A huge crowd of Trump supporters engaged in a violent clash with law enforcement before the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, January 6th. After the rioters attacked the capitol building, it went under total lockdown. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter temporarily froze the accounts of President Donald Trump on their platforms. Many celebrities have expressed their thoughts on the matter. Selena Gomez expressed her disappointment with the role of the social media giants in the matter. She accused them of not doing enough to prevent situations like this. She called them out on their incapability to prevent the spread of wrong and fabricated information in the mass. She also said that these platforms failed to check the violent rhetoric that has been circulating in recent months. According to her, it led the President and his supporters to spread hatred, by baselessly claiming there has been fraud committed during the election.
In her statement published on Twitter after the devastating incident took place in Washington DC, Gomez pointed out the role of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. She specially mentioned the CEOs of these platforms, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Alphabet Inc. and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
. @Facebook, @Instagram, @Twitter, @Google, Mark Zuckerberg, @SherylSandberg, @jack, @Sundarpichai, @SusanWojcicki pic.twitter.com/df3ZLR5Ruk
— Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) January 7, 2021
She wrote on her Twitter account, ‘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 continued her note mentioning the name of the names of the leaders of the tech giants in the country. She criticized their contribution to society and maintaining peace in the community. She further wrote, ‘You have all failed the American people today, and I hope you’re going to fix things moving forward.’
Before this recent outburst, Gomez had previously also condemned Facebook’s role in spreading misinformation. Earlier in December, she accused them of spreading inaccurate information about the COVID-19 vaccine through the platform. She posted that this kind of scientific misinformation ‘has and will cost lives.’ She further stated, ‘@Facebook said they don’t allow lies about COVID and vaccines to be spread on their platforms. 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!’
Follow her on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/selenagomez