Facebook group claims political intolerance
Says conservative views are attacked at company
SAN FRANCISCO – A small group of Facebook staffers say their fellow employees are intolerant of right-leaning political views and voices, creating an internal “political monoculture.”
A senior engineer with the social media giant created an internal group called FB’ers for Political Diversity.
“We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack – often in mobs – anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to leftleaning ideology,” Brian Amerige, a senior Facebook engineer, wrote in a post obtained by The New York Times.
The allegation comes as tech companies come under fire from President Donald Trump and conservatives.
The internal Facebook group has just more than 100 members – a small group for a company that employs more than 25,000 people. According to the newspaper, minorities at Facebook have complained the group’s posts are offensive to them but were told it had not broken any company rules.
When they join the Silicon Valley company, employees are given training on how to engage in respectful conversations about politics and diversity. Political bias training is part of the company’s course on managing bias.
“On Day 1 of Facebook’s new hire orientation in Menlo Park, everyone hears from our chief diversity officer about the importance of diversity and how to have respectful conversations with people who have different viewpoints,” the company said in a statement.
Allegations that tech companies are biased against conservatives gained steam after James Damore was fired from Google for an internal memo that suggested gender differences could explain why most of Google’s engineers and leaders are men. He attacked the internet giant in the news media and claimed in a lawsuit that Google dis-
criminates against white men and conservatives.
The newspaper report on the internal Facebook group comes one week before Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, is slated to testify at a Senate hearing, where she’s likely to field questions about social media bias.
On Tuesday, Trump also criticized Facebook and Twitter in the Oval Office.
“I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they are really treading on very, very troubled territory, and they have to be careful,” Trump said.
The comment came on the heels of Trump’s allegations that Google manipulates its search results to prioritize negative stories about him. “Trump News” were “RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD,” he wrote on Twitter.
Conservative claims that Facebook’s liberal staff treats them unfairly have been simmering for years but are gaining momentum as Facebook concedes it made missteps in moderating the vast amount of content that streams through its platform.
In 2016, Facebook came under fire for reports that its moderators suppressed conservative voices, leading to an inquiry by the Senate Commerce Committee. Facebook said its investigation found no evidence of bias but held a meeting with big names from conservative political and media circles that seemed to mend fences for a time.
The catalyst for Facebook’s latest pledge to address possible conservative bias were Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s appearances in April on Capitol Hill.
Rather than grill Zuckerberg on privacy, Republican lawmakers used some of their allotted time to accuse Facebook and other tech companies of left-wing favoritism.
“There are a great many Americans who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said at the time.
Zuckerberg acknowledged that staffers at his company, headquartered in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area, have politics that lean left but said Facebook’s policies do not favor any political ideology.
In May, Facebook announced it was bringing in conservative advisers to probe whether it suppresses rightleaning voices.