Social platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have agreed to adopt a common set of definitions for hate speech and other harmful content, alongside a commitment to better collaborate with marketers and agencies so industry efforts to improve in this area can be monitored.
The announcement came from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a cross-industry initiative founded by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and supported by other trade bodies, including ISBA, the ANA and the 4As.
GARM has spent the past 15 months in talks with major advertisers, agencies and the key social platforms.
The result is four agreed areas for action and a timeline, which will see Twitter, Facebook and YouTube adopt common definitions for harmful content; commit to having independent oversight on operations, integrations and reporting; commit to developing and deploying tools to better manage advertising adjacency; and commit to helping develop GARM’s reporting standards on harmful content.
The platforms have agreed to consistently enforce these action points as part of their advertising content standards and consistently label and enforce the common definitions. All parties have also agreed to harmonised reporting metrics on issues around consumer safety, advertiser safety, and platform effectiveness in addressing harmful content.
Stephan Loerke, WFA CEO said: “The issue of harmful content online has become one of the challenges of our generation. As funders of the online ecosystem, advertisers have a critical role to play in driving positive change and we are pleased to have reached agreement with the platforms on an action plan and timeline in order to make the necessary improvements.
“A safer social media environment will provide huge benefits not just for advertisers and society but also to the platforms themselves.”
In addition to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, there are also firm commitments from TikTok, Pinterest and Snap to provide development plans for similar controls by year end.
GARM was founded by WFA members and is made up of advertisers, agencies, media owners, platforms and industry organisations.
The news comes following July’s Facebook boycott, which saw over 90 major advertisers pull their ads from the social platform as part of the #StopHateForProfit campaign, including Coca-Cola, Diageo, and Unilever.
The campaign, organised by civil rights groups, urged businesses to stop buying ads on Facebook during the month to protest the platform’s handling of hate speech and misinformation.
