Facebook is failing its black employees and its black users

Facebook is a company built on data. When determining where to allocate resources, ranking data such as followers, greatest number of likes and shares, or yearly revenue are employed to scale features and products. The problem with this approach is Facebook teams are effectively giving more resources to the people who already have them. In doing so, Facebook is increasing the disparity of access between legacy individuals/brands and minority communities. You can see this reflected in everything from the guest lists of Facebook's external programs, the industry events the company has historically sponsored, the creators and influencers who appear in Explore tabs on Instagram, the power users who are verified on the platforms, and more. So many positive advancements have been made in recruiting and in engineering with formal programs that are inclusive of or specifically uplift communities of color. We need that same lens at all areas of the company, particularly those that are external facing. Black employees are commonly told “I didn't know black people worked at Facebook." Though relatively small in number, we are here. What this translates to is the black people who invest so much time into us want their opinions to matter and they're not seeing that reflected externally.