Facebook workers rebel over Mark Zuckerberg's
refusal to act against Trump
Employees in rare display of dissent after site left
up post that was hidden by Twitter
Mark
Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg
said he personally had a negative reaction to Trump’s ‘inflammatory rhetoric’.
Alex Hern
and Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland
Published
onMon 1 Jun 2020 12.09 BST
Facebook
employees are staging a rebellion over Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to act against
Donald Trump, expressing their dissatisfaction with their boss on social media
in a rare display of dissent from within the company.
Disagreement
came from employees at all levels of the company, including some senior staff.
Particular criticism was levelled at Zuckerberg’s personal decision to leave up
the Facebook version of a tweet sent by Trump in which the president appeared
to encourage police to shoot rioters. By contrast, Twitter hid the message behind
a warning.
Andrew
Crow, the head of design for Facebook’s Portal video-phone, tweeted: “Giving a
platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable,
regardless who you are or if it’s newsworthy. I disagree with Mark’s position
and will work to make change happen.”
Jason
Stirman, a member of the company’s R&D team and the former chief executive
of the “mental training” app Lucid, also posted on Twitter, saying: “I don’t
know what to do, but I know doing nothing is not acceptable. I’m a FB employee
that completely disagrees with Mark’s decision to do nothing about Trump’s
recent posts, which clearly incite violence. I’m not alone inside of FB. There
isn’t a neutral position on racism.”
On Friday
Zuckerberg said he disagreed with Twitter’s interpretation of Trump’s
statement, which included the phrase: “When the looting starts, the shooting
starts.” Where Twitter had read the statement as incitement – encouraging police to shoot at protesters –
Zuckerberg said he read it as a warning to protesters that the police would be
shooting at them. The distinction meant that the post fell on the right side of
Facebook’s rules, Zuckerberg said, and would not be removed.
“Personally,
I have a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory
rhetoric,” Zuckerberg added. “I disagree strongly with how the president spoke
about this, but I believe people should be able to see this for themselves,
because ultimately accountability for those in positions of power can only
happen when their speech is scrutinised out in the open.”
The
Facebook founder’s statement galvanised responses from within his organisation.
“Mark is wrong, and I will endeavour in the loudest possible way to change his
mind,” said Ryan Freitas, the director of product design for Facebook’s News
Feed. Others who spoke out included the director of product management, Jason
Toff, and the product designer Sara Zhang.
Some
appealed to the company’s oversight board, a quasi-independent body that
Facebook has funded to act as a “supreme court” capable of ruling on difficult
questions around content moderation. But on Saturday, the board said it would
not be able to intervene in time, but was “working hard to set the board up to
begin operating later this year”.
The number
of Facebook employees complaining publicly is small in absolute terms – a
fraction of the company’s 45,000 or so employees – but is a rare external
display of dissatisfaction with the leadership of Zuckerberg, who controls
57.9% of the voting rights on Facebook’s board. The complaints are mirrored in
internal discussions, according to reports in the New York Times and the Verge,
where workers accused the company of applying its rules unevenly so as to avoid
angering Trump.
Late on
Sunday night, Zuckerberg committed a $10m donation from Facebook to groups
working on racial justice. “It’s clear Facebook also has more work to do to
keep people safe and ensure our systems don’t amplify bias,” he said in a post
to his Facebook page. “I hope that as a country we can come together to
understand all of the work that is still ahead and do what it takes to deliver
justice – not just for families and communities that are grieving now, but for
everyone who carries the burden of inequality.”
Do you work
for Facebook? Are you unhappy with Zuckerberg’s stance? Contact the authors:
julia.carrie.wong@protonmail.com or alex.hern@theguardian.com
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