A number of Facebook employees have protested in an innovative way to the position of company president Mark Zuckerberg about US President Donald Trump's posts in which he commented on the protests currently taking place in the United States.
The employees asked for an official holiday as a form of protest, and they created an automatic e-mail to respond to messages from outside the office, explaining to callers their opposition to their company's position.
According to the New York Times, Facebook employees have also publicly shared their criticism of the company on social media.
I work at Facebook and I am not proud of how we're showing up. The majority of coworkers I've spoken to feel the same way. We are making our voice heard.
- Jason Toff (@jasontoff) June 1, 2020
Mass demonstrations have raged across the United States since last week to protest the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a policeman in Minneapolis.
On Friday, Trump posted a message through his personal social media accounts threatening these protesters with violence.
Since almost all Facebook employees work from home because of the current epidemic, asking for leave in this way is a virtual protest rather than leaving the traditional office.
This is just one of a host of other measures employees will soon take to show their displeasure with Facebook's handling of the crisis, the New York Times reported.
Some employees are currently working on a list of requests addressed to Facebook executives, while others have expressed dissatisfaction with the company's response, and Facebook employees have classified the current status of the company as "the most serious challenge to Zuckerberg's leadership" in Facebook history.
In turn, Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Facebook explaining the reason behind his decision, "I know a lot of people are upset because we left the president's comments - meaning Donald Trump - on the podium, but our position is that we should allow as much freedom of expression as possible unless this creates a risk Imminent or specific and obvious damage or risk. ”
Trump wrote a tweet in which he referred to the protesters as "thugs", saying, "I just spoke to Governor Tim Falls and told him that the army is with him all the way ... We will impose control, but when the looting begins, the shooting begins."
There is a history charged with racism behind the phrase, "When looting begins, shooting begins," the Washington Post reported, in the 1960s a white police chief used the same phrase during civil unrest in black-populated neighborhoods in Miami, yet Trump claims that He didn't know that.
The curfews and security deployments come at levels not seen in the United States since the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, and the National Guard was then deployed in 23 states and the capital, Washington.