A recent report from BuzzFeed News claims that a number of key Facebook employees are leaving the company following the election and criticizing the Silicon Valley giant on their way out. One data scientist said it is “embarrassing to work here.”
BuzzFeed News reports in an article titled “After The US Election, Key People Are Leaving Facebook And Torching The Company In Departure Notes,” that a number of key Facebook employees have left the firm since the recent U.S. election and have criticized the firm following their departure.
A Facebook data scientist left the company on Wednesday, writing in a farewell note that as part of a team focused on “Violence and Incitement,” had dealt with some of the worst content on Facebook and were proud of their work at the firm but felt that Facebook was still not doing enough.
In their “badge post,” a traditional farewell note for departing Facebook employees, the data scientist wrote: “With so many internal forces propping up the production of hateful and violent content, the task of stopping hate and violence on Facebook starts to feel even more Sisyphean than it already is. It also makes it embarrassing to work here.”
BuzzFeed News notes that this isn’t the only Facebook employee to recently depart the company, writing:
But in just the past few weeks, at least four people involved in critical integrity work related to reducing violence and incitement, crafting policy to reduce hate speech, and tracking content that breaks Facebook’s rules have left the company. In farewell posts obtained by BuzzFeed News, each person expressed concerns about the company’s approach to handling US political content and hate speech, and called out Facebook leadership for its unwillingness to be more proactive about reducing hate, incitement, and false content.
“We have made massive integrity investments over the past four years, including substantially growing the team that works to keep the platform safe, improving our ability to find and take down hate speech, and protecting the US 2020 elections,” said Osborne. “We’re proud of this work and will continue to invest and build on learnings moving forward.”
The departures come as Facebook’s “election integrity” effort is undergoing major changes in the wake of the 2020 US election. The Information recently reported that the company’s civic integrity team — which was charged with “helping to protect the democratic process” and reducing “the spread of viral misinformation and fake accounts” — was recently disbanded as a stand-alone unit. It also reported that a proposal from the company’s integrity teams to throttle the distribution of false and misleading election content from prominent political accounts, like President Donald Trump’s, was shot down by company leadership.
“We continue to have teams and people dedicated to elections work, and will expand on the work of our civic team to other focus areas for the company,” Osborne said about changes to the civc integrity team. “Integrity touches everything we do, which is why it’s important to grow and better integrate the teams doing this work across the organization.
Read the full report at BuzzFeed News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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