With the world still focused on Facebook’s ineffectual response to election hacking and fake news, longstanding criticisms about the company’s lack of diversity and exclusion or undermining of people of color exploded back into public view on Tuesday when a departing senior employee published a Facebook post criticizing what he described as discriminatory practices against black people who use the platform, as well as the company’s work place culture, which he said is hostile to minorities.
Mark Luckie, a digital strategist and former journalist who has worked at the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, as well as Twitter and Reddit, published the note, entitled “Facebook is failing its black employees and its black users” Tuesday morning, after circulating it among the company’s employees earlier this month.
In the note, Luckie alleges that black people are routinely disenfranchised on Facebook’s platform. Minority users’ posts are often reported as offensive despite not meeting the company’s criteria, and then deleted without warning or recourse. Furthermore, the company doesn’t do a thorough enough job verifying and supporting minority influencers, and complaints lodged by minorities or minority groups are often ignored.
Luckie’s allegations about the company’s workplace culture were also shocking, but sadly unsurprising. For one, the company only employs a handful of black people. Black employees frequently complain about managers accusing them of being aggressive or hostile when they try to share their views. Managers sometimes would even go so far as to dissuade internal groups for blacks from doing “black stuff” – without specifying what exactly he meant by this. Black employees are also routinely accosted by campus security at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park. And at least two or three times a day, white employees would clutch their wallets while passing Luckie in the halls, he said.
Given the overwhelmingly liberal leanings of the company’s employees, the hypocrisy alleged by Luckie is stark.
“In some buildings, there are more ‘Black Lives Matter’ posters than there are actual black people. Facebook can’t claim that it is connecting communities if those communities aren’t represented proportionately in its staffing.”
During an interview with USA Today, Luckie said he felt obligated to go public on behalf of those who “don’t feel empowered to speak up.”
“I wish I didn’t have to write it. I was determined to stay there and build,” Luckie told USA TODAY in an interview Tuesday. “I had to write what all the black employees are saying and feeling and we don’t feel empowered to speak up about.”
Having worked in a senior position at Facebook, Luckie said he knows that the company won’t enact meaningful change unless it’s held publicly accountable.
Keeping with Facebook’s reputation for never admitting fault or accepting responsibility, a company spokesman insisted to USA Today that it has “people from diverse groups” working in “many different functions” across the company.
“The growth in representation of people from more diverse groups, working in many different functions across the company, is a key driver of our ability to succeed,” Harrison said.
So first Facebook pissed off Jews by hiring a lobbying firm to smear George Soros, now the company has managed to offend African Americans. The company has also been accused of favoring white male program. And let’s not forget about pervasive accusations of Silicon Valley sexism that have touched every major firm, including Facebook.
We look forward to seeing what minority group or protected class Zuckerberg & Co. offend next.
via RSS https://ift.tt/2BCwfzw Tyler Durden