Sacha Baron Cohen thinks the lack of regulation online has made the coronavirus pandemic worse.
Sacha Baron Cohen
The 'Trial of the Chicago 7' actor is worried about the way conspiracy theories are allowed to spread unchecked on the Internet and admitted he thinks inaccurate information has lead to more people "dying" and others being too afraid to accept a vaccine.
He said: "People are dying because the internet has not been regulated. The length of the pandemic depends to no insignificant degree on whether conspiracies about the vaccine are spread on social media.”
In November 2019, Sacha famously made his first ever public speech out of character for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in which he lambasted hate speech, in particular Holocaust denial, but he admitted he was worried it would ruin his career.
He said: "Eventually, I felt it’d be OK because I’ve achieved more than I ever would have dreamed of. Having had my own TV show was unbelievable. The fact that I got to make my own movie was beyond my wildest dreams.”
But ultimately, the 49-year-old star felt he had to act.
He told The Guardian newspaper: "I didn’t feel I had a choice. If social media wasn’t reformed, Trump would definitely win. Because he could only do so by propagating lies about voter fraud, the danger of certain ethnic minorities, of violence, of the Black Lives Matter movement, of Antifa.
“I thought I would feel really upset with myself on November 4th if I hadn’t done my tiny bit to try to stop Trump getting reelected and dismantling American democracy into something similar to what we see in Russia and Turkey. And I felt that other populists would do the same around the world."
In September last year, the 'Borat Subsequent Moviefilm' star called for a one-day freeze of Instagram and Facebook accounts and the protest proved to be effective in his campaigning.
He said: "[Shortly after, Facebook] banned QAnon and Holocaust deniers.
"They took down a Trump post saying flu was worse than Covid. They banned political ads after the polls closed on election day, they added labels and notifications about the actual election results. Facebook and Twitter did more in a few weeks than they’d done in a few years.”
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