Mark Hamill has quit Facebook over the company’s political ads policy.
In a Sunday tweet, the Star Wars actor accused social network chief Mark Zuckerberg of valuing profit over “truthfulness.”
“I know this is a big ‘Who cares?’ for the world at large, but I’ll sleep better at night,” Hamill wrote.
As of press time, the post received 173,000 likes and was retweeted more than 20,000 times.
“#PatriotismOverProfits,” he tweeted, linking to a New York Times article about Facebook’s decision to not limit political ad targeting.
(He also included two emoji indicating the US is greater than money—but accidentally used the Malaysian flag [featuring 14 alternating red and white stripes beside a crescent moon and 14-point star]. A postscript corrected the error.)
Hamill is the latest celebrity to condemn Facebook’s actions: Sacha Baron Cohen in November penned an op-ed on social media site regulation for the Washington Post.
Following a September ruling that politicians are “exempt” from third-party fact checking, the social network last week announced changes to its political ad system.
New functions like searching for ads with exact phrases, grouping similar plugs, and filtering content will allow for “more efficient and effective research,” according to Rob Leathern, director of product management for Facebook.
Except, instead of sifting out falsehoods promoted by party members, the updates will simply boost confirmation bias and spread misinformation without verification.
“This does not mean that politicians can say whatever they like in advertisements on Facebook,” Leathern wrote in a blog post.
Which is to say: hate speech, harmful content, and messages designed to intimidate or stop people from exercising their right to vote are prohibited, but misleading adverts are A-OK.
This is keeping with Facebook’s newsworthiness exemption, introduced in 2016, which allows posts that break community standards “if we believe the public interest in seeing it outweighs the risk of harm,” VP of global affairs and communications Nick Clegg said last year.
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