Sarah Tew/CNET
Viber, a messaging app with over 1 billion users, is cutting all ties with Facebook, the business stated Thursday. According to Viber, the choice is available in the wake of “Facebook’s data violations and failure to combat violent rhetoric.”
Effective right away, the messaging app will stop all advertisement costs on the social networking platform, and it prepares to get rid of Facebook Connect, Facebook SDK, and Giphy from the app by the start of July.
“Facebook continues to demonstrate poor judgment in understanding its role in today’s world,” stated Viber CEO Djamel Agaoua. “From the company’s mishandling of data and lack of privacy in its apps, to its outrageous stand of avoiding the steps necessary to protect the public from violent and dangerous rhetoric, Facebook has gone too far. We are not the arbiters of truth, but the truth is some people are suffering from the proliferation of violent content and companies must take a clear stand.”
Viber CEO Djamel Agaoua.
Viber
Viber’s statement indicate Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal as a significant cause for issue, and calls the platform’s failure to suppress the spread of hate speech following the killing of George Floyd “the last straw.”
Viber, owned by Japanese international business Rakuten, states it hopes its choice serves to “level up” the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP’s #StopHateForProfit motion, which gets in touch with Facebook’s marketers to stop briefly advertisement costs throughout the month of July due to the expansion of hate speech on the platform.
Facebook didn’t right away react to an ask for remark.
