VF Corp's The North Face, REI, and Upwork say they are committing to an ad boycott of Facebook in light of its handling of misinformation and hate speech
(CNN Business)Outdoor apparel brand The North Face has become the best-known company yet to commit to an advertising boycott of Facebook …
The counterweight was always scale: among Facebook's top 25 advertisers of 2019, including Uber and Netflix, only Microsoft, Starbucks, and Pfizer paused spending, and Politico framed the whole exercise as low-cost signaling during a pandemic-slowed ad month. By late July, North Face and Heineken had committed to returning in August while Levi Strauss and Smucker held out.
First-order effects
Facebook absorbs a visible revenue and reputational hit for July as The North Face, REI, and Upwork pull paid spend, joining a widening roster of apparel and consumer brands making the same demand.
The three brands convert marketing budgets into public-pressure capital, tying their spend explicitly to Facebook's moderation policies rather than performance metrics.
Second-order effects
Every major advertiser now faces a forced choice — join the boycott or explain publicly why it keeps funding the platform — which explains why only three of the top 25 moved and why holdouts like Uber and Netflix drew scrutiny.
Facebook's incentive is to wait the campaign out, since Politico's analysis showed participants lose little during a slow ad month but plan to return — softening the economic bite that would force policy concessions.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, brand boycotts become episodic pressure valves rather than structural repricing: advertisers return within weeks once the news cycle passes, leaving Facebook's moderation economics largely intact while giving brands a reusable protest template.
The split between August returners like North Face and Heineken and continuing boycotters like Smucker points toward a durable tiering of advertisers by tolerance for platform controversy, not a collective exit.
The trend: Advertiser activism against social platforms is consolidating into a repeatable, short-cycle boycott playbook that generates headlines more than lasting changes to how platforms moderate content.
“A company spokesman said it was halting all US paid advertising with Facebook, effective June 19, until stricter policies are in place to stop racist, violent, and hateful content and misinformation from circulating on the platform.” https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
Thank you, @thenorthface ! If I didn't live in Texass and it wasn't 300 degrees, I'd put on my NF fleece and walk the neighborhood! Now... who's next? @Nike ? https://twitter.com/...
This is the path Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and company have selected. They didn't have to become the Fox News of social networks. They chose to. https://twitter.com/...
@vipulsatya I think without disclosing the amount it's mostly a symbolic gesture. and symbolic gestures are fine but the Twitter reaction has been like “oh shit FB is in big trouble now” which seems like an overreaction
After I read this story, it was updated to say North Face pulled its ads from Instagram too. Weird North Face wouldn't just say that upfront. Would also like to know how much they were planning to spend this year!
“Effective June 19, The North Face is halting all U.S. paid advertising with Facebook until stricter policies are put in place to stop racist, violent or hateful content and misinformation from circulating on the platform.” Via @Raju https://adage.com/...
North Face says it will discontinue ads on Faceboook, after civil rights groups call on brands to stop paying for ads on the social network. https://twitter.com/...
Thank you @TheNorthFace for joining @ADL @NAACP @ColorofChange and our other partners to support racial justice on #Juneteenth by taking a stand against hate and pushing for better practices on the largest social media platform in the world. #StopHateForProfit https://twitter.com…
Thank you @thenorthface for understanding the responsibility social media sites share in the spread of accurate information across their platforms. https://twitter.com/...
i am reluctant to ever compliment a brand since a lot of what we're seeing lately is just marketing with a woke veneer on top, but i've also been laughed out of rooms for suggesting pulling funding from facebook. this couldn't have been easy. https://twitter.com/...
Good! Now what company is pulling ads next? Facebook has decimated online media sites, crippled small outlets from making money & cost countless freelancers their jobs. Why is everyone collectively keeping them in the business of destroying businesses? https://twitter.com/...
Facebook operates under idea that they can & should give in to every bad-faith demand from the far-right, because the far-right will punish them for not doing so AND the mainstream & left will just accept this asymmetric pandering. Math is changing with announcements like this. h…