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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFacebook Fired An Employee Who Collected Evidence Of Right-Wing Pages Getting Preferential Treatment
Facebook employees collected evidence showing the company is giving right-wing pages preferential treatment when it comes to misinformation. And theyre worried about how the company will handle the presidents falsehoods in an election year.
By Craig Silverman and Ryan Mac
After months of debate and disagreement over the handling of inflammatory or misleading posts from Donald Trump, Facebook employees want CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain what the company would do if the leader of the free world uses the social network to undermine the results of the 2020 US presidential election.
I do think were headed for a problematic scenario where Facebook is going to be used to aggressively undermine the legitimacy of the US elections, in a way that has never been possible in history, one Facebook employee wrote in a group on Workplace, the companys internal communication platform, earlier this week.
For the past week, this scenario has been a topic of heated discussion inside Facebook and was a top question for its leader. Some 2,900 employees asked Zuckerberg to address it publicly during a company-wide meeting on Thursday, which he partly did, calling it "an unprecedented position."
Zuckerbergs remarks came amid growing internal concerns about the company's competence in handling misinformation, and the precautions it is taking to ensure its platform isnt used to disrupt or mislead ahead of the US presidential election. Though Facebook says it has committed more money and resources to avoid repeating its failures during the 2016 election, some employees believe it isnt enough. President Trump has already spent months raising questions about the legitimacy of the upcoming 2020 election, spreading misinformation about mail-in ballots, and declining to say if hed accept the possibility of losing to Democratic nominee Joe Biden in November.
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