Don’t expect to see new pictures on Kim K’s Instagram or read about Coca Cola’s newest attempts to win back sugar haters… they’re all silent today. At least on Instagram.
Joining Kim and Coke are big names like Katy Perry, Michael B. Jordan and Ashton Kutcher. They’ve all said they will participate in a 24-hour Instagram “freeze” on Wednesday as part of the Stop Hate For Profit movement to protest what the organization calls “Facebook’s repeated failures to address hate speech and election disinformation on their platforms.”
A slew of big-name advertisers including Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Verizon paused to their social media 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 into taking more stringent steps to stop the spread of hate speech and misinformation on its platform.
Specifically, the organization wants Facebook to remove Facebook Groups that promote white supremacy, hate and violent conspiracies; forbid any event page with a call to arms and eliminate a politician exemption for political and voting content, among other requests.
For instance, in one recent incident, Facebook reportedly declined to take down a page for a militia organization based in Kenosha, Wisconsin, despite hundreds of notifications from users that the page included a call to arms and comments advocating violence against protesters, who were demonstrating over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man. Facebook removed the page only after a gunman at the protest killed two people, an error which CEO Mark Zuckerberg later called an “operational mistake.”
Now, the organization is turning its attention to Facebook subsidiary Instagram, asking users to conduct a 24-hour “freeze” in which they’ll make one post criticizing the company and no further posts for the day.
Among the participants are Sacha Baron Cohen, Naomi Campbell, Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Kate Hudson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rosario Dawson, Isla Fisher, Scooter Braun and Mark Ruffalo.
Facebook declined to comment.