A former Facebook executive whose job focused on strategic partnerships with minority communities said the social media platform is failing black users, a problem he links to awkward interactions with black employees and managers.
The issues outlined in a memo that now-former Strategic Partner Manager Mark Luckie sent to Facebook employees before his departure and has since posted on the platform are occurring against a backdrop of concerns over privacy and data security as well as questions about the retention of an opposition-research firm to uncover information on George Soros after the Jewish billionaire criticized the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company.
African-American users “are finding that their attempts to create ‘safe spaces’ on Facebook for conversation among themselves are being derailed by the platform itself,” he 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. Their content is removed without notice. Accounts are suspended indefinitely.”
A Facebook spokesperson said the company has been “working diligently to increase the range of perspectives among those who build our products and serve the people who use them throughout the world.”
The growth in representation of people from more diverse groups, working in many different functions across the company, is a key driver of our ability to succeed. We want to fully support all employees when there are issues reported and when there may be micro-behaviors that add up. We are going to keep doing all we can to be a truly inclusive company,” he said in an emailed statement.
Black people are the most active users of the platform, said Luckie, who is black himself, and are “driving the kind of meaningful social interactions Facebook is striving to facilitate,” but the company’s actions could curb that.
Facebook uses information like shares and the number of followers to determine where and how to offer new features and products, a process that Luckie says helps to widen the “disparity of access between legacy individuals/brands” and minorities.
The challenge is reflected in “the guest lists of Facebook’s external programs, the industry events the company has historically sponsored, the creators and influencers who appear in Explore tabs on Instagram, the power users who are verified on the platforms, and more,” he wrote.
Among the causes is the company’s lack of staff diversity, which is a problem for the tech industry as a whole and one that some activists have sought to address through shareholder initiatives.
Instead of relying on black employees to answer questions of whether a specific project is racist or culturally appropriate, Luckie argues that minority voices should be more directly involved.
Another issue, Luckie said, is that African-American individuals are “aggressively accosted by campus security beyond what was necessary” and dissuaded from participating in black-centric work groups.
“To feel like an oddity at your own place of employment because of the color of your skin while passing posters reminding you to be your authentic self feels in itself inauthentic,” he wrote.
That issue isn’t limited to Facebook; Congress, too, has grappled with it. Sen. Tim Scott, a black Republican from South Carolina, recounted in a 2016 speech how he faced heightened scrutiny from police, including Capitol Hill officers who asked him for identification even though he wore a pin worn by all senators.
“I do not know many African-American men who do not have a very similar story to tell no matter their profession,” he said. “No matter their income, no matter their disposition in life.”
