Facebook employees critical of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision not to remove an inflammatory comment from US President Donald Trump took their dissent public over the weekend on Twitter, praising the rival social media firm for taking action and rebuking their own employer.
Many tech workers at companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon have become active on social justice issues in recent years and urged their employers take action and change policies.
Still, the criticism of Zuckerberg marked a rare case of high-level employees publicly taking their own CEO to task, with at least three of the seven critical posts seen by Reuters coming from people who identified themselves as senior managers.
“Mark is wrong, and I will endeavour in the loudest possible way to change his mind,” wrote Ryan Freitas, whose Twitter account identifies him as director of product design for Facebook’s News Feed. He added he had mobilised “50+ likeminded folks” to lobby for internal change.
Jason Toff, identified as director of product management, wrote: “I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we’re showing up. The majority of co-workers I’ve spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the employee dissent.
Twitter on Friday hid a tweet from Trump that included the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” behind a warning label. It explained the tweet violated Twitter’s rules against “glorifying violence” but was being left up as a “public service exception”.
Facebook declined to take action on the same message, with Zuckerberg saying in a Facebook post on Friday that while he found the remarks “deeply offensive,” the company decided they did not violate its policy against“incitements to violence.”
Some of the dissenting employees directly praised Twitter’s response.
Giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable, regardless who you are or if it’s newsworthy,” wrote another Facebook manager.
