Facebook (NASDA:FB) is facing an internal backlash from its employees over its social media policies.
Employees at the company walked away from their work-from-home desks on Monday and took to Twitter to accuse Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg of failing to police U.S. President Donald Trump’s posts on the platform as strictly as rival platforms such as Twitter have done.
Dozens of Facebook employees wrote online posts critical of Zuckerberg’s decision to leave Trump’s most inflammatory comments unchallenged while rival social media platform Twitter has labeled the posts and, in some cases, hidden them.
The staff protest was a rare case of staff publicly taking their CEO to task, with one employee tweeting that thousands participated in the virtual walkout. Among them were the engineers who maintain Facebook’s apps.
Technology workers at companies including Facebook, Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) have pursued social justice issues in recent years, urging the companies they work for to change their policies. On Friday, Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) affixed a warning label to a Trump tweet that included the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter said it violated rules against glorifying violence.
Facebook declined to act on the same message, and Zuckerberg sought to distance his company from the fight between the U.S. president and Twitter. Facebook employees feel that Zuckerberg should take a similar stance against Trump’s social media posts as Twitter.
Separately, online therapy company Talkspace said it ended its partnership discussions with Facebook because the company has failed to take action against Trump’s often inflammatory rhetoric on the social media platform.