Mark Hamill, the iconic actor known for playing Luke Skywalker and voicing the Joker, has recently deleted his Facebook account in protest against Mark Zuckerberg for not taking action against hate speech on his website. Hamill expressed his disappointment on Twitter, claiming that “Zuckerberg values profit more than truthfulness”.
This protest was in response to Facebook stating that it won’t make changes to its political advertising policy. This lack of change has helped promote disinformation that benefits the Republican Party campaign, with Hamill being a very vocal critic of the Trump administration on social media. The actor stated in his tweet that, “I know this is a big “Who Cares?” for the world at large but I’ll sleep better at night”.
In addition to Hamill, other actors have been very critical of Facebook’s policy page. Borat actor Sacha Baron Cohen also criticized Zuckerberg during his speech accepting an award from the Anti-Defamation League, joking (though not really) that “if Facebook had been around during Adolf Hitler’s reign, he could have posted “30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem.'” Of course, Facebook denounced Cohen’s claims by stating that they are against hate speech on their platform and that his statement misrepresented the website’s policy. Regardless of these claims, it’s unlikely as to whether Facebook could be potentially affected by Hamill’s actions.
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