The New York Times, June 1, 2020: Facebook Employees Stage Virtual Walkout to Protest Trump Posts
Hundreds of Facebook employees, in rare public criticism on Monday of their own company, protested executives’ decision not to do anything about inflammatory posts that President Trump had placed on the giant social media platform over the past week.
Many of the employees, who said they refused to work in order to show their support for demonstrators across the country, added an automated message to their digital profiles and email responses saying that they were out of the office in a show of protest.
In 2014, 2 percent of Facebook’s employees were black. In 2019, that number had increased to 3.8 percent, according to the company’s diversity report.
In the post to the internal message board, the dissenting Facebook employee ended his comment with a quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the slain civil rights leader.
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” the quote read.
