Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/FilmMagic
Selena Gomezis urging Facebook to crack down on misinformation being spread aboutCOVID-19and vaccines on their platform.
Alongside the video, Gomez tweeted, “Scientific disinformation has and will cost lives.”
“@Facebook said they don’t allow lies about COVID and vaccines to be spread on their platforms,” she wrote. “So how come all of this is still happening? Facebook is going to be responsible for thousands of deaths if they don’t take action now!”
“I’m speechless,” Gomez tweeted on Dec. 2. “@Facebook @Instagram how are you tolerating this hate? There’s still accounts there even though you have been notified!!”
Back in September, Gomez shared a screenshot of a private message she sent to Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as well as the company’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, in which she asked them to stop allowing “misinformation” and “hate speech” to be shared on their platforms.
“I am calling on you both to HELP STOP THIS. Please shut down groups and users focused on spreading hate speech, violence and misinformation. Our future depends on it,” she added. “This is an election year. We cannot afford to have misinformation about voting. There has to be fact checking and accountability. Hope to hear back from you ASAP.”
Facebook haslong faced criticismforshowing all types of political ads, even those that have contained lies and misinformation — as well as forignoring warnings about threatsmade on the platform.
In response, theStop Hate for Profitcampaign was announced on June 17, when a number of civil rights groups, including theNAACPand theAnti-Defamation League,took out a full-page adin theLos Angeles Times.
“Today, we are asking all businesses to stand in solidarity with our most deeply held American values of freedom, equality and justice and not advertise on Facebook’s services in July,” the ad read. “Let’s send Facebook a powerful message: Your profits will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence.”
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Although Zuckerberg went on to announce that the company would be changing some of its policies in order to prohibit hate speech from appearing in its ads, the Stop Hate for Profit campaign said that the “small number of small changes” would not be enough and would barely “make a dent” in the enormous problem.
“To be clear, Mr. Zuckerberg has not yet approached the type of meaningful action that we want to see,” the campaign wrote in a statement in July. “This movement will not go away until Facebook makes the reasonable changes that society wants.”
source: people.com
