Actress Isla Fisher, wife of comedic actor Sacha Baron Cohen, denounced Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly allowing hateful voices on the platform leading up to the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill.
Speaking with Marie Claire magazine, Fisher claimed that Facebook hosted “conspiracy theories” and “lies that cost lives.” Her rhetoric was specifically pointed at the January 6 riot.
“It is something that we all need to be as proactive as possible about right now. It was clearly the spread of online conspiracy theories that led to the storming of Capitol Hill,” she said.
“And people like Mark Zuckerberg are making money off lies that cost lives, and these social media companies should be creating jobs that save lives,” Fisher added. “No account on social media should incite violence, or spread hate or false information.”
Fisher concluded Facebook and other platforms should invest more money in moderation, even though the platforms have purged their sites of figures they deemed divisive, such as President Donald Trump.
“I think these companies can afford to hire moderators to prevent misinformation being spread, and to save lives,” she concluded.
Fisher’s husband, Sacha Baron Cohen, publicly backed the blacklisting of President Trump on every major internet platform.
“Virtually every social media company has removed Trump…EXCEPT YouTube. Trump’s YouTube channel is STILL showing videos of his election lies to MILLIONS of people!” Cohen tweeted in January as he tagged YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki as well as Google CEO Sundar Pichai in the post.
YouTube later banned Trump from the platform.
Last Wednesday, Facebook’s oversight board upheld the former president’s ban on Facebook and Instagram, though it demanded that the platform clarify its terms of service and revisit Trump‘s ban in six months.
As The Daily Wire reported on Monday, a recent NBC News poll showed that a majority of Americans believe social media has further deepened America’s divide.
“The poll showed that among respondents who said they use social media at least once per day, 49% of respondents said that it makes their lives better, while 37% of daily social media users said that social media makes their lives worse,” said the report. “Among all adults responding to the poll (rather than only those who use social media each day), 32% said that social media makes their lives better, while 24% said that it makes their lives worse. Overall, 66% of respondents said they use social media at least once a day, while 69% answered the same way in March 2019. In April 2021, the poll showed that 41% of respondents said that they have made an effort to limit the amount of time they use their smart phone in the last year or two. When asked the same question in March 2019, 48% of respondents said they had made an effort to limit smart phone use.”