Some current and recently-departed Facebook employees are reckoning with several ways that they state the social media giant is damaging the society. Max Wang, a software engineer at Facebook left the company on July 1 of this year. He worked at Facebook for seven years. As Wang departed, he posted a 24-minute video on Facebook’s internal discussion board that was meant to serve as a warning.
Wang stated in a note accompanying his video that he believes that Facebook is hurting people at scale. Most Facebook employees on their way out of the company typically post pictures of their company badges along with farewell notes thanking their co-workers. Max Wang opted for a video of himself speaking directly to a camera. Wang’s video is a distillation of months of internal strife, protest, and departures that followed Facebook’s decision to not removing a post from Donald Trump that seemingly called for violence against those individuals who are protesting the recent killing of George Floyd.
While criticizing the company’s leaders for catering to political concerns at the expense of real-world harm, Wang said that Facebook is failing. He added that the worse thing is that the company has enriched that failure in Facebook’s policies, BuzzFeed News reported.
Employees have raised a long list of complaints against the company, for instance, Facebook declined to match employee donations to black justice organizations, BuzzFeed News reports. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, personally told Facebook employees that the company would not match donations because of the worldwide recession. Like other Silicon Valley billionaires, Zuckerberg has also made billions since the coronavirus lockdowns began.
On top of that, Facebook employees also complained about how the company’s leadership refuses to combat the spread of misleading information across Facebook’s platform, which could also threaten the legitimacy of upcoming presidential election. In a June 26 post on Workplace, Dan Abramov, a Facebook engineer, wrote that social media platforms have enough power to damage the fabric of our society. Employees are frustrated and angry, and they are now challenging Facebook CEO and leadership at company-wide meetings, and even staging virtual workouts. The turmoil has reached a point where Zuckerberg recently threatened to fire workers who ‘bully’ their co-workers, BuzzFeed News states.
According to BuzzFeed News, if someone thinks that this is an overstatement, they are not paying attention.
Read next: Facebook Has Built A New Army of Bots To Strengthen Anti-Spam Methods
Wang stated in a note accompanying his video that he believes that Facebook is hurting people at scale. Most Facebook employees on their way out of the company typically post pictures of their company badges along with farewell notes thanking their co-workers. Max Wang opted for a video of himself speaking directly to a camera. Wang’s video is a distillation of months of internal strife, protest, and departures that followed Facebook’s decision to not removing a post from Donald Trump that seemingly called for violence against those individuals who are protesting the recent killing of George Floyd.
While criticizing the company’s leaders for catering to political concerns at the expense of real-world harm, Wang said that Facebook is failing. He added that the worse thing is that the company has enriched that failure in Facebook’s policies, BuzzFeed News reported.
Employees have raised a long list of complaints against the company, for instance, Facebook declined to match employee donations to black justice organizations, BuzzFeed News reports. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, personally told Facebook employees that the company would not match donations because of the worldwide recession. Like other Silicon Valley billionaires, Zuckerberg has also made billions since the coronavirus lockdowns began.
On top of that, Facebook employees also complained about how the company’s leadership refuses to combat the spread of misleading information across Facebook’s platform, which could also threaten the legitimacy of upcoming presidential election. In a June 26 post on Workplace, Dan Abramov, a Facebook engineer, wrote that social media platforms have enough power to damage the fabric of our society. Employees are frustrated and angry, and they are now challenging Facebook CEO and leadership at company-wide meetings, and even staging virtual workouts. The turmoil has reached a point where Zuckerberg recently threatened to fire workers who ‘bully’ their co-workers, BuzzFeed News states.
According to BuzzFeed News, if someone thinks that this is an overstatement, they are not paying attention.
Read next: Facebook Has Built A New Army of Bots To Strengthen Anti-Spam Methods
