Star Wars actor Mark Hamill says he’s quitting Facebook because CEO Mark Zuckerberg won’t censor political ads on the platform.
Hamill announced his decision on Twitter and said that he’s deleted his Facebook account because Mark Zuckerberg “values profit more than truthfulness.”
“#PatrotismOverProfits,” Hamill added, accidentally using the Malaysian flag, instead of the United States flag.
Ever since Facebook announced that it wouldn’t censor political ads last September, it’s faced intense pressure from the media, public figures, and politicians to reverse its stance.
Earlier this week, Facebook announced new features that will allow people to see fewer political and social issue ads on Facebook and Instagram but stuck with its original policy of not censoring ads from politicians. This update brought renewed pressure from the parties who want Facebook to change its stance and appears to have prompted Hamill to quit Facebook and delete his page.
Despite Hamill’s claims that Zuckerberg values profit more than truthfulness, Zuckerberg has insisted that the decision to not censor political ads is not profit-driven. “From a business perspective, the controversy that this creates far outweighs the very small percentage of our business that this makes up,” Zuckerberg said about the decision in October. “These ads from politicians will be less than 0.5% of our revenue next year.”
“Ultimately, we don’t think decisions about political ads should be made by private companies,” Facebook said in its post earlier this week.
