A group of celebrities, including Kim Kardashian West and Michael Jordan, are taking part in a 24‑hour Instagram boycott.
On Wednesday, Kim Kardashian and other celebrities said they would join the Instagram "freeze" as part of the Stop Hate For Profit, to protest what the organization calls: "Facebook's repeated failures to address hate speech misinformation election on its platforms."
A slew of big-name advertisers, including Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Verizon, cut their social media ad budgets this summer after Stop Hate For Profit called on advertisers to boycott Facebook for the month of July. The goal, the group said, was to pressure the company to take stricter measures to stop the spread of hate speech and misinformation on its platform, according to CNBC.
Specifically, the organization wants Facebook to remove the groups that promote «white superiority», hatred and violent conspiracies. It aims to ban any page or event that glorifies war, and to eliminate exemptions for politicians, political content and voting content, among other requests.
In a recent incident, Facebook appeared to refuse to remove a page for a paramilitary group based in Kenosha, Wisconsin, despite hundreds of reports from users that the page promoted violence and glorified guns. In fact, comments were reported that promoted violence against protesters who were demonstrating against the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a man of color. Facebook only removed the page after a gunman killed two people at the protest, a mistake that CEO Mark Zuckerberglater called an “operational error.”
Now, the organization is turning its attention to its subsidiary Facebook, Instagram, asking users to participate in a 24‑hour boycott, in which they will post criticizing the company and not other posts for the rest of the day.
Besides Kim Kardashian, among the participants in the Instagram boycott are Katy Perry, Ashton Kutcher, Sacha Baron Cohen, Naomi Campbell, Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Kate Hudson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rosario Dawson, Isla Fisher, Scooter Braun and Mark Ruffalo.
