Telecoms giant Vodafone Group PLC (LON:VOD) is adopting a tougher stance to prevent its adverts from appearing on hate speech or fake news sites.
Vodafone – which is estimated to spend the best part of £450mln on digital advertising every year – has updates its code of conduct to prevent its brand from appearing alongside material that is “fundamentally at odds” with its company “values and beliefs”.
The move is an attempt to cut off the flow of money to “abusive and damaging” websites, Vodafone said, and comes just a couple of days after Theresa May blamed the likes of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Google and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) for giving such sites a “safe space…to breed”.
Pressure on likes of Google and Twitter
Like May, Vodafone is taking the fight straight to the internet giants.
In order to participate in future Vodafone campaigns, the likes of Google and Facebook will have to place its ads only on outlets that have been pre-approved and that are highly unlikely to be focused on hate speech or fake news.
The company added: “[Facebook, Google etc] must take all measures necessary to ensure that Vodafone advertising does not appear within hate speech and fake news outlets.”
The new policy makes Vodafone the biggest name so far to move to a whitelist model where ‘good’ sites are approved rather than ‘bad’ sites being disapproved (or blacklisted, as it’s known).
Facebook backs the new policy
Facebook has come out and said Vodafone’s stance would work hand-in-hand with its own recently updated policies.
“We welcome Vodafone’s new global rules,” said a Facebook spokesman.
“We work closely with all of our advertiser partners to ensure that they have control over where their ads appear on our platform, and vigorously enforce our community standards which include policies against hate speech, violence or extremist content.”
Vodafone shares were broadly flat at 230p shortly before close on Tuesday.