Coca-Cola will suspend its social media advertising for at least 30 days in response to the growing calls for online platforms to eradicate hate speech.
"There is no place for racism in the world and there is no place for racism on social media," CEO and chairman James Quincey said in a statement, adding that the company is demanding "greater accountability and transparency" from social media companies.
The move follows the growing momentum of the #StopHateforProfit campaign, a movement aiming to hold Facebook to account for hate speech on its platform and in its ads.
Responding to the calls, the multibillion-dollar company's founder Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook would ban advertising portraying people of a "specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, case, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status" as a threat to others.
He said potentially harmful or misleading posts will still be permitted on the platform if they are from a "newsworthy" source, but they will now be labelled.
But a representative for the #StopHateforProfit campaign said it won't "make a dent in the problem", claiming none of the changes will be vetted or verified.
More than 90 companies, including Honda, iHerb and Verizon, have boycotted advertising on Facebook in support of #StopHateforProfit. Due to the boycott, shares in Facebook fell 8.3 percent on Friday (local time), eliminating US$56 billion from the company's market value.
In a statement to CNBC, Coca-Cola said its decision to suspend its social media advertising did not mean it was joining the #StopHateforProfit movement. Despite it being listed as a "participating business" on the campaign's official website, the company says it's using the global "social media platform pause" to "reassess [its] advertising policies to determine whether revisions are needed".
Following Zuckerberg's announcement, iconic American clothing company Levis Strauss & Co declared it would also be pausing advertising on the platform. In a statement, CMO Jen Say called for Facebook to "commit to decisive change" to end the "amplification of misinformation and hate speech".
"While we appreciate that Facebook announced some steps in this direction today - it's simply not enough," she said.
"We want to see meaningful progress towards ending the amplification of misinformation and hate speech and better addressing of political advertisements and content that contributes to voter suppression."
The #StopHateforProfit coalition, which includes the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said it would be taking Zuckerberg's announcement with a pinch of salt.
"We have been down this road before with Facebook. They have made apologies in the past. They have taken meagre steps after each catastrophe where their platform played a part. But this has to end now," it said in a statement.
The campaign called on Zuckerberg to take 10 additional steps, including establishing permanent civil rights infrastructure within the company, submitting to independent audits of identity-based hate and misinformation, removing both public and private groups publishing discriminatory content and forming expert teams to review complaint submissions.
