Facebook employees are speaking out with the company’s handling of Donald Trump’s post about the Minneapolis police brutality protests.
Director of product design at Facebook, Ryan Freitas, tweeted, “Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way to change his mind. I apologize if you were waiting for me to have some sort of external opinion. I focused on organizing 50+ like-minded folks into something that looks like internal change.”
The social media giant has faced intense scrutiny from users and staff since last Friday after it left up a post by Donald Trump which threatened the use of military enforcement against protestors in Minneapolis. He even very boldly used the 1960 segregationist phrase, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the company’s decision to leave Trump’s post untouched, explaining that although he personally had “a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric,” Facebook’s “position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies.”
However, several Facebook employees felt differently and voiced their disdain for the company’s lack of removing Trump’s hateful posts.
“Inaction is not the answer. Facebook leadership is wrong. I have voiced my concerns internally, and I will continue to do it. I believe in our mission. I believe in my teammates. I hope we will do and be better,” Diego Mendes, a product design manager at Facebook ARVR, proclaimed.
Jason Toff, director of product management at Facebook, also voiced his opposition saying, “I work at Facebook, and I am not proud of how we’re showing up. The majority of coworkers I’ve spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard.”
Facebook’s lack of action comes as Twitter is engulfed in a battle with Trump after fact-checking several of his tweets that spread misinformation about mail-in voting.
“Censoring information that might help people see the complete picture *is* wrong. But 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,” Andrew Crow, head of design at Facebook Portal declared.
David Gillis, a director of product design at Facebook, tweeted, “I believe Trump’s “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet (cross-posted to FB), encourages extra-judicial violence and stokes racism. Respect to @Twitter’s integrity team for making the enforcement call. While I understand why we chose to stay squarely within the four corners of our violence and incitement policy, I think it would have been right for us to make a “spirit of the policy” exception that took more context into account.”
“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,” wrote Jason Stirman, a design manager at Facebook.
On Sunday, possibly in an effort to combat some of the backlash that he was receiving, Zuckerberg announced that the company would be donating $10 million to fight racial injustice.
Update: Many of the employees, who stated that they refused to work in order to show their support for demonstrators across the country, added an automated message to their digital profiles and email responses saying that they were out of the office in a show of protest.
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