A Facebook Ad Boycott Update

The #StopHateForProfit boycott officially ended July 31, 2020. I’ve covered how publishers have responded for months now (here, here, here, and here, for the main posts), and now that we’re in September, I thought I’d check on where things stand. The vast majority of the 56 publishers I’ve been tracking have remained off Facebook’s ad platform. The three that are using it again — Harvard Business Review Press, MIT Press, and ProQuest — continue to use it. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) made a brief foray into using the platform again, but appears to have backed off. Otherwise, I couldn’t find active ads from any of the other organizations.

Harvard Business Review (which is not the Press, per se, but with ads covering products created by the Press) is running a very robust set of ads (Facebook estimates ~1,100 ads, up from the ~120 they were running in August).

Here’s the update for today. Only those running ads are highlighted.

Stated Boycott Participants

• American Academy of Family Physicians
• Annual Reviews

Harvard Business Review Press — multiple ads started August 11, 2020

• Research Square
• University  of California Press
• University  of Toronto Press

Likely Boycott Participants, Still No Ads

• Academy of Management
• AIP Publishing
• American Academy of Neurology
• American Academy of Pediatrics

American Association for the Advancement of Science — active ads from August 18-September 10, 2020

• American Chemical Society
• American College of Cardiology
• American College of Chest Physicians
• American College of Physicians
• American Dental Association
• American Mathematical Society
• American Physiological Society
• American Psychological Association
• American Society of Clinical Oncology
• American Urological Association
• American Veterinary Medical Association
• American Water Works Association
• BMJ
• Cambridge University Press
• De Gruyter
• EBSCO
• Elsevier
• Emerald Publishing
• Endocrine Society
• Frontiers
• Harvard University Press
• IEEE and IEEE Xplore
• Institute for Civil Engineering (ICE Publishing)
• JAMA
• JBJS
• JMIR Publications
• Johns Hopkins University Press
• Karger Publishers
• Mary Ann Liebert
• McGraw-Hill

MIT Press — active ads started running August 12, 2020

• Modern Language Association
• NEJM and NEJM Knowledge+
• Oxford University Press
• PNAS
• Project MUSE

ProQuest — multiple ads running between July 14-August 10, 2020; and, a single ad running September 2-5, 2020

• RSNA
• Royal Society of Chemistry
• SAGE Publishing
• Springer Nature
• Taylor & Francis
• Thieme
• Wiley
• Wolters Kluwer

I’ll keep updating this story occasionally, as it keeps taking unexpected turns.

Thanks for reading.

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