Facebook to roll out new policies tightening grip on employee discussions on politics

With more details to be unveiled in the upcoming week, Facebook Inc has said on September 17 that it would update its internal communications policy to tighten its grip on the monitoring of the employee discussions on certain social issues that have the potential to become more intense or confrontational. According to international media reports, the California-based company will introduce the new policies in a bid to ensure that the employees refrain from participating in such conversations unless they are directly sought out. 

Bloomberg quoted a Facebook spokesperson, Pamela Austin saying that based on what the seniors have heard from their employees, they currently want the ‘option’ to join such debates on social as well as political issues as opposed to seeing such discussions ‘unexpectedly’ in their work feed. Therefore, as per Austin, the social network has decided to update the employee policies along with other work tools to ensure the company’s ‘culture remains respectful and inclusive’. 

Further reports have said that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced the new policy at a staff meeting on September 17. However, this report came in the backdrop of company’s internal discussions growing more intense while Facebook reckons with its role in the widening polarization of political discourse including discussions over Black Lives matter movement with back-to-back incidents of racial injustice taking place in the United States. Meanwhile, most employees working for the social media giant interact among themselves on Workplace, a business version of Facebook. 

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Google tightening its rules on internal messages

Amid growing scrutiny of tech giants, earlier, CNBC had reported that Google has been asking its employees to indulge actively in moderating the internal message boards as the discussions get more heated while working remotely. As per the documents received by the media outlet, Google has also been witnessing a surge in posts being flagged for racism or abuse on its message boards. The group has reportedly attributed the move to Google employees sharing more opinions while working from home leading to ‘tough global conversations’, as per the recent internal blog post by company’s internal community management team. 

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