Some Facebook employees are slamming the social network for not following Twitter’s example in flagging posts from President Trump.
Numerous Facebook workers — including a number identifying themselves as high-level employees — criticized the company on Twitter over the weekend as protests over the death of George Floyd gripped the nation.
“Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way,” Ryan Frietas, director of product design for Facebook’s News Feed, wrote on Twitter about Zuckerberg’s decision to leave Trump’s posts up untouched.
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.”
“Respect to @Twitter’s integrity team for making the enforcement call,” David Gillis, a Facebook director of product design, wrote. Despite saying that he understood Zuckerberg’s thinking in Facebook holding firm, he added that “It would have been right for us to make a ‘spirit of the policy’ exception that took more context into account.
Jason Toff, identified as a Facebook director of product management, tweeted that he was “not proud” of how his company was dealing with the matter, while another Facebook manager, Andrew Crow, said that he disagrees “with Mark’s position and will work to make change happen.”
“Giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable, regardless who you are or if it’s newsworthy,” Crow said.
Facebook officials on Monday merely said they are listening the criticisms. “We recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our black community,” the company said in a statement to The Post. “We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership. As we face additional difficult decisions around content ahead, we’ll continue seeking their honest feedback.”
Zuckerberg on Friday wrote in a public post that h had been “struggling with how to respond to the President’s tweets and posts all day,” saying that he had a “visceral negative reaction” to them but noting that he is “responsible for reacting not just in my personal capacity but at the leader of an institution committed to free expression.”
“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 scrutinized out in the open,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Shares of Facebook were up 0.2 percent Monday morning, at $225.63.
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