Facebook Celebrity Boycott Joined By Kim Kardashian West

The civil rights groups that organised the advertising boycott of Facebook in July are at it again, calling on companies and celebrities to stop posting on Instagram for a day.

They have selected Wednesday for a Instagram boycott and so far celebrities including Kim Kardashian West, who has one of the biggest Instagram followings in the world, as well as Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Orlando Bloom, Kerry Washington and Sacha Baron have pledged to join it.

The Instagram boycott is being organised by a coalition of civil rights groups including the ADL and NAACP, who organised the previous boycott.

Instagram boycott

These groups are unhappy that Facebook largely took a dismissive attitude to the ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ advertising boycott of the platform in July, when the firm said “advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough.’

Indeed, the organisers were further outraged in a meeting senior executives from the platform, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, when Facebook refused any concessions to the 11 demands from the organisers.

Their demands included allowing people who experience severe harassment to speak with a Facebook employee and giving refunds to brands whose ads show up next to offensive content that is later removed.

Facebook had already indicated it would submit to an audit of its hate speech controls.

After July’s Facebook ad boycott, the organisers have decided to once again used their ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ to persuade celebrities to boycott Instagram for the day, to protest Facebook’s handling of hate on its platform and to call on the company to stop allowing politicians to lie in political ads.

The organisers pointed to Facebook’s failure to shut down the page of a Kenosha militia group as one reason to protest.

It remains to be seen whether this latest effort will work.