Zuckerberg ripped by civil rights leaders over Trump’s ‘harmful’ Facebook posts
Civil rights leaders have had enough.
After a call Monday evening with Facebook’s Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, three racial justice organizations say the CEO’s inaction against President Donald Trump’s recent posts about “fraudulent” mail-in ballots and protesters fighting for black lives is simply unacceptable.
“We are disappointed and stunned by Mark’s incomprehensible explanations for allowing the Trump posts to remain up,” Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, said in a statement provided to McClatchy News via email.
“He did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump’s call for violence against protesters,” the statement continued.
“Mark is setting a very dangerous precedent for other voices who would say similar harmful things on Facebook,” the leaders added.
The disappointment comes after Twitter posted a warning on two of Trump’s tweets: one about “fraudulent” mail-in ballots and another about shooting people found destroying businesses in the midst of peaceful protesters.
“Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump tweeted on May 29. Above the tweet a message says that the president “violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence.”
But Zuckerberg opposed taking similar actions, coincidentally right after speaking with Trump in a call Friday night, according to confirmations from Axios and CNBC.
He believes it’s Facebook’s duty to “enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers,” according to his Facebook post Friday night.
“Unlike Twitter, we do not have a policy of putting a warning in front of posts that may incite violence because we believe that if a post incites violence, it should be removed regardless of whether it is newsworthy, even if it comes from a politician,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I disagree strongly 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 added that Facebook decided to keep the posts because “the National Guard references meant we read it as a warning about state action, and we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force.”
Facebook employees performed a “virtual walkout” Monday after learning of Zuckerberg’s decision to keep Trump’s posts, according to The New York Times.
Employees expressed their feelings on Twitter, including Facebook’s head of design, and left messages on their emails saying “they were out of the office in a show of protest,” the outlet reported.
A spokeswoman for the social media platform spoke up after the virtual walkout.
“We recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our Black community,” Liz Bourgeois, the spokeswoman said in a statement, according to the NYT. “We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership.”
Zuckerberg announced Sunday that Facebook will donate $10 million to racial justice organizations, a move that only infuriated his employees even more, The Washington Post reported.
“The lack of backbone, and this weak leadership, will be judged by history. Hate speech should never be compared to free speech,” one employee wrote in a video session with the company that the NYT reviewed. “The president (sic) is literally threatening for the National Guard to shoot citizens. Maybe when we’re in the middle of a race war the policy will change.”
Mark Luckie, a former Facebook employee, wrote in a 2018 memo that the company has a long history of “not seeing or being responsive to black employees.”
“When you don’t have a diverse group of people at the top of the company, you don’t understand the issues involved or why your employees are upset,” Luckie said in a recent interview with the NYT.
Zuckerberg spoke about the company’s donation in a Facebook post at 1:05 a.m. Tuesday.
“I know that $10 million can’t fix this,” Zuckerberg wrote. “It needs sustained, long term effort.”
