U.S. coffee chain Starbucks is reportedly considering closing its Facebook page because of the 'hateful comments' it receives on its posts about racial justice and social issues, Fox News said Monday.
Starbucks posts information about their beverages on Facebook, which is followed by 35 million people, but the company also engages in social issues, such as the conviction of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd, and the spate of anti-Asian hate crimes and attacks.
Starbucks is in the process of "evaluating their organic presence on Facebook, and whether they should continue to have a presence on the platform at all," a Facebook employee wrote, as quoted by The Independent.
The comments went on to say that the world's largest coffee company experienced overwhelmingly "negative/insensitive, hate speech-related comments" on the posts, based on a report by BuzzFeed.
Should the Seattle-based company close its page from the social media platform, it would be one of the biggest companies ever to cut relations with the social media network, but not the first.
In 2018, Elon Musk removed the Tesla and SpaceX Facebook pages after the billionaire was challenged to do so on Twitter as part of the #DeleteFacebook campaign. While the companies continue to use Instagram, which Facebook owns, the pages were never reactivated on the platform, FOX said.
Last year, Starbucks joined around 500 other companies in the "Stop Hate for Profit" campaign that saw them terminating their advertising deals with Facebook to push for a tougher measure against racist content.
Sanja Gould, a Starbucks representative, would not confirm if the company was considering closing its Facebook page. She told Buzzfeed that Starbucks "stands against hate speech," according to Daily Mail.
