By Associated Press
LOS ANGELES: Hours after an offended mob of Trump supporters took management of the U.S. Capitol in a violent revolt, Selena Gomez laid a lot of the blame on the toes of Big Tech.
“Today is the result of allowing people with hate in their hearts to use platforms that should be used to bring people together and allow people to build community,” tweeted the singer/actor. “Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai, Susan Wojcicki — you have all failed the American people today, and I hope you’re going to fix things moving forward.”
It’s simply the most recent effort by the 28-year-old Gomez to attract consideration to the hazard of web firms critics say have profited from misinformation and hate on their platforms. Gomez has been calling out Big Tech for months — publicly on the very platforms she’s combating and privately in conversations with Silicon Valley’s huge hitters.
In an unique interview with The Associated Press, Gomez stated she’s pissed off by what she views as the businesses’ lackluster response and that they need to “stop doing the bare minimum.”
“It isn’t about me versus you, one political party versus another. This is about truth versus lies and Facebook, Instagram and big tech companies have to stop allowing lies to just flow and pretend to be the truth,” Gomez stated in a cellphone interview from New York. “Facebook continues to permit harmful lies about vaccines and COVID and the U.S. election, and neo-Nazi teams are promoting racist merchandise through Instagram.
“Enough is enough,” she stated.
Facebook and Twitter representatives declined to remark. Google did not reply to an AP request for remark.
Gomez is amongst a rising variety of celebrities utilizing their platforms to name out social media, together with Sacha Baron Cohen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Kerry Washington, and Kim Kardashian West.
Gomez grew to become passionate concerning the situation in 2017 when a 12-year-old commented on one among her Instagram posts: “Go kill yourself.”
“That was my tipping point,” she stated. “I couldn’t handle what I was seeing.”
Social media specialists have argued that firms like Facebook and Twitter performed a direct position within the Capitol revolt each by permitting plans for the rebellion to be made on their platforms and thru algorithms that enable harmful conspiracy theories to take flight. That’s although executives, similar to Facebook’s Sandberg, have insisted that planning for the riots largely passed off on different, smaller platforms.
“The operational planning was happening in spaces that Selena, for example, was identifying to Sheryl Sandberg in advance saying, ‘You know, we need to do something about white supremacist extremism online and their ability to just form a group on Facebook and happily talk away to each other, plan what they’re going to do next,’” stated Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has helped educate Gomez about on-line misinformation.
In emails shared solely with the AP, Gomez advised Sandberg in September that “a search for a militia group ‘Three Percenters’ results in dozens of pages, groups and videos focused on people hoping and preparing for civil war, and there are dozens of groups titled ‘white lives matter’ that are full of hate and lies that might lead to people being hurt or, even worse, killed.”
That’s although Facebook banned U.S.-based militia teams from its service in August.
In the identical e-mail, Gomez additionally factors to a number of adverts with lies about election fraud being allowed to stay on Facebook and Instagram and questions why that was being allowed.
“I can’t believe you can’t check ads before you take money, and if you can’t you shouldn’t be profiting from it,” she wrote. “You’re not just doing nothing. You’re cashing in from evil.”
In an e-mail response to Gomez, Sandberg defends Facebook’s efforts to take away dangerous content material, saying the platform has eliminated tens of millions of posts for hate speech, and bans adverts which can be divisive, inflammatory, or discourage individuals from voting. She didn’t straight deal with the promoting examples Gomez pointed to.
“It’s beating around the bush and saying what people want to hear,” Gomez stated about her interactions with Sandberg and Google, amongst others. “I feel at this level we’ve all discovered that phrases don’t match up except the motion goes to occur.”
Following the violence on the U.S. Capitol, tech firms made a few of their largest modifications thus far.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and different platforms banned President Donald Trump, drawing criticism from some together with the American Civil Liberties Union that it was censorship, and reward from others who say the president abused his platform by encouraging violence.
In a thread defending Twitter’s Trump ban, CEO Jack Dorsey stated “offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all.”
In addition to banning Trump, Facebook has been eradicating video and pictures from Capitol rioters. The firm additionally added textual content on posts questioning the election, confirming that Joe Biden has been lawfully elected, and saying it was taking enforcement motion in opposition to militarized social actions like QAnon.
While the modifications are constructive, they’re “just a drop in the bucket,” stated Jeff Orlowski, director of Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma,” a preferred 2020 movie that confirmed how Silicon Valley’s pursuit of revenue may pose an existential menace to U.S. democracy.
Voices like Gomez’s is usually a enormous assist to get the message throughout, contemplating her a whole bunch of tens of millions of followers, Orlowski stated.
“Think of the advertising revenue from every Selena Gomez post. Think of the advertising revenue from every Donald Trump post, the advertising revenue from every post from The Rock or whoever,” he stated. “Those people are literally generating millions of dollars for these companies … The top 20 people on Instagram have probably the most influence over Mark and Sheryl compared to anybody else until finally Congress as a whole gets enough momentum and energy to put some legislation together.”
Orlowski and Ahmed each stated they’re trying to Biden’s administration for reforms, together with a measure that may maintain social media firms accountable for the posts they permit, an effort that has gained momentum and drawn bipartisan assist.
“The question no longer is ‘Is there going to be change,’” Ahmed stated. “The question is, ‘What kind of change are we going to get?’”
Meanwhile, Gomez vows to maintain combating so long as she has a pedestal.
“While I have this, I’m going to do good things with it,” she stated. “I think that’s my purpose.”