The boycott against Facebook is gaining momentum with larger big brands joining the call to stay away from the social media platform by not spending advertising dollars, the main source of revenue for the site.

Brands like Coca Cola., Hershey, Unilever, Honda have joined the already growing number of brands pulling out from the platform. Facebook makes 90% of its revenue from advertising and the move exhorted by these corporations will be cause a lasting impact on the bottomline, they are hitting the company where it hurts most.

There are now more that 120 companies who have joined the list and the numbers keep growing, this comes after Mark Zuckerberg failed to control the unbridled hate speech taking place on his social platform, which many blame for the proliferation of racism. “There is no place for racism in the world and certainly no place for racism in social media” said the CEO of Coca Cola James Quincey. Civil right’s group are calling for Facebook to be more transparent and control contents or face continued boycott, the call has been ongoing for sometime and gained momentum during the Black Lives Matter protest.

Zuckerberg hosted a live stream session assuring the public that there will be more accountability and new rules banning hate speech in ads and plans to label some posts from politicians. But this has yet to materialise. Officials from Facebook have said in the past that advertisers do not dictate the platforms policies and decisions, with billions coming in every month from all part of the world, 120 pulling out is not going to cause any damage to Zuckerbergs bank account.

For instance just in Malaysia, Facebook enjoys a substantial portion of the ADEX, it is estimated over 70% of total ads spend is now allocated for digital, with the Covid-19 situation it is expected more ad ringgit are heading towards this direction.

As of now, no calls for boycott has been initiated, but usually global directive from these corporations are followed through to local markets. They are however insignificant to the overall spend, perhaps the only way we can get Facebook to yield is to have a worldwide boycott and stop all advertising on the social platform.