Facebook employees have staged a “virtual” walkout, and two have quit, over founder Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to censor President Donald Trump’s posts.
But Zuckerberg might be amenable to censoring the president if there is “state use of force” against rioters, according to reports.
“There is a real question coming out of this, which is whether we want to evolve our policy around the discussion of state use of force,” Zuckerberg told employees, according to audio obtained by The Verge. “Over the coming days, as the National Guard is now deployed, probably the largest one that I would worry about would be excessive use of police or military force.
“I think there’s a good argument that there should be more bounds around the discussion around that,” he added.
Facebook’s decision to leave up Trump’s posts because they did not violate the social media’s policies, per Zuckerberg, was met with a virtual walkout of about a dozen telecommuting workers, per The Verge.
Now, at least two Facebook software engineers have announced they were leaving the company because of the decision to leave Trump’s posts up.
Timothy Aveni wrote on LinkedIn, per The Hill:
“I cannot stand by Facebook’s continued refusal to act on the president’s bigoted messages aimed at radicalizing the American public. I’m scared for my country, and I’m watching my company do nothing to challenge the increasingly dangerous status quo.”
Owen Anderson tweeted Monday:
“I am proud to announce that as of the end of today, I am no longer a Facebook employee.”
Adding in an ensuing tweet:
“To be clear, this was in the works for a while. But after last week, I am happy to no long support policies and values I vehemently disagree with.”
