Facebook employee quits; says company is on 'wrong side of history'

On September 8, a Facebook employee lashed out at the companies’ policies and accused the social media platform of being on the “wrong side of history”. Outraged, the 28-year-old software engineer quit the giant firm, saying, it was “profiting off hate”. "I'm quitting because I can no longer stomach contributing to an organization that is profiting off hate in the US and globally," Ashok Chandwaney said in a Facebook post that was public. The employee also highlighted Facebook's several content moderation decisions in the recent past despite civil rights advocates pressurizing the social media platform to control the hate speech and disinformation. 

Earlier in May, Facebook earned backlash for letting US President Donald Trump’s tweet "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" stay on the social media. Zuckerberg insisted that the words did not, in fact, violate the company’s policies and regulations or incited violence. Twitter, on the other hand, flagged the tweet as ‘glorifying violence’. In another instance, Facebook also refused to look into the Kenosha Guard militia event ahead of the fatal shooting at Wisconsin during the Defund The Police protests.

Facebook, which eventually took down the event after the shooting, cited "operational mistake” as the reason for the delay in action. "The actions that have been taken are easy and could be interpreted as impactful because they make us look good, rather than impactful because they will make substantive change," the employee wrote in the post. 

However, Chandwaney said, “every day 'the looting starts, the shooting starts' stays up is a day that we choose to minimize regulatory risk at the expense of the safety of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour.”

He added, “Violent hate groups and far-right militias are out there, and they’re using Facebook to recruit and radicalize people who will go on to commit violent hate crimes. So where’s the metric about this?”

He added, “I've learned to engage honestly and eagerly with folks who want to have conversations with me at work. The lack of openness on Facebook's part when it comes to the matter of hate on platform throws this idea into sharp relief.”

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Facebook spokeswoman Liz Bourgeois reportedly said that Facebook never benefited from “hate." She highlighted that the company spent millions of dollars to keep the community safe and had guidelines inlace and partnership with experts to review those policies from time to time. She clarified that Facebook removed millions of hate speech posts and posts related to the hate organizations, 96 percent of which were detected by Facebook without being reported.

Brands urge Facebook to address "hate speech"

However, due to Facebook’s policies that have been in the middle of controversy, brands like The North Face and Ben & Jerry’s quit purchasing advertising from Facebook in July 2020, include g several other companies urging Facebook to address hate speech on its platform. President of the civil rights advocacy group Colour of Change, Rashad Robinson hailed Chandwaney's decision. He wrote in a tweet, “Facebook has had ample opportunity to address hate and misinformation. Instead of protecting communities of color, they've chosen to cozy up to people in power.”

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