REM’s Michael Stipe urged his social media followers to join him in temporarily boycotting Meta and its related products in protest of their role in “helping the advancement of the American far right.”
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Stipe shared his intentions in an Instagram post on Sunday (Jan. 19), outlining the “Lights Out Meta” campaign that will run from Jan. 19 to Jan. 26 and asking users to sign out during the week. Meta platform. Stipe added that this includes Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, WhatsApp, Giphy, Meta Quest and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, among others.
“I will be logged out for a week. Starting tomorrow,” Stipe wrote. “Please consider doing the same so that companies like Meta can imagine the consequences that helping to advance the far right in the United States and around the world could have. Or are we too obsessed? [that] Can’t you go offline for a week?
“This is disgusting,” he continued in the post’s caption. “I’m really happy to be away for a week as a protest of sorts – and then I’ll come back and decide what to do next.”
Stipe’s decision to join the boycott of Meta comes just days after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company’s decision to abandon its fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram, noting that the company had clearly made “too many mistakes and too much censorship.” and “too politically biased.
Instead, Facebook and Instagram will rely on an approach similar to the “social notes” model on X. Further spread of far-right ideology.
Stipe isn’t the only one to announce his retirement from social media this weekend, The Cure’s Robert Smith also told his fans that he will be leaving X on Sunday (January 19) in favor of Bluesky, Instagram or Mastodon’s Universeodon account on. “Otherwise I might be out there,” Smith added.
