Facebook supports racism and lose Vodafone contract

Kimono 08-03-2007

Facebook has lost Vodafone as an advertiser, after its skyscraper ads were shown on the group profile for the British National Party, a far-right political party in the UK that wants to send all non-white people in Britain “back home”.

The purposeful avoiding of political affiliation is extremely important for both advertisers and political parties, and a slip up of this magnitude could have repercussions that reach farther than just the Facebook community. Case in point: the ad agency, OMD, that distributed Vodafone’s ads. The fact that the British National Party is a bit more conservative than many would be comfortable with only heightens the situation.

In all, Vodafone seems pretty peeved at both Facebook and OMD, taking a zero tolerance approach to its relationship with Facebook, and a more stringent relationship with its advertising agency. Considering the handful of other major brands that also had advertisements on the British National Party’s Facebook page, including T-Mobile and Virgin Media, some would say that this has served as a bit of a setback for companies comfortable with online marketing, especially within social networks.

Whatever the general regard is toward the British National Party, not all companies are avoiding having advertisements on the group’s Facebook page, including Orange.

Hsoolien

Course the company should be smart enough to realize the ad's are on ALL face book groups, but that said, maybe pulling ad revenue would cause a site to enforce rules against bigotry (course using add revenue to push agendas could be a bad thing as well)

SamiJo

regardless of what ad's are pulled or kept its going to surface. They have policies about that stuff and you can report it but that only closes the group so that some other person can reopen it the next day.

Raven

I have a huge problem with racism and anyone that supports it. If facebooks much less allows racism, but actually help adverties for it is too much. Not even myspace is that fucking stupid. I could see if it was just a member that did it but for it to displayed and advertise by facebook, let's me know what they caring about.

SamiJo

but I dont think that it was facebook using it for advertising, i think it was more that the British National Party had a group set up on the site, and the ads (that i would assume are randomly generated) showed up on the sidebar or whereever and the company got pissed that they were being associated with it. The company wasn't thinking all the way through, in my opinion, in pulling the ad, would have probably been better to work out something like only havethe ad shown in a certain area of the site.

Raven

I think that would make it alot worse. That anyone could post up ads that will show up on anyones page. That would be one of the dumbest ideas for a site there could be.

SamiJo

well its kinda like when someone buys ad space for a magazine or soemthing and doesn't specify where it will go then the publisher will just put it where it fits. in that case...depending on what the company paid for, and did or didn't specify as far as where to put it on the apge...just might have happened

Hsoolien

Samijo is very right Raven, a site like Facebook sells Ad space, they also happen to have content created by users on their site, so it was pure chance the two happened on the same page. Of course the best course is to try and shut down offensive and bigoted material as one can, but you do run into the possibility that the country of origin for the material does not have a lw against that specific form of libel, but does have free speech laws that you are now infringing and then you''re looking at lawsuits in the tens of millions of dollars.

Per example as a Canadian it's illegal for me to say Jews are the reasons for all the worlds wrongs, but on the flip side, said comment is 100% legit in the US and an attempt to censor the phrase could result in strong litigation.

That said if the site has a fairly well worded policy Terms of usage, then they can effectively control across all countries of origin racism etc.

SamiJo

yes, that the crappy thing...you can get away with SO MUCH here just hiding behind the freedom of speech crap. i am all for it but there should be a point to where you have to stop and say look thats just wrong and you should stop.

Hsoolien

i believe in freedom of speech as long as it does not incite hate or prejudice against someone else. Which is kind of the way it is in Canada. Though we take it a bit far sometimes, it's needed because people can be such assholes

Raven

Even though its done that way lets me know that the filtering of such things on that site isn't good if even existant on there. Just so a company can make some money they going to allow that and then possibly clean it up later. That isn't right. Safe gaurds against such things should of already been in place and none were and none are becuse selling that ad space means more.

Hsoolien

Well I'm not sure on Facebooks policies, but I do know that such a group/band/personal page would be shut down on MySpace, but they do rely on a complaint being filed first.

Jessica

If facebook don't put a few changes in their policies they are going to have more problems then myspace.

SamiJo

yea they are really bad about not monitering things when they are originally posted as well. I was browsing in the marketplace area and found a guy that posted an ad for oral sex. he was charging girls to give it to them. i dunno how many responses he got but i reported it. lol stupid asses

Hsoolien

Perverts will try anything, he probably got some pretty skank pussy offered up though, it's still a ridiculous amount of women complaining their men don't give head, especially when it's almost become mandatory women give it to keep their man, so pathetic