Facebook worker unrest rises with walkout, criticism of Zuckerberg for allowing incendiary Trump comments
- Some employees – working from home because of the pandemic – held a virtual walkout, deciding not to log in to work on Monday in protest
- It is rare for Facebook employees to speak publicly about internal activity unless they have permission from the communications team
Facebook employees became increasingly bold in expressing their dismay at CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision not to take action on incendiary comments posted to the social network by US President Donald Trump, tweeting out criticisms and staging a virtual walkout.
After the president tweeted a message with the words “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in response to protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Twitter for the first time obscured one of his posts, marking it with a warning that it breached service rules by glorifying violence.
Facebook’s response to the same content, in a post from Zuckerberg on Friday, was to say, “We think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force.”
Several senior figures at Facebook declared their strong disagreement online over the weekend, and some employees – working from home because of the pandemic – held a virtual walkout, deciding not to log in to work on Monday in protest.
“Mark is wrong, and I will endeavour in the loudest possible way to change his mind,” said Ryan Freitas, director of product design for Facebook’s News Feed. “I apologise if you were waiting for me to have some sort of external opinion. I focused on organising 50+ like-minded folks into something that looks like internal change.”
“Giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable, regardless who you are or if it’s newsworthy,” wrote Andrew Crow, head of design for Facebook’s Portal product line.