“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.”
Selena Gomez Calls Out Social Media CEOs After Capitol Riot: You ‘Failed the American People’
Selena Gomez is taking social media CEOs to task after the riots that took place at the U.S. Capitol Building on Wednesday, January 6.
The singer wrote that gatekeepers of platforms like Twitter and Facebook are in part responsible for the day’s events, which saw Trump supporters storming the Capitol in protest of the 2020 election results. But it went far past protest: The people present—whom Ivanka Trump called “American patriots” in a now deleted tweet—began breaking windows, entering politicians’ offices, and displaying acts of violence toward Capitol police. One woman was fatally shot.
Gomez thinks none of this would’ve happened had social media channels done better to control hate speech and misinformation. “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 wrote on Twitter. The singer tagged Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google directly, as well as key leaders at those companies: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.
She continued, “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.”
https://twitter.com/selenagomez/status/1346996209643376642Selena Gomez is one of several celebrities who have voiced outrage over what happened at the Capitol. “Accepting the results of a legitimate democratic election is patriotic. Refusing to do so and inciting violence is anti-American,” Karlie Kloss tweeted. (She later responded, “I've tried” to a user asking her to say this to her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.)
https://twitter.com/karliekloss/status/1346991615324336128Meghan McCain call the incidents “domestic terrorism” and urged her followers to “stop calling it protesting.”
https://twitter.com/MeghanMcCain/status/1346916232390463488Cardi B tweeted, “The irony is pretty funny…weren’t people just wild animals in the summer for demanding justice?”
https://twitter.com/iamcardib/status/1346913939523653632Chris Evans called out the racial double standard of these riots. “Just think of the carnage had they not been white,” he wrote on Twitter. “So many people enabled this.”
https://twitter.com/ChrisEvans/status/1346927215720734722https://twitter.com/ChrisEvans/status/1346928070213603329Demi Lovato condemned the rioters’ actions before demanding Trump’s impeachment in a series of tweets and Instagram posts. “My heart is broken. It makes me to sad to believe how naive I was to think this couldn’t possibly happen, and yet it did. Here we are,” she wrote.
Lovato also revealed that she’s working on new music, possibly inspired by the riot. “For everyone in my comments saying ‘where’s d7’ or wanting me to sing instead of speaking up about what needs to change in this country… THIS IS WHY I POST AS MUCH AS I DO. THIS IS WHY I CARE. THIS CANNOT HAPPEN ANY F--KING MORE. I’m angry, embarrassed and ashamed. I’m in the studio working on something special after today’s assault on democracy. #impeachtrumptonight.”
https://twitter.com/ddlovato/status/1347018650184777731https://twitter.com/ddlovato/status/1347018651896066052President Donald Trump, for now, has been suspended from posting to Twitter for “repeated and severe violations” of the platform’s Civic Integrity policy.
This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Paulina Jayne Isaac
