Last year Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) shuttered FB Anon, an anonymous discussion board forum that was used by employees of the social media giant and which had turned into a political forum where debate sometimes took a racial turn. According to sources the shutting down of FB Anon, which had become popular with supporters of Donald Trump, took place in December.
Trump supporters
Prior to the election members of the forum had put up posters all over the Facebook campus telling supporters of Trump that they were welcome. A section of Facebook employees also found the forum to contain comments that were supposedly offensive. This included a post which appeared last year suggesting that the bar had been lowered by the social media giant in order to be in a position to hire female engineers and thus boost diversity numbers. This ended up provoking an angry reaction in Facebook’s employee chat room, rather than a discussion over whether the statement was actually true or not.
“A cornerstone of our culture is being open. 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 head of people at Facebook, Lori Goler, said in a statement that was released on Wednesday.
Social media struggles
While offering an explanation last year over the closure of the forum, Facebook’s chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said that the forum had harassing messages. Employees of the social media giant were also reminded that there existed other forums where confidential matters could be discussed albeit not anonymously.
That the forum was disabled is an illustration of the struggle by Facebook to enable open, free debate without alienating some employees. These internal challenges also mirror the difficulties the platform faces when it comes to policing speech for its two billion users. Since mid last year, for instance, Facebook has been trying to ensure the internal climate allows ideological diversity inside the company especially after a report surfaced saying a feature on the platform tended to suppress conservative sources of news.
On Wednesday shares of Facebook fell by 0.58% to close the day at $170.
