Facebook Employees Break Ranks To Criticize Mark Zuckerberg For Not Tackling Trump’s ‘Shooting’ Posts

TOPLINE

Senior Facebook employees have publicly blasted CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “do-nothing” approach to President Donald Trump’s inflammatory posts threatening violence against protesters.

Facebook cofounder, CEO and Chairman Mark Zuckerberg

2018 Getty Images

KEY FACTS

Facebook staff have begun to voice their discomfort at the radically different approach of their social network to that of Twitter, in response to posts shared by the president on Friday targeting George Floyd protests that said, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

For the first time, Twitter took the step of obscuring Trump’s tweets with a public interest warning that its contents breached the platform’s rules about glorifying violence.

Facebook left Trump’s post up on the site without being flagged, a decision defended by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

“I strongly disagree 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 said in a post.

He added: “We think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force.”

The White House claimed Twitter said the tweet did not violate the platform’s rules.

Chief critics

Facebook employees lined up to criticize Zuckerberg on Twitter.

Ryan Freitas, product design director, 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+ likeminded folks into something that looks like internal change.”

Design manager Jason Stirman wrote: “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.”

They were joined by product designer Zara Zhang, who said that concerns were being voiced internally, but “to no avail.”

Key background

Trump’s use of the word “thugs” in the same post to describe protests relating to the death of unarmed and handcuffed black man George Floyd in police custody, drew comparisons on social media to the way he described “very good people” who stormed the Michigan Capitol building in protest at coronavirus shutdowns just weeks ago. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” used by Trump, is a charged phrase first used in 1967 by Miami police chief Walter Headley in response to civil rights protests. Trump on Friday said he did not know about the racially charged history of the term, NPR reports.

News peg

The spat between Trump and Twitter has intensified in recent days. Trump last week claimed that Twitter is biased against conservative voices after the social media platform added a fact-check tag to two Trump tweets claiming mail-in voting was fraudulent. Trump last week signed an executive order targeting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, aimed at curtailing the immunity of Twitter, and that of other social media tech companies, from being sued over user content on their sites.

Tangent

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg have both endured criticism for their failure to address abusive and problematic speech on the platforms they lead. Zuckerberg seems to have leaned into a laissez-faire approach that saw him justify giving a platform to Holocaust deniers, while Dorsey has laid down a precedent that the site will address problem users, even those in the Oval Office.

Zuckerberg last week told Fox News: “I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of the truth of everything that people say online.

“Private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”

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