Selena Gomez Calls Out Social Media CEOs After Capitol Riot: You ‘Failed the American People’

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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—who 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.”

Selena 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.) 

Meghan McCain call the incidents “domestic terrorism” and urged her followers to “stop calling it protesting.” 

Cardi B tweeted, “The irony is pretty funny…weren’t people just wild animals in the summer for demanding justice?” 

Chris 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.”

President Donald Trump, for now, has been suspended from posting to Twitter for “repeated and severe violations” of the platform’s Civic Integrity policy. 

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