When Soraya Chemaly, Jaclyn Friedman and I launched a campaign last week asking Facebook to change its advertising policies, we knew that many before us had tried and failed. Beyond repetitive party-line statements, the company had not responded publicly to complaints about violently misogynistic posts. So instead of attempting to engage Facebook directly we contacted advertisers, sending them screenshots of their brands displayed alongside graphic content depicting rape and domestic violence. We appealed to supporters to help us carry out the plan on a mass scale.

Within a week, 60,000 tweets and 5,000 emails had been sent to advertisers. Images of women beaten, bloodied and bruised were flying around the internet accompanied by the recognisable logos of huge companies, from Dove to American Express. Several companies, including brands such as Nissan and Nationwide Building Society, reacted in horror, quickly confirming they would pull out of Facebook advertising altogether until the issue was resolved. On Tuesday Facebook issued a statement, agreeing to re-evaluate its policies on hate speech and retrain its moderators to recognise and remove such content.

It was an important result and one that has significant implications for companies, advertisers and campaigners. Consider the different reactions by businesses and how, in turn, consumers reacted to them. For those such as Nissan, Nationwide and the many smaller companies who chose to suspend their Facebook presence, support flooded in – alongside new offers of business. When WestHost, a website provider, confirmed it was pulling its ads, it was inundated with new requests.