As Mark Zuckerberg continues to cement himself as CEO of one of Silicon Valley’smost amoral tech titans — namely by profit of the slow erosion of republic — his companionship has supervise to sink to a newfangled level of abhorrent by pitching a tool that could be used to blacklist hashtags related to organized travail .
The InterceptreportedThursday on an national presentation for new features for the company ’s Cartesian product Workplace , aninternal communicating toolused by companies like Starbucks and Walmart , both of which areknownandaggressiveunion - buster . According to the Intercept , the presentation touted the potential for “ capacity control ” and specifically used the word “ unionize ” as one such matter that could be banish . The feature article triggered such a strong blacklist among Facebook ’s own employees , the land site reported , that work VP Karandeep Anand later apologized for the example on an inner companionship assembly .
In a statement , a spokesperson for the company said the company has since canned plans to cast the feature out wide — for the time being .
Photo: Getty
“ While these variety of content moderation tools are useful for companies , this example was poorly select and should never have been used . The feature was only in early ontogenesis and we ’ve pulled any plans to roll it out while we think through next step , ” the Facebook spokesperson enounce .
Facebook framed these variety of content easing tool as resources for curbing harassment and other vilification on these internal platforms . The company said that this feature , in fussy , would allow a moderator to delete hashtags from situation that are trending on Workplace without delete the station itself . Though Facebook said the puppet was mean to prevent harmful posts from trending , it ’s unclear why “ unionize ” would be cited as an example for potential remotion . It does , however , seem to track for a company whose drawing card is seemingly lean ever more amply into his role as anunrelenting supervillain .
It ’s also not tough to see the irony in Facebook ’s ostensible cause against abuse on its Workplace chopine while Facebook proper continues to face criticism for its owncontent moderation catastrophesand freakish defense of mail by President Donald Trump threaten real , explicitly express violenceagainst Americans . However , Facebook fiddle with a tool that can be used for union - wear — whether or not Facebook explicitly allege so — feels absolutely unsurprising for a company that ’s graduated fromembarrassing data leakerto defender ofconspiracy horseshitanddangerous misinformationin a comparatively short amount of fourth dimension .
Honestly , do any of us really anticipate any unlike at this point ?
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