Facebook employees stage a virtual walkout over Trump's posts

Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley joins Kristin Myers to discuss how tech companies like Facebook are responding to controversial posts from President Trump.

Video Transcript

KRISTIN MYERS: So talking about tech, tech companies have also been responding to George Floyd's death. But in the case of Facebook [INAUDIBLE] employees, they are staging a virtual walkout, because they are unhappy with Mark Zuckerberg's response to the president's posts about protesters. That stock is actually down today in the red about 3/4 of a percentage point. And for more on that, we're going to go to our tech guru, Dan Howley, for more info. Hey, Dan.

DAN HOWLEY: Hey, what's going on? Yes, this is kind of a rare rebuttal from Facebook employees of Facebook. They are doing this virtual walkout. [? And ?] there has been dissent from executives in the company because of Mark Zuckerberg's decision to allow President Trump's comments regarding "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" to remain on both Facebook and Instagram.

You'll remember that that's the comment that got him the branding on Twitter basically saying that he was glorifying violence, and that goes against that company's terms of service. Mark Zuckerberg, for his part, had previously told Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that if someone, regardless of whether or not they're a elected official or not, was glorifying violence, their post would be removed. And as you can see, Mark Zuckerberg did not put his money where his mouth is. And so they are now facing a walkout, virtually, from employees at Facebook.

That doesn't, though, touch on the fact that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg also met with leaders from the NAACP's LDF, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Human Rights, and Color of Change, and basically just annoyed them-- did not provide any real context that they appreciated as far as why he decided to leave those comments up.

And that's really-- you know, this was supposed to be an easy PR win for Zuckerberg to say, look, I met with folks from the NAACP and [? for ?] Color of Change and want to kind of smooth over relationships, proving that, yes, we do take, you know, African-American and minority voices into account. They said that they were stunned, basically, by his lack of understanding as to why that comment is so incendiary, [? as ?] well as the issue of voter suppression.

There was another comment that Trump had previously put out prior to "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" about mail-in ballots being fraudulent. That, obviously, leads to the discussion of voter suppression-- something that, obviously, has been an issue for minority communities in the US.

KRISTIN MYERS: Dan, I don't know. I feel like every time we talk about Facebook, it's always a bad headline. So I almost would have been surprised if they were able to come through with a PR home run. But investors still love [? this ?] stock. Stock in the red today, but still down less than a percentage point. Dan Howley, thanks so much.