Facebook earlier this month was accused in an investor lawsuit of paying lip service to racial diversity while it fails to achieve any progress whatsoever in the process of doing so. According to one of the social network giant’s shareholder, Natalie Ocegueda who claims the company’s failure to deal with racial issues is what has led to the recent exodus of advertisers who have boycotted the platform as they require the company take responsibility of “Hate speech” on the platform.
In the lawsuit there were citations of examples whereby the Social network giant has refused to remove the U.S. President Donald Trump‘s post which some said to be offensive to them. In the post, the President commented about the Minneapolis looting spanning from the George Floyd death under the custody of police officers as saying “When the looting starts, the shooting starts”.
Ocegueda also noted the resignation of the company’s board member Kenneth Chenault this year from the company. Chenault is an African American who ran American Express from 2001 to 2018.
“Facebook’s approach to diversity has been characterized by tokenism: make a small gesture to satisfy appearances, but don’t make any underlying substantial change,” according to the complaint.
Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the issue with stakeholders and advertisers boycotting Facebook is now becoming the news everyday even though the company’s CEO believes that his company shouldn’t police any body’s freedom of speech as well as refusing to take responsibility for comments made by users on the platform which has more than 2 billion users.
