Facebook Employees Continue to Pressure Mark Zuckerberg to Censor Trump

Far-left employees at Facebook continue to pressure founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to increase the platform’s censorship against President Donald Trump.

Facebook has censored the President before, blocking one of Trump’s campaign videos during the 2018 midterm elections. An algorithm change in 2018 also cut engagement on the President’s Facebook page by 45 percent.

But in the current climate of radicalism fueled by the George Floyd protests, employees are pressuring the company to go further.

Via the Washington Post:

At an emergency town hall meeting Facebook held this week, days after President Donald Trump posted, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” on his account, 5,500 Facebook employees had a demand for Mark Zuckerberg.

Before the meeting, the employees voted in a poll on which questions to ask the chief executive at the meeting, according to internal documents viewed by The Washington Post. The question that got the most votes: “Can we please change our policies around political free speech? Fact checking and removal of hate speech shouldn’t be exempt for politicians.”

The Facebook employees were upset that Trump had been allowed to make posts calling the violent rioters “thugs,” and issue warnings that the military would be sent in to contain them.

“I’m trying to reassure myself that we will do something here. We HAVE to, surely? Are there any lines that remain to be crossed?” someone asked.

Zuckerberg has so far resisted the pressure, reportedly telling his employees that he believes it is important to let people see and discuss the President’s posts. However, according to the Post, at least one Facebook executive who initially supported Zuckerberg has since changed his mind, saying:

“After the call was made on Friday to keep Trump’s post, I convinced myself that it was the only logical decision. [But] slowly, over the weekend and Monday, doubt has crept in,” the executive wrote. “I did not feel threatened by it but would the black community feel threatened? Can I understand why and where they come from? Can the people who were involved in making the decision? I don’t think so.”

Facebook, like other Silicon Valley companies, is known for its far-left political culture. Zuckerberg has even acknowledged before Congress that Silicon Valley is an “extremely left-leaning place.” Last week , Breitbart News exclusively revealed that Facebook allowed biased third-party “fact-checkers” to falsely label a Breitbart story over the use of the phrase “temporary amnesty” to describe Democrat legislative proposals.

Conservative employees at Facebook say that the company needs to do more to tackle political bias. In February, a Facebook employee claimed to Breitbart News that “I’ve attended seminars on bias before. Gender bias and racial bias. There’s never been one on political bias.”