Conservative Facebook employees create a group to complain about ‘political monoculture’

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At Facebook, some employees have joined an online group to complain about what they say are the company’s left-leaning politics, reports the New York Times. 

It’s named FB’ers for Political Diversity, and was created by Brian Amerige, a senior engineer at the social media giant.

Amerige wrote a post called “We Have a Problem With Political Diversity” on Facebook’s internal message board, which was shared with the Times.

“We are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views,” reads the post. “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.”

The Times said around 100 Facebook employees have joined the group, according to “two people who viewed the group’s page and who were not authorized to speak publicly.” The company has more than 25,000 employees. 

The group says its aim is to “create a space for ideological diversity” within the company, but the post has also received criticism. One engineer told the Times that several employees have complained to their managers about the post. 

Google faced a similar problem when former engineer, James Damore, sent around a memo arguing that the lack of diversity in tech was due to women being biologically inferior to men. As you might expect, it didn’t go over so well, and Damore was fired shortly after the memo was sent. He is now part of a class-action lawsuit against the company. 

Despite claims from people like Donald Trump that Silicon Valley is suppressing conservative voices, right-wing viewpoints from sites like Breitbart have largely flourished on the network. According to a 2017 analysis by social media monitoring company NewsWhip, liberal publishers only see half the engagement of conservative pages.

Facebook has also been accused of letting hate speech — especially from those on the alt-right — flourish on the site, something it’s still figuring out how to deal with.