that say specific races or groups of people are a threat to anyone else. The company also said it was going to do more to protect immigrants from ads that express contempt against them.

Facebook also said that it was going to label posts that it doesn’t remove and let people know they violate company policies, arguing that they’re newsworthy and valuable to the public interest. Twitter has already taken steps against harmful speech and misinformation by labeling its tweets, even recently doing so to the U.S. president.

Microsoft is also participating in the boycott, but it also recently reported that it was teaming up with Facebook with a Facebook Gaming streaming platform.

Digital Trends has reached out to PlayStation for additional comment, and will update this story as necessary.

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