Selena Called Out Social Media CEOs After The Capitol Riot For This Reason
Selena Gomez is contributing to the conversation surrounding the Jan. 6 attempted coup at Capitol Hill. The singer took to Twitter to say major social media conglomerates are responsible, in part, for the spread of hatred and misinformation in the U.S. that led to the day's events and must be held accountable. Selena Gomez's tweet slamming social media CEOs for the U.S. Capitol riots has since been retweeted by thousands of people and made a great point.
Following the chaos that saw pro-Trump rioters descend on the Capitol in Washington D.C. in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden's electoral college win in the 2020 election, Gomez had a message for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. She tagged each executive before delving into a heated message about why they need to do better for the American people.
"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," she tweeted, before once again naming the tech leaders one by one. "You have all failed the American people today, and I hope you're going to fix things moving forward."
As Gomez and countless others call out social media giants for allowing hate-filled messages and misinformation to spread, they are seemingly starting to listen. Twitter removed three of the President's tweets on Jan. 6 for "severe violations" of their Civic Integrity policy. "This means that the account of @realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of these Tweets. If the Tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked," Twitter explained. It also threatened the permanent suspension of Trump's account.
Facebook and Instagram soon followed suit. Both platforms banned Trump from posting for 24 hours. "We've assessed two policy violations against President Trump's Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time," Facebook said in a tweet.
Gomez also called out the social media giants in December for allowing the spread of false information about the coronavirus. As these companies tighten up their posting policies, it doesn't sound like Gomez is letting them off the hook anytime soon.
