Facebook Employees Start Movement to Combat Company's 'Intolerant' Liberal Culture
A group of about 100 conservative Facebook employees have formed an internal organization whose aim is to combat a liberal company culture considered by many to be intolerant of different views.
The group was started by a post on the social network company's internal message board last week, as reported by The New York Times on Tuesday.
"We are a political monoculture that's intolerant of different views," posted Brian Amerige, a senior Facebook engineer, according to the NY Times. "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."
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The internal group has come to be known as "FB'ers for Political Diversity," its goal being to allow for increased ideological diversity within the Facebook company.
Recently, Facebook has garnered controversy both for concerns over how the site shares personal data and allegations of political bias, especially censorship of conservatives.
For example, in January, Facebook took down the socially conservative Warriors for Christ ministry page, which had about 225,000 followers, accusing it of hate speech and bullying.
While promoting its academic programs on Facebook, The Franciscan University of Steubenville had their ads censored due to them including a crucifix.
Facebook responded that they censored the image of Jesus dying on a cross because it violated their ban on "shocking, sensational, or excessively violent content."
By contrast, when a group was formed on Facebook seeking to burn alive the woman behind the socially conservative "Activist Mommy" page, Facebook responded to her complaint by noting that the group "doesn't go against one of our specific community standards."
In May, it was announced that Facebook would have an external group with a former Republican member of Congress on their staff investigate whether they have an anti-conservative bias.
Meetings were also planned between Facebook executives and the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, according to a report by Axios.
Despite the investigation and other overtures, controversies continued in August over allegations of viewpoint discrimination regarding the social networking site's alleged mistreatment of the Activist Mommy and the Warriors for Christ pages.
"We are entrusted by a great part of the world to be impartial and transparent carriers of people's stories, ideas and commentary," wrote Amerige, the NY Times reports.
"Congress doesn't think we can do this. The president doesn't think we can do this. And like them or not, we deserve that criticism."
