Ben & Jerry’s Ends Paid Advertising on Twitter, Citing Concerns Over Hate Speech

Ben & Jerry’s Ends Paid Advertising on Twitter, Citing Concerns Over Hate Speech

News by DesignRush DesignRush
Published: June 02, 2023

Ben & Jerry’s, the world’s largest ice cream manufacturer by annual revenue, has decided to end all paid advertising on Twitter.

Citing concerns over the proliferation of hate speech on Twitter, Ben & Jerry’s said that their business model was built around opportunities to advance their progressive values and that they were concerned over the direction the social media giant was heading.

“We’ve watched with great concern the developments at Twitter following Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform. Hate speech is up dramatically while content moderation has become all but non-existent,” the company said on its website on Thursday.

“The platform has become a threatening and even dangerous space for people from so many backgrounds, including people who are Black, Brown, trans, gay, women, people with disabilities, Jewish, Muslim, and the list goes on. This is unconscionable in addition to being plain bad business,” it added.

The company also called on the social networking service to take actions to end “extremist and violent content on the platform” and encouraged other companies to take a stand against the “harmful changes” at Twitter.

In the meantime, the company said that they would maintain a presence on the social media platform to connect with their community and that they would revisit that presence as needed pending developments in the space.

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Ben & Jerry’s, which has nearly 500,000 followers on Twitter, has positioned itself as a socially progressive company and has a track record of taking political stances, advocating for issues from climate change to racial justice.

Elon Musk, meanwhile, acquired Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion, saying that he wanted to make the platform a haven for free speech. Since the takeover, however, over half of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers such as Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo have pulled their advertising dollars from the platform.

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