A week of internal debates shows widespread anxiety about how the company will handle abuse going into 2020, according to a trove of internal documents obtained by The Washington Post.
SAN FRANCISCO — At an emergency town hall meeting Facebook held this week, days after President Trump posted, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” on his account, 5,500 Facebook employees had a demand for Mark Zuckerberg.
Before the meeting, the employees voted in a poll on which questions to ask the chief executive at the meeting, according to internal documents viewed by The Washington Post. The question that got the most votes: “Can we please change our policies around political free speech? Fact checking and removal of hate speech shouldn’t be exempt for politicians.”
Zuckerberg also met privately with black executives to discuss their pain and objections to Trump’s post, which referred to responding to protesters over George Floyd’s death while in Minneapolis police custody. And employees questioned whether Facebook was in an “abusive relationship” with the president, according to a trove of documents that included more than 200 posts from an internal message board that showed unrest among employees. Continue reading.
Facebook staff have spoken out against the tech giant’s decision not to remove or flag a controversial post by US President Donald Trump last week.