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Comment by oplav | Hacker News Reader

> Unilever, the maker of Dove soap and Hellmann's mayonnaise, will stop advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the U.S. through the end of the year. The company cited a need to end divisiveness and hate speech during a polarized election season.

Why was Twitter included in this?

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> Why was Twitter included in this?

Have you ever been on Twitter? It's not exactly where you go to look for inspirations for best human behavior, compassion and inclusiveness.

Probably because Unilever thinks Twitter is a source of divisiveness and hate speech.

Probably because the recession side effects are real, and advertisements are costly.

I would bet that marketing departments for companies like Unilever have a hard time showing ROI on Facebook advertising. Why not get some marketing attention for cutting your spend?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Facebook ad that wasn’t trying to get me to do something, to go to some page or to click through to a store full of tracking garbage and buy something. Surely for all of those you can very easily measure RoI?

I’d understand this argument for something like YouTube where most ads seem to be TV style and not trying to get me to click away to buy something immediately, but Facebook ads seem to always want me to go do something they can trivially track.

Advertising isn't necessarily about buying something right now. There is some focus on building familiarity so the next time someone buys something they buy [brand X].

The ROI of that effect is typically real, noticeable and impossible to directly attribute.

That doesn't mean that works for them. I hope the vast majority of purchases of Dove, Breyers, Klondike, Lipton, Vaseline, etc. can't be connected to social media impressions.

Yeah, not just ROI, even within Unilever, no more unicorn colored toothpaste for kids or Daniel Craig co-branded deodrant for getting laid quickly, since the movie has been postponed. Recession brings a lot of conservatism in the big corporations, and when the new products aren't being launched, not much to advertise!

> Unilever, the maker of Dove soap and Hellmann's mayonnaise

They mean makers of Best Foods mayonnaise!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellmann%27s_and_Best_Foods

And about a thousand other brands Unilever is massive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unilever_brands

Somewhat interesting history as well, lever brothers before the merge bought products from Belgian colonised parts of Africa that used slave labour well into the 20th century and they knew it.

Even had a separate own company so they could use their own slaves and keep it nice and separate from the main company.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huileries_du_Congo_Belge

Twitter is where the president lies about US elections and says a lot of his racist things and endorses violence. And Twitter more or less lets it go, so that's not great.

I stayed away from twitter until about a month ago when boredom set in. I found it utterly fascinating during the BLM protests. It's amazing to be able to follow political leaders and journalists and see the evolving discussion. But yes, gosh, so so much blatant racism, trolling, etc., it is just miles apart from the general level of thoughtfulness on, say, HN.

I was on Twitter for the BLM protests too. Traditional media - even most new media - cannot keep up when events are happening that quickly.

> Why was Twitter included?

Twitter is a Hell where, instead of pushing a rock uphill forever, its denizen are stuck in eternal rush hour traffic such that everyone can read bite-sized chunks of everyone else's angry, rage-induced thoughts and some of these people actively ram into other cars just to make it more miserable/gain status.

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