Despite Tense Pressure With Employees, Zuckerberg Refuses To Censor President Trump Over His Posts, Report Says

OPINION | This article contains commentary which reflects the author's opinion.

OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has refused to censor posts from President Trump, despite high tensions from his own employees, according to Fox News.

According to leaked audio, Zuckerberg held a question-and-answer session with employees, where he explained that he would not be flagging the President’s “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” was “the right action for where we are right now,” posts.

“We basically concluded after the research and after everything I’ve read and all the different folks that I’ve talked to that the reference is clearly to aggressive policing — maybe excessive policing — but it has no history of being read as a dog whistle for vigilante supporters to take justice into their own hands,” Recode alleged Zuckerberg said.

“This isn’t a case where [Trump] is allowed to say anything he wants, or that we let government officials or policy makers say anything they want,” the Facebook CEO added.

Another member of the Facebook team allegedly asked, “How can we trust Facebook leadership if you show us a lack of transparency?”

Facebook engineer Brandon Dail tweeted on Tuesday that “it’s crystal clear today that leadership refuses to stand with us,” referencing the lack of action by the company on Trump’s posts.

Recode also alleged that there were several tense exchanges between Zuckerberg and his employees, with one asking Zuckerberg how many black people were involved in the decision to not take down or label the post (just one, Facebook’s global diversity officer, Maxine Williams, according to Zuckerberg).

“Mark [Zuckerberg] always told us that he would draw the line at speech that calls for violence,” Aveni wrote. “He showed us on Friday that this was a lie. Facebook will keep moving the goalposts every time Trump escalates, finding excuse after excuse not to act on increasingly dangerous rhetoric.”

On Monday, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be donating $10 million to a number of groups working on racial justice.

“The organizations fighting for justice also need funding, so Facebook is committing an additional $10 million to groups working on racial justice,” Zuckerberg wrote in a late Sunday night post to his Facebook account. “We’re working with our civil rights advisors and our employees to identify organizations locally and nationally that could most effectively use this right now.”

More from Fox News:

Zuckerberg added that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has also donated large sums of money, “investing ~$40 million annually for several years in organizations working to overcome racial injustice.”

Several media reports, including The New York Times, on Monday reported that Facebook employees were holding “virtual walkouts” in response to Zuckerberg’s decision to leave Trump’s posts on the platform as is. Last week, Twitter put warning labels on a few of Trump’s tweets, including ones related to the protests.

A source familiar with Color Of Change said its president, Rashad Robinson, and its members were “not only just underwhelmed, but insulted” by Facebook and Zuckerberg’s response to the protests.

The source added that the $10 million in donations is “small relative to the potential” and “without meaning to the ultimate goal of protecting black lives” and needs to be investigated by criminal justice organizations.