Facebook temporarily removed comments made by a former employee who accused the tech giant of “failing” black people.
As previously reported by HuffPost, the company’s former strategic partner manager for global influencers, Mark Luckie, alleged Facebook regularly removed the content of black users without notice and suspended their accounts indefinitely.
“Black people are finding that their attempts to create “safe spaces” on Facebook for conversation among themselves are being derailed by the platform itself,” Luckie wrote.
“Non-black people are reporting what are meant to be positive efforts as hate speech, despite them often not violating Facebook’s terms of service.”
Seemingly proving his point, Facebook removed Luckie’s post Monday because it reportedly went against its community standards.
“Turns out Facebook took down my post challenging discrimination at the company, disabling users’ ability to share or read it,” Luckie tweeted. “Further proves my point.”
The post was later restored by Facebook, despite Luckie’s claim he “never appealed” its original decision to remove it.
Speaking to The Guardian, the 35-year-old described the ordeal as an “ironic twist,” pointing out that he had “been on so many phone calls and email threads” with people having the same issue while he was employed by the company.
“I feel like Facebook can tackle a lot of issues ... but when you talk about black people, all of a sudden there is silence,” he said. “There are a lot of black employees who express that they feel the same way.”
Luckie said the company’s “disenfranchisement of black people on the platform mirrors the marginalization of its black employees.”
“In some buildings, there are more “Black Lives Matter” posters than there are actual black people,” he wrote. “Black staffers at Facebook know that by raising our voices we risk jeopardizing our professional relationships and our career advancement.”
He said that he hoped people would understand he has “more to lose than to gain” in “spotlighting Facebook’s discriminatory practices.”
“But we’re talking about a company that affects billions of lives around the world. It has to be held accountable for its actions,” he tweeted Tuesday.
You can read Luckie’s full post here.
Facebook did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.