Facebook Censors Racist Employees, Closes Down Conservative Internal Chatroom

Mark Zuckerberg’s whole shtick is preserving free speech on his platform whenever possible. However, in the wake of so much criticism regarding his lax attitude towards addressing racism on Facebook, the tech figure is finally taking a hard stance on offensive speech. In a rather stunning twist, Zuckerberg has also started targeting his own employees by closing down internal chat rooms with racist undertones.

This new report came via The Wall Street Journal, which spoke to multiple anonymous sources about Facebook closing down a chat room where employees could chat anonymously. Apparently, this particular platform into pointless exchanges of racial and sexist comments, which was likely fueled by the feeling of confidence that anonymity provided them.

Called “FB Anon,” it would seem that the chat room was actually quite popular among Facebook employees. It was where supporters of then-candidate Donald Trump would go to vent their feelings on the matter as well as express their thoughts on the controversial figure.

When conversations finally got to the point where employees started hurling offensive words and harassing each other on the forum, Zuckerberg stepped in and put a stop to the debacle once and for all. He axed the chatroom, which is decidedly in contrast to his stance when it comes to the exchange of ideas and free speech.

At the time, Facebook’s HR head Lori Goler sent out a statement, explaining why the chat room had to be dismantled.

“The FB Anon internal Facebook group violated our terms of service, which require people who use Facebook (including our employees) to use an authentic identity on our platform,” the statement read.

As BGR notes, this news came out just days after Google also had to fire an employee due to controversial statements that he made in a company memo. Facebook is still trying to walk a fine line between censorship and preserving free speech, but this incident proves that the company is not above shutting its employees up when it feels the need for it.