Actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen said he will not post to his Instagram account on Wednesday in protest of parent company Facebook’s failure to fight hate.
Cohen made the announcement in support of the Week of Action organized by the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, which was spearheaded over the summer by the Anti-Defamation League, NAACP and several other civil rights groups. The groups are protesting Facebook’s unwillingness to police hate speech or monitor posts for misinformation.
The only thing more terrifying than Mark Zuckerberg surfing in whiteface...Is the white supremacy and lies Facebook spreads every day. This Weds Sept 16 I’m freezing my Instagram to tell Mark to #StopHateForProfit. Who’s in?! pic.twitter.com/nM5VB9YVZd
— Sacha Baron Cohen (@SachaBaronCohen) September 14, 2020
The same groups called for a pause in advertising on Facebook during the month of July.
The tweet posted Monday by Cohen included a photo of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wearing whiteface. The message reads: “The only thing more terrifying than Mark Zuckerberg surfing in whiteface … Is the white supremacy and lies Facebook spreads every day. This Weds Sept 16 I’m freezing my Instagram to tell Mark to #StopHateForProfit. Who’s in?!”
Cohen has been a public critic of Facebook, which he called “the greatest propaganda machine in history” last November in a speech after receiving an international leadership award from the ADL. He added that “if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem.’”