Facebook fired an employee who criticized a coworker on Twitter for not issuing a public statement supporting Black Lives Matter on a project they worked on (FB)

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Facebook fired an employee who publicly criticized a coworker for not issuing a statement in support of Black Lives Matter on a project they worked on, a spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider.
The employee, Brandon Dail, tweeted that he was let go for dragging a coworker who refused to support BLM via one of Facebook's open-source software project, Recoil.
Dail had also criticized Mark Zuckerberg's stance regarding Trump's controversial posts earlier this month, which Zuckerberg defended in an all-hands meeting last week, prompting rare public rebukes from Facebook employees and content moderators.
The Facebook spokesperson did not say whether Dail had violated a specific company policy.
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Facebook fired an employee after he criticized a coworker on Twitter who refused to add a statement supporting Black Lives Matter to the documentation for an open-source software project they oversee, a spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider.

"In the interest of transparency, I was let go for calling out an employee's inaction here on Twitter. I stand by what I said. They didn't give me the chance to quit," Bradon Dail, the former employee, tweeted Friday.

Dail, a user interface engineer in Seattle, said on Twitter that he had asked a coworker who oversees Recoil, one of Facebook's open-source projects, to "add a #BlackLivesMatter banner" like React, another Facebook open-source project, had supposedly done.

When the coworker refused, Dail dragged them on Twitter, prompting Facebook to terminate him, he said.

"I can confirm the accuracy of Brandon's tweets explaining what happened," a Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider.

Dail, along with dozens of Facebook, had also spoken out publicly about CEO Mark Zuckerberg's inaction regarding controversial posts from President Donald Trump.

Trump's posts included the racially charged phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" in reference to protests against systemic racism and police brutality held after the May 25 killing of George Floyd.

Twitter affixed a warning label to the same post, saying it glorified violence. Facebook opted to leave the post untouched.

Zuckerberg stood by his decision at a tense all-hands meeting with employees that week. During the meeting, Dail tweeted that it was "crystal clear today that leadership refuses to stand with us."

Zuckerberg's position has prompted rare public rebukes and even resignations within the company, both from Facebook employees and content moderators, as well as external pushback from civil rights leaders and other critics.

Dail again voiced objections this week after both Facebook and Twitter declined to take action against a Trump post that contained an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old protester who was critically injured by police in Buffalo, New York.

"Trump's attack on Martin Gugino is despicable and a clear violation [of] Facebook's anti-harassment rules. It's again extremely disappointing that we (and Twitter) haven't removed it," he said.

Dail did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Katie Paul; Editing by Will Dunham)

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