A Facebook engineer has publicly resigned from the company, citing Facebook's failure to deal with President Trump's posts as the main reason. This comes at a time when many are reevaluating how they view society, each other, and the messages being sent by individuals and government agencies on all social media platforms. However, it is the differences in approach by Facebook to many other popular social media services that has caused controversy recently.
While events in the last few days have led to some companies actively announcing changes to their services as an example of solidarity, the wider issue of the use of social media as a personal platform has plagued services like Facebook and Twitter for some time. Furthermore, although the latter has made controversial moves, including fact-checking the President’s Tweets, Facebook has vocally made it clear that it does not want to limit speech any more than it already does. This is irrespective of who it is, or what is said on the platform, and particularly when it comes to politicians. This approach, and the effects of it, recently led to Facebook employees staging a ‘virtual walkout.’
For Timothy J. Aveni, who is still a Facebook employee as of right now, the company recently crossed a line when President Trump sent out a message on social media that Aveni suggested incited violence. In explaining the resignation, Aveni said that Mark Zuckerberg has always insisted the company would “draw the line at speech that calls for violence,” before going on to say, “He [Zuckerberg] showed us on Friday that this was a lie,” referring to the 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts' message shared by Trump on Facebook last Thursday. The same message was also shared on Twitter as well, but it has since received a warning label by the platform - perfectly highlighting the difference between Facebook and Twitter's policies on the same content. Aveni posted twice to explain the resignation, one can be read in full on LinkedIn, while the other is available to view on Facebook.
What appears to be central to the resignation, and the recent public calling out of Facebook by multiple employees, is the suggestion the company won’t do what other social media services appear to be doing to moderate their platforms. However, no social media service seems to actually know what to do when it comes to this topic. The issue of misinformation and inciting violence is prevalent on many social media services, and in spite of Twitter’s recent moves to label and limit what it deems to be inaccurate or violent posts, the changes have not stopped similar content from circulating on Twitter. Furthermore, there’s inconsistencies in Twitter’s approach, due to the sheer volume of Tweets that could be classified as misinforming or violent, but are not.
There's also the issue of free speech and this has remained Facebook’s go-to line throughout the last few months, with the company, and CEO, repeatedly suggesting it wants people to be able to say what they want and as importantly, have others be able to see what people say and make their own judgement. Whether Facebook or Twitter’s approach is ultimately right, the latest resignation coupled with the recent virtual walkout, suggests the company’s employees are now starting to hold their employer to its own policy standard. That is, those employees have listened to what the company has said recently and are now making their own judgement on Facebook, and publicly.
Source: Timothy J. Aveni / LinkedIn
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