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Zuckerberg faces employee backlash over Trump protest comments

Facebook employees are speaking out about CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his decision not to remove a post from President Donald Trump that they believe breached company policy on inciting violence.

Employees - like Andrew Crow, head of design for Facebook's Portal product - have taken to Twitter - writing comments such as "giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable" after Trump last week shared a message on Twitter and Facebook saying "when the looting starts, the shooting starts.", referring to protests that have erupted across the U.S. over the death of George Floyd, an African-American man killed by a white Minneapolis police officer.

And while Twitter added a warning label to the Tweet, Facebook declined to take action.

Zuckerberg defended the decision, saying that while he found Trump's remarks "deeply offensive," they did not violate company policy against incitements to violence and people should know if the government was planning to deploy state force.

Ryan Freitas, whose Twitter account identifies him as director of product design for Facebook's News Feed said "Mark is wrong, and I will endeavor in the loudest possible way to change his mind."

While, Jason Toff, identified as director of product management, wrote: "I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we’re showing up."

While many workers at tech companies have actively pursued issues of social justice in recent years, the weekend criticism marked a rare case of high-level employees publicly taking their chief executive to task.

Some even praised Twitter.

David Gillis, identified as a director of product design at Facebook, said "Respect to @Twitter’s integrity team for making the enforcement call."

And taking it a step further, on Monday, dozens of Facebook employees took part in a virtual walkout - according to the New York Times - by logging into Facebook’s systems and requesting time off to support protesters across the country.