A coalition of civil rights groups including the NAACP and Anti-Defamation League is hosting a “week of action” on Instagram to demand Facebook “address racism, hate and disinformation on its platform,” according to a press release.
The Stop Hate for Profit campaign which led a boycott that saw some of the world’s biggest companies pull their ads from Facebook in July announced Monday a week of new action against the company, CNN Business reports.
Civil rights groups are calling on companies and high profile users to stop posting on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, today to protest its parent company’s handling of hate and its allowing politicians to lie in political ads.
Announcing the campaign on Monday morning, the groups focused on Facebook’s alleged failure to remove a page that encouraged armed Americans to take to the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the shooting of Jacob Blake.
“Facebook wants you to believe that the company’s role in the death of the protestors in Kenosha was just an ‘operational mistake.’ But it wasn’t. It is just the latest casualty of Facebook’s choices designed to maximize profits,” the coalition said in a statement.
The other groups in the coalition include Color of Change, Common Sense Media, Free Press, Sleeping Giants and the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) . The Stop Hate for Profit campaign is meant to push Facebook to do something about the ‘hate speech’ on its platform by hitting the company where it makes its money, advertising, according to their website.
“Our organizations as well as other experts have been warning Facebook for years about the problem of dangerous, potentially violent groups and individuals using Facebook. But time and time again they’ve failed to listen,” the group said.
“In response to Facebook’s continued role in undermining democracy and sowing division, individuals will be asked to freeze Instagram for a day and post a series of coordinated messages in unison on their social media accounts this week,” they added.