Report: Half of Facebook’s Employees Don’t Believe Company Has a ‘Positive Impact’ on the World

BuzzFeed News recently published an inside look at the internal workings of tech giant Facebook the day before the U.S. Presidential election. Among other revelations of plunging morale amongst the Masters of the Universe, the report includes the results of an internal poll of employees that found “only 51% of respondents said they believed that Facebook was having a positive impact on the world, down 23 percentage points from the company’s last survey in May.”

BuzzFeed News recently published a report detailing the mood at Facebook in the 24 hours leading up to the U.S. Presidential election. In a note to Facebook employees titled “READY FOR ELECTION DAY,” the site’s vice president of global affairs and communications and the former United Kingdom deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, told employees: “We have transformed the way we approach elections since the U.S. presidential election four years ago. Thanks to the efforts of far, far too many of you to mention by name, Facebook is a very different company today.”

However, many of Facebook’s employees did not seem to share Clegg’s positive opinion of the social media giant. BuzzFeed writes:

Only 51% of respondents said they believed that Facebook was having a positive impact on the world, down 23 percentage points from the company’s last survey in May and down 5.5 percentage points from the same period last year. In response to a question about the company’s leadership, only 56% of employees had a favorable response, compared to 76% in May and more than 60% last year. (A Facebook employee acknowledged in the announcement that the uptick in May’s Pulse results were “likely driven by our response to COVID-19,” which was widely praised.)

The external criticism leveled against Facebook for failing to completely stem hate and misleading information is weighing on employees.

“Top constructive themes from comments mention decision-making related to hate speech and misinformation on our platforms, and concerns that leadership is focusing on the wrong metrics,” wrote a human resources leader in explaining the results. Employee performance at Facebook is often evaluated based on audience growth metrics, such as increasing the use of a new feature.

Facebook implemented rules in September that prevented employees from discussing social issues unless they did so in designated groups following months of internal debate over the state of politics and race relations in the U.S. However, some internally believe that the new rules were an attempt to prevent criticism of Facebook.

One current Facebook worker told BuzzFeed News: “The public rationale was that employees were uncomfortable not being able to log on and ‘just do their job,’ it’s now very easy to log in and do your job without seeing anything vaguely political beyond corporate announcements, so they succeeded.”

Read the full report at BuzzFeed News here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com