Facebook dismissed an employee who criticized CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision not to take action against the controversial publications of US President Donald Trump this month, and the company justified the decision by tweeting the meaning in which he chided his colleague on a case related to the events in the United States.

Brandon Dale - a user interface engineer at Facebook offices in Seattle - wrote on Twitter that he was fired for criticizing his colleague for refusing to include a statement of support for the "important black lives" movement in program documents they were developing, and the employee justified his refusal by not wanting to take a political stance.

"Not making a statement about the incident is really political," Dell said in the tweet he posted on June 2.

I asked @Vjeux to follow @ reactjs's lead and add a statement of support to Recoil's docs and he privately refused, claiming open source shouldn't be political.

Intentionally not making a statement is already political. Consider that next time you think of Recoil. https://t.co/eVeGsKfmG0

- Brandon Dail (@aweary) June 2, 2020

The tweet was posted a day after Dell joined dozens of employees in a protest to protest Zuckerberg's handling of Trump posts, in a rare protest to employees of the social media giant.

Facebook confirmed to Reuters the description of Dell of the reason for his dismissal, but refused to provide additional information, and the company said the participating employees would not face retaliation.

Dell did not respond to a request for comment, and said in a tweet on Friday that he was sticking to his position.

In the interest of transparency, I was let go for calling out an employee's inaction here on Twitter. I stand by what I said. They did not give me the chance to quit 😅 https://t.co/zMw8ARMwZt

- Brandon Dail (@aweary) June 12, 2020

Trump's posts that infuriated staff included the phrase "when looting begins to shoot," referring to demonstrations against racism and police brutality that emerged after the killing of George Floyd, an African American, who died while in police detention on May 25 in Minneapolis.

Twitter put a warning sign on the post, and considered it to glorify violence, while Facebook chose to leave the post unchanged.

Zuckerberg defended his decision in a tense meeting with employees that week, and during the meeting Dell published a tweet in which he said, "It is quite clear from today's meeting that the leadership refuses to stand with us."

Dell posted a tweet this week protesting that Facebook and Twitter had refused to take action against another Trump publication promoting the conspiracy theory in the Martin Gugino incident, a 75-year-old protester who was seriously injured by police in Buffalo, New York.

"Trump's attack on Martin Guggeneau is a despicable violation of Facebook's anti-harassment rules, and it is disappointing once again that we (and Twitter) have not removed it," Dell said in the tweet.

Trump's attack on Martin Gugino is despicable and a clear violation Facebook's anti-harassment rules. It's again extremely disappointing that we (and Twitter) haven't removed it.

The amount of mental gymnastics required to assume good intent and ignore impact are astounding.

- Brandon Dail (@aweary) June 10, 2020

Although internal opposition is often encouraged by tech giants in Silicon Valley, they face charges of sanctioning workers who organize and broadcast complaints publicly.