#DeleteFacebook began trending on Friday as Mark Zuckerberg admitted during an all-staff virtual meeting that the company made an “operational mistake” over its handling of a Facebook page from a self-described militia that issued a “call to arms” before protests in Kenosha.
Facebook faced backlash after a group called the Kenosha Guards had been allowed to remain online despite being flagged for its commentary surrounding violence and bringing weapons to the protest, as first reported by The Verge. It wasn’t until Wednesday that Facebook took the page down, after which two protesters had been shot by an armed vigilante who has now been charged with murder.
“It was largely an operational mistake, but it’s because the team that enforces our policy against dangerous organizations is a specialized team that is trained to look for symbolism and innuendo and different things that require a significant amount of training, in some of these cases, to understand the details or the nuances of how certain militias or conspiracy networks or other dangerous organizations operate,” Zuckerberg said in the meeting, which was partially made public after BuzzFeed News first reported about it.
“The contractors, the reviewers who the initial complaints were funneled to didn’t, basically didn’t pick this up. And on second review, doing it more sensitively, the team that’s responsible for dangerous organizations recognized that this violated the policies, and we took it down.”
Zuckerberg also added that there wasn’t yet any evidence that there was a link between the militia page and the teen vigilante charged with murdering the two protesters.
As of Friday night, over 13,000 tweets had been made about #DeleteFacebook, many of which were written by Hollywood notables. Check out a few of them below or all of them here.
I know – it seems futile but what if lots of us held @facebook accountable? #deleteFacebook
— Elizabeth Banks (@ElizabethBanks) August 27, 2020
Ignoring repeated warnings that Facebook users were organizing to slaughter peaceful protesters is not an “operational mistake.” It is complicity in murder. #StopHateForProfithttps://t.co/CYFlJVvoog
— Sacha Baron Cohen (@SachaBaronCohen) August 28, 2020
Read this thread. And then #DeleteFacebook. They are one of the enemies of our democracy and an enabler of violence, oppression, and disinformation. https://t.co/tUUdmhMUbL
— Steven Boyer (@SteveBoyer5000) August 26, 2020
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