Environmental activists have been continuously beating down the Nestle company over social media sites such as YouTube and Twitter. They claim that Nestle is helping destroy the rainforest, and endangering orangutans, by purchasing palm oil from an Indonesian company that is notorious for tearing down the rainforest to build palm plantations.
Nestle states that they have already decided to terminate business with the company.
"We, like Greenpeace and many others, abhor destruction of the rain forests, and will not source from companies where there is verifiable evidence of environmental damage," says Nestlé spokeswoman Nina Backes.
Greenpeace, however, says this is not enough. There is proof that they are continuing to buy the products.
Activists had always used Web media, but are now hitting the companies in their soft spots: new social media. Somewhere they do not have complete control.
A protest video renaming "Kit-Kat" to "Killers" was posted on YouTube and spread. Nestle had the video banned and told Facebook users that they would delete comments that used an altered logo. Those most familiar with social media believe that these actions caused the incident to worsen and grow.
Experts say it may be a good idea to delete social media pages and start over.
Read more here.
The following video is the protest video posted on YouTube. Warning: It can be seen as disturbing.
2 comments:
I thought this story was really interesting in the WSJ. It's going to be even more interesting to see how they respond. Will they actually delete their fb page?
That video is really kind of disturbing; I'm surprised it's still up on YouTube. Despite it being disturbing, it's also rather effective.
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