Coca-Cola, a major force in global advertising, announced on Friday it would suspend ads on social media for at least 30 days, as platforms face a reckoning over how they deal with racist content.
“There is no place for racism in the world and there is no place for racism on social media,” James Quincey, chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, said in a brief statement.
He said social media companies — which other major brands have boycotted to force changes in how they deal with hateful material — need to provide “greater accountability and transparency.”
Coca-Cola will use the pause to “reassess our advertising policies to determine whether revisions are needed,” Quincey said.
The beverage giant told CNBC that the “break” does not mean it is joining the movement launched last week by African American and civil society groups.
Statement by Mark Zuckerberg
Although CEO Facebook had already stated the issue before Coca-Cola’s announcement, Facebook said that it is going to ban ads that portray a race, religion, caste, ethnicity, or sexual orientation as a threat or inferior to the rest.
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