In leaked internal messages, Facebook employees harshly criticized CEO Mark Zuckerberg for not censoring conservatives enough. One employee ominously wrote: “History will not judge us kindly.”
Facebook has suppressed the traffic of Breitbart News posts, for example, by 20% using tools designed for that purpose.
Another Facebook staffer wrote: “We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control.” An employee working on Facebook’s “Integrity” team complained in August 2020 that proposed design changes that may limit users’ exposure to extreme content was being consistently sidelined in favor of any efforts that may increase user engagement. The employee stated that Facebook was “willing to act only after things had spiraled into a dire state.”
Employees also alleged that Zuckerberg himself regularly intervened to alter decisions that may negatively affect user growth. Insiders told the Washington Post that Zuckerberg caved to the Vietnam government’s censorship demands in 2020 in an effort to avoid losing an estimated $1 billion in annual revenue from the country.