Conservative Facebook Employees Unite Against 'Intolerant' Liberal Corporate Culture

Conservative employees at Facebook are reportedly banding together to stand up to the company’s “intolerant” liberal culture.

A report from the New York Times states that more than 100 politically conservative Facebook employees have formed an internal group called “FB’ers for Political Diversity,” in an effort to stand up to the “intolerant” liberal culture at the company. Brian Amerige, a senior Facebook engineer, said in a post to the new internal Facebook group:“We are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views. 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 left-leaning ideology.”

According to people with access to the group, the aim of the conservative employees is to promote political diversity within Facebook. Apparently, the group has already upset some coworkers at the company who claim that posts in the group are offensive to minorities. These coworkers reported the page to higher-ups at Facebook, who stated that the group did not break any of the site’s rules.

Another employee stated that the group appeared to be constructive and and inclusive of different viewpoints. The creation of the group is a rare act of dissent within Facebook, which has a predominantly liberal office culture. Based on the fact that the company employs approximately 25,000 people and only a hundred have signed up for a group that promotes political diversity, it would seem that conservative viewpoints are practically nonexistent at the tech firm.

This new group at Facebook is similar to the case of James Damore, a Google engineer who was fired from the company after he sent an internal memo in which he stated that forced diversity at the company was not a positive, and that the underrepresentation of women in tech might not be due to systemic sexism within the community but rather a result of many women not being interested in the industry.

President Trump recently began putting pressure on tech firms such as Google and Facebook in a series of tweets in which he pointed out the political bias in Google’s search results. During a meeting with reporters President Trump stated:

“I think Google is really taking advantage of a lot of people and I think that is a very serious thing and it is a very serious charge. I think what Google and what others are doing, if you look at what is going on with Twitter and if you look at what’s going on in Facebook, they better be careful because you can’t do that to people. You can’t do it.”

“We have tremendous; we have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. And you just can’t do that. And so I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they are really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful. It is not fair to large portions of the population”