In late May, President Donald J. Trump uploaded a post on Facebook against the Mayor of Minneapolis and calling him out for his alleged inaction against the large scale protests that erupted in the city after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer. Calling the protests as dishonouring the memory of Floyd, he stated he would send in the military to control the situation. He further added, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”.
The post apparently went against the content moderation policies of Facebook and was seen as inciting violence. Employees at the social media giant staged their own protest against the company’s reluctance of taking the post down. Recently, at the beginning of this month, a long time employee of the company left after posting a long video of the company’s ‘failings’ in its leadership and decision making processes.
Again in recent revelations, CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an internal Q&A reportedly threatened to fire employees for bullying other employees and forcing them to take positions on issues they did not want to be associated with. This came after employees staged virtual walkouts and demonstrations against the company’s content moderation policies after failing to take action on President’s Trump’s post against the Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis. An employee was let go of immediately following the internal Q&A meeting and took to Twitter to post that he was let go for speaking out against a fellow colleague.
There has been trouble at Facebook since the past few months with employees questioning company policies. This latest unrest stems from employees believing that the company has chosen to not react against Trump’s post which was seen as a violation of the company’s community guidelines.
