Michael Stipe calls for social media boycott in protest of the “far right”
The musician Michael Stipe, who made his name as the frontman of REM, has urged fans to partake in a boycott of Instagram, Facebook and all other Meta platforms. He claims that the policies enacted by the platforms have prompted a rise in far right sentiments in America and across the globe.
In a post on Instagram, Stipe commented, “I’ll be logged off for the week. Please consider doing the same so corporations like Meta can imagine there might be consequences for helping advance the far right in America and world wide.”
He then added, ”Are we too addicted we can’t log off even for one week?” While rhetorical, statistics suggest that many people are, indeed, too addicted to join him. A study by California State University suggested that around 10% of Americans are addicted to social media.
In Stipe’s view, this has led to a very problematic situation. He signed off his message by concluding, “It’s so gross. I’m really happy to step away for a week as some form of protest—and then I’ll come back and decide what to do from there.”
He has vowed to log out of all the platforms owned by Meta, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Recent studies have shown that more than 77% of Internet users, which correlates to roughly 3.59 billion people worldwide, are active on at least one Meta platform.
Which policies is Michael Stipe protesting?
Earlier this month, it was announced by Meta that they would be scrapping their independent fact checker operation in favour of a community notes model. Mark Zuckerberg said that the move would take Meta ”back to our roots around free expression”.
However, experts have also argued that this will make fake news harder to discern and expose users to more extreme political messaging. This type of content was blamed for being behind what Keir Stramer later branded as ”far right riots” in the UK last summer.
Presently, any potential mass boycott remains muted, with Stipe among the first public figures to raise the point.
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