Labour boycotts Facebook

LABOUR is to stop advertising on Facebook in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.

The social media giant is accused of failing to do enough to remove hate speech and racist conspiracy theories following the death of George Floyd, the black man killed by police in Minnesota in May.

Labour joined Coca-Cola, Lego and Adidas in suspending all adverts on the site last week. A party source said: ‘In line with many other organisations across the world, the Labour Party have paused spending money with Facebook for the month of July.

‘This is to show that we stand against hate online, especially in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and urge Facebook to take stronger steps to tackle it on their platforms.’

The party spent more than £1.2million on advertisements on Facebook during last year’s election. According to Stop Hate for Profit, the American campaign behind the boycott, 98 per cent of Facebook’s £55billion in revenue last year came from advertising.

The pressure group is trying to force the firm to act to remove hate speech and fake news from its platforms.

The social media network, run by its billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg, is considering cancelling all political advertising before America’s presidential election in November.