Facebook staff rebel against Zuckerberg over social network founder’s inaction on Trump protest posts

Executives have voiced public anger over failure to mute the president's inflammatory remarks against protestors
Facebook staff have taken to rival to Twitter as the platform for voicing their descent

Facebook is facing a public mutiny from several executives for failing to quell incendiary comments made by President Trump on the social network.

While Twitter obscured threats made by the president targeted at protestors who have taken to the streets against alleged police brutality — on the grounds that commander in chief’s post “glorified violence” — Facebook left the same comments available for all to see.

He posted combative remarks about “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” as anger erupted and demonstrations grew following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Over the past 24 hours, a number of Facebook staff have criticised its founder Mark Zuckerberg for failing to act on presidential posts they say “incite violence” and allow the platform to "spread disinformation".

It comes after a row last week between the Facebook boss and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey after Mr Zuckerberg said that his social network “shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth” in fact-checking users’ comments.

Now President Trump’s latest inflammatory remarks aimed at protesters, made at just after 10 pm on Thursday, three days after Mr Floyd’s death, pushed workers to speak out publicly against Facebook.

However, despite the outcry from the tech giant’s own staff, the post was still visible on the presidential timeline today and has gathered more than 250,000 interactions, along with tens of thousands of comments and shares.

Twitter, in contrast, obscured Mr Trump's same statement for violating its rules on “glorifying violence”, which could be viewed by clicking the warning box.

A number of Facebook staff broke ranks with official policy to air their frustrations at Mr Zuckerberg's policy stance.

They include David Gillis, a Facebook director of product design, who tweeted: "I believe Trump’s 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts' tweet (cross-posted to FB), encourages extra-judicial violence and stokes racism."

Jason Toff, a director of product management at Facebook, also wrote on Twitter: "I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we’re showing up.

“The majority of coworkers I’ve spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard."

Jason Stirman, a design manager at Facebook, said: “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.”

Ryan Freitas, director of product design for Facebook's news feed, wrote on Twitter: “Mark is wrong, and I will endeavour in the loudest possible way to change his mind."

Andrew Crow, head of design at Facebook Portal, added that "giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable".

Explaining the decision to leave the president’s post, Mr Zuckerberg wrote on Friday that while he had "a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric," the company's "position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies.”

Facebook said in a statement today: “We recognise the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our black community.

“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."

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