A new position of vice president for civil rights appeared on Facebook. It was announced on Monday, January 11, USA Today reports.
Roy Austin, a former employee of Barack Obama’s administration, will handle racial hatred and discrimination issues on the company’s platforms and set up a civil rights organization within Facebook, as the internal audit recommendation calls for.
“Technology plays a role in virtually every aspect of our lives, and it’s important that it be used to address the historical discrimination and hatred that many ‘underrepresented’ groups have faced, not to exacerbate it,” he said.
Austin will officially take office on Jan. 19 in Washington, D.C., where he will set up his team.
In December, the U.S. Justice Department sued Facebook for discriminating against U.S. citizen employees. According to the department, the company had refused to hire American specialists for more than 2.6 thousand positions, which Facebook had instead reserved for holders of temporary visas.
On December 18, it became known that the court on the claim of the U.S. Department of Justice against Google Corporation for violations of antitrust laws may begin in September 2023.
It became known in the summer of 2019 that U.S. authorities were preparing to launch a large-scale investigation into Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple to check for possible antitrust violations on their part.
Facebook on Dec. 10 called the U.S. authorities’ antitrust lawsuits a revision of history.
