Selena Gomez lobbies social media companies for stricter regulation
. @SelenaGomez says Facebook is "cashing in from evil." Gomez exchanged emails with the social media giant's COO Sheryl Sandberg as part of a public and private fight against online misinformation and hate. She's now sharing the messages with @AP.https://t.co/kvlD4IMzG2
- AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) January 16, 2021
The Associated Press reports that pop chanteuse Selena Gomez has been lobbying for a while for social media platforms to clean up their act and 'stop doing the bare minimum'. She stated that her tipping point came when in 2017, a 12-year-old commented on one of her Instagram posts: “Go kill yourself.”
“That was my tipping point,” she said. “I couldn’t handle what I was seeing.”
In an interview that took place right before the insurrection on January 6, Gomez said: “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. Facebook continues to allow dangerous lies about vaccines and COVID and the U.S. election, and neo-Nazi groups are selling racist products via Instagram."
The AP also notes that several other celebrities have been using their platforms to call out technological companies as well, such as Sacha Baron Cohen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Kerry Washington, and Kim Kardashian West. It obtained emails that Gomez sent to Sandberg in September 2020, expressing her concern that white supremacist militia the Three Percenters (several chapters of which were involved in the insurrection) were still networking and propagating hate on the platform, despite US militia groups supposedly being banned the month before.
The piece ends with Gomez vowing to continue her focus on the issue. “While I have this, I’m going to do good things with it,” she said. “I think that’s my purpose.”
Gomez has become more politically active over the past year and posted on both Twitter and Instagram about political events and elections. She has made several tweets continuing to criticise the lack of action from Big Tech.
. @Facebook, @Instagram, @Twitter, @Google, Mark Zuckerberg, @SherylSandberg, @jack, @Sundarpichai, @SusanWojcicki pic.twitter.com/df3ZLR5Ruk
- Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) January 7, 2021
I love @YouTube and put a music video on there the other day... how can this be happening? I don’t want my fans or anyone to be funding hate or violence. https://t.co/oNEhKkjBsp
- Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) January 16, 2021
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4