Employees warn of ‘political monoculture’ at Facebook

Over 100 Facebook employees have formed a group pushing for increased tolerance of conservative ideologies within the company, reports the New York Times.

The employees have banded together in an online group called FB’ers for Political Diversity after senior Facebook engineer Brian Amerige made a post about what he called the company’s “political monoculture” on the firm’s internal message board last week.

{mosads}Amerige, a senior Facebook engineer, published a post on the company’s internal message board titled “We Have a Problem With Political Diversity.”

“We are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views,” a senior Facebook engineer Brian Amerige wrote in the post, which the company quickly removed from the message board but The New York Times obtained. “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.”

Amerige wrote that employees are afraid to disagree with the political climate and HR had told him the concern is not rare. He wrote, “I’ve personally gotten over a hundred messages to that effect.”

“These are not fears without cause,” Amerige wrote, listing various pieces of evidence for his point.

Several Facebook employees though have reportedly reacted negatively to the new group, filing complaints about how the posts are offensive to minorities. According to the report, Facebook managers said that the post and group have not broken company rules.

According to Amerige’s memo, the aim of FB’ers for Political Diversity is to create a space for the diversity of thought within Facebook’s staff.

The reported memo and online group come as Facebook faces scrutiny over its content policies.

President Trump lashed out at the company, along with Twitter and Google on Tuesday.

The President didn’t specify what his criticism of Twitter and Facebook were but said, “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.”

He slammed Google for allegedly being biased against conservatives in its search results.

“Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media,” Trump wrote. “In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning.

Facebook has fielded criticism from other Republicans who have made it a point to attack Silicon Valley for being biased against conservatives.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is set to testify on the matter before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Sept. 5.

In May, Facebook confirmed that it would bring in two outside advisers to help it run an audit of the platform’s effect on communities of color and to offer advice on the social media giant’s alleged bias against conservatives.

Updated at 12:54 p.m.