Kim Kardashian And A Slew Of Other Stars Boycott Instagram For One Day
Kim Kardashian is joining over a dozen celebrities including Ashton Kutcher, Michael B. Jordan, and Katy Perry to boycott Instagram for 24 hours. These celebrities announced the one-day Instagram freeze on Wednesday as part of the "Stop Hate For Profit" movement citing Facebook's repeated failures to get rid of hate speech and election disinformation on its platform.
A myriad of top advertisers such as Verizon, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks delayed their social media budgets this summer in the wake of "Stop Hate For Profit" urging advertisers to boycott Facebook for the month of July. The group said its goal was to pressure Facebook into coming up with stricter methods to put a lid on the spread of misinformation and hate speech on its platform.
The organization is urging Facebook to get rid of Facebook Groups that support hate, white supremacy, and violent conspiracies. Aside from that, the group wants the social media platform to restrict any event page that encourages people to defend or prepare for confrontation and eliminate a politician exemption for political and voting content, in addition to several other requests.
Facebook, reportedly, refused to take down a page for a militia organization from Kenosha, Wisconsin, despite receiving complains about the group including a call to arms and comprising comments that support violence against protesters, who were demonstrating over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, BuzzFeed News reported. Facebook removed the page after a gunman shot and killed two people, a mistake that CEO Mark Zuckerberg later deemed as an " “operational mistake," according to CNBC.
Now, the "Stop Hate For Profit" movement is deviating its attention to Facebook subsidiary Instagram, urging users to join their 24-hour Instagram freeze, in which they will be posting only one post that criticizes the company and refrain from sharing a further post for the day.
The participants include Mark Ruffalo, Scooter Braun, Isla Fisher, Rosario Dawson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Hudson, Sarah Silverman, Amy Schumer, Judd Apatow, Naomi Campbell, and Sacha Baron Cohen. Kardashian West boasts one of Instagram’s most-followed accounts, with over 188 million followers.
Taking to her Instagram account, the makeup mogul noted that she likes the fact that Facebook and Instagram allow her to directly connect to her fans, Kardashian West told her fans that she can't sit by and remain mum about these platforms allowing the spread of hate, propaganda, and misinformation. She went on to say that this negativity is being spread by groups that want to sow division and split America apart so that they could take steps after people are killed.
The KKW Beauty founder wrote in her post that misinformation shared on social media platforms seriously impact elections, and undermine democracy. She then urged her Instagram followers to join her when she freezes her Instagram and FB account to tell Facebook to #StopHateForProfit.