In a report by the New York Times, more than 100 politically conservative Facebook employees have formed a new internal group to complain that the famously liberal company is “intolerant” of opposing political thought.
The new group, “FB’ers for Political Diversity,” was reportedly created in the last week, and came after senior Facebook engineer Brian Amerige wrote in an internal post viewable only by company employees that “we are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views … 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.”
Silicon Valley, the heart of the American tech industry, is largely liberal, and has been fraught with allegations of bias against conservatives.
In July 2017, Google found itself at the centre of a political firestorm after engineer James Damore wrote an internal post decrying what he characterised as “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” in which he attacked the company’s diversity efforts. Some conservatives also allege, without proof, that social media firms are deliberately silencing and censoring non-liberal voices on their platforms.
On Tuesday, President Trump accused Google, without providing evidence, of “silencing” conservative news publications in its search results.
In 2017, a group called “Facebook Anon” where employees could chat anonymously morphed into a hub for conservative, Trump-supporting employees during the 2016 election. It was ultimately shut down in December 2016 as the talk “turned ugly and … alarmed management.”
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