- Facebook fired an employee who spoke out against the company's inaction on Trump's controversial, racially charged posts earlier this month, a spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider.
- Software engineer Brandon Dail tweeted that he was fired for publicly criticizing a coworker's refusal to issue a statement in support of Black Lives Matter on a Facebook open source project.
- Dail had also criticized Mark Zuckerberg's stance regarding Trump's posts, which Zuckerberg defended in an all-hands meeting last week, prompting rare public rebukes from Facebook employees and content moderators.
- Zuckerberg has faced intense backlash over his decision, including from civil rights leaders as well as scientists he funds through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
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A Facebook employee who criticized Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's decision not to take action against inflammatory posts by U.S. President Donald Trump this month said on Friday that the social media company had fired him.
Brandon Dail, whose social media profiles describe him as a user interface engineer in Seattle, wrote on Twitter that he was dismissed for publicly challenging a colleague's silence on the controversy that prompted a rare staff protest at Facebook.
Dozens of employees, including Dail, abandoned their desks and tweeted objections to Zuckerberg's handling of Trump's posts. Trump's posts included the racially charged phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" in reference to protests against racism and police brutality held after the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis.
Twitter affixed a warning label to the same post, saying it glorified violence. Facebook opted to leave the post untouched.
Zuckerberg stood by his decision at a tense all-hands meeting with employees that week. During the meeting, Dail tweeted that it was "crystal clear today that leadership refuses to stand with us."
Dail again voiced objections this week after both Facebook and Twitter declined to take action against a Trump post that contained an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old protester who was critically injured by police in Buffalo, New York.
"Trump's attack on Martin Gugino is despicable and a clear violation [of] Facebook's anti-harassment rules. It's again extremely disappointing that we (and Twitter) haven't removed it," he said.
Facebook and Dail did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Katie Paul; Editing by Will Dunham)
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