Only losing users will make Zuckerberg change course

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1591188892 879360 1591189079 Noticia Normal.jpg
1591188892 879360 1591189079 Noticia Normal.jpg

Mark Zuckerberg says he is listening to criticism of his handling of President Donald Trump’s incendiary messages on Facebook. Some employees, and civil rights groups, are not convinced. In the current situation, the co-founder of the $ 661 billion social network has little incentive to act, because the platform is running as it is.

The Facebook chief stood firm on Tuesday in his decision not to delete or flag a comment by Trump that “when the looting begins, the shooting begins,” although he acknowledged that the employees could be upset, the New York Times reported.

A day earlier, some workers had gone on virtual strike against Trump’s texts, after protests and violence in dozens of cities in the United States. Zuckerberg said the comments did not violate Facebook’s policies. Instead, Twitter warned users that Trump’s statement glorified violence.

Zuckerberg also was unimpressed by the civil rights groups he spoke to, who on Monday said he refused to acknowledge that he was facilitating calls for violence.

Facebook has done nothing but strengthen itself during the pandemic that preceded the ongoing protests. Confinement orders have spurred more people to connect virtually. The company’s monthly active users in the first quarter, across its entire family of platforms, including the photo-sharing app Instagram and the WhatsApp messaging service, reached 3 billion for the first time. While advertising revenue was affected, it has since stabilized and user engagement has skyrocketed.

The economic devastation caused by the outbreak also takes away influence from employees. Several workers took the unusual step of tweeting their criticism to Facebook. Timothy Aveni, a software engineer, said in a LinkedIn post on Monday that he was resigning in protest and asked people to contact the San Francisco Bay Area job offers.

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But a wave of resignations is unlikely. Companies Uber Technologies and Lyft, along with Yelp review portal and coupon service Groupon, have laid off thousands of workers in the past month. Google’s parent company Alphabet abandoned its plans to hire 20,000 people this year.

Facebook has survived (and increased its number of users) by privacy scandals, government investigations and Russia’s use of its platforms to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election. As long as its decisions do not scare many of With its 2.4 billion daily users, it’s easy to bet that Zuckerberg will stay the course.