Facebook takes hit after hit. After at the end of June major companies started to boycott Facebook over racism, and Black Lives Matter, Holocaust, and such, now, it took another hit, as the results of a two-year audit came through.
Yesterday, auditors published an 89-page report in which states that Facebook made "vexing and heartbreaking decisions" that led to "significant setbacks for civil rights." According to the report, since 2018, when the auditors started working on this, the company made progress in the right direction, but things took a turn for the worse in the past nine months, "with real-world consequences."
It came into attention that Facebook decided to leave up the post that President Trump posted where it used the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" regarding the Minneapolis protests over George Floyd's death. Besides the companies that temporarily ended the collaboration with Facebook, they also had some of its own employees protesting against its policies.
Facebook's attitude regarding civil rights and disinformation dissemination contrasts with Twitter’s way of handling the matter – it marked one of Trump’s tweets about looting.
To be aligned with the auditors' requirements, Facebook has to have a rock-solid civil right infrastructure, to be consistent and transparent regarding the civil rights laws. Steps in this direction have been taken, and on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and other officials met with civil rights leaders. But the meeting didn’t go smoothly, and according to one of the civil rights leaders, it was a “disappointment.” Now, allegedly, the company is looking to hire a civil rights executive.
Facebook’s market performance didn’t budge, and yesterday it closed higher by 1.13%, and in today’s pre-market session gained more than 0.60%.
Sources: bbc.com, cnbc.com