Facebook’s very bad week

Facebook faces a racial bias complaint; a German commando company is dissolved over concerns about extremists. Tonight's Sentences was written by Cameron Peters. Note: We'll be taking a break Friday for the July Fourth weekend and will be back Monday. TOP NEWS Facebook's troubles continue with new racial bias complaint Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images - On Thursday, a Black Facebook employee filed a complaint against Facebook with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging a pattern of anti-Black bias in hiring practices, promotions, and other areas. [[Washington Post / Elizabeth Dwoskin](] - According to Oscar Veneszee Jr., who has been with Facebook since 2017, managers at the company repeatedly failed to address the treatment of Black employees there, and he personally encountered instances of hostility and discrimination. [[Bloomberg / Joel Rosenblatt](] - It’s not the first time that Facebook has been hit with accusations of discrimination: In 2018, a Black employee quit the company and wrote in a public memo that Facebook was “failing its black employees and its black users.” [[NPR / Shannon Bond](] - Part of the company’s alleged bias is said to be rooted in its focus on hiring workers who fit the Facebook “culture,” where Black employees are severely underrepresented; currently, according to Gizmodo, less than 4 percent of Facebook’s tens of thousands of employees are Black. [[Gizmodo / Dell Cameron](] - The complaint is just the latest blow for Facebook, which is also facing a sweeping advertiser boycott this week. More than 500 companies have signed onto the Stop Hate for Profit campaign to protest Facebook’s hate speech policies. [[AP / Barbara Ortutay](] - Big names like Ford, Adidas, and Verizon have all agreed to a month-long freeze on Facebook advertising as part of the campaign; other brands, like Coca-Cola, have pulled advertising but aren’t yet on board with the broader initiative, according to the Guardian. [[The Guardian / Alex Hern](] - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, however, appears unconcerned with the boycott: At a company meeting last week, he predicted that advertisers would return soon and told employees that “we’re not gonna change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue, or to any percent of our revenue.” [[The Information / Alex Heath](] - Still, Facebook took action earlier this week to ban hundreds of groups associated with the extremist “Boogaloo” movement after the group’s anti-government rhetoric spilled over into real-world violence in two recent incidents. [[The Verge / Casey Newton](] - As Recode’s Shirin Ghaffary writes, pressure from multiple directions means that Facebook is reaching a “tipping point” when it comes to hate speech, even as other platforms like Twitter and YouTube start to take action in response to a “national reckoning over systemic racism in the United States.” [[Recode / Shirin Ghaffary](] Far-right worries in Germany's special forces - On Wednesday, Germany announced that a company of special forces within the elite KSK would be disbanded in response to reports of far-right extremism and a “toxic leadership culture” in the unit. [[NPR / Scott Neuman](] - KSK soldiers have been connected with a string of disturbing incidents, including the use of the Nazi salute and the disappearance of a large quantity of explosives and ammunition. According to German military intelligence, some 600 soldiers, both in and out of the KSK, are under investigation for extremism. [[Washington Post / Loveday Morris and Luisa Beck](] - Some members of the dissolved company will be integrated into the rest of the KSK, Germany’s defense minister said Wednesday. Others who are “part of the problem” will be removed from special forces entirely. [[The Guardian / AP](] - And the KSK is now on the clock to make changes. The unit will be given time to “press the reset button,” but Deutsche Welle reports that the entire group could be disbanded if progress doesn’t happen quickly. [[Deutsche Welle](] MISCELLANEOUS Ghislaine Maxwell, an alleged accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested Thursday on charges of facilitating the sexual abuse of girls. [[CNN / Kara Scannell and Erica Orden](] - “It’s like riding in the cavalry”: How bike protests have caught on in NYC [[NYT / Troy Closson and Sean Piccoli](] - The best — and riskiest — ways to get out of your house this summer [[Vox / Katherine Harmon Courage](] - Hamilton is back, "vital and more challenging than ever." [[NYT / A.O. Scott](] VERBATIM "Facebook is too big to govern responsibly. There will always be more work to do because Facebook’s design will always produce more hate than anyone could monitor. How do you reform that? You can’t." [[NYT columnist Charlie Warzel on how we should approach Facebook / NYT](] LISTEN TO THIS [Who really killed Blockbuster Video?]( When Netflix started out, it was a fraction of the size of Blockbuster. It should have been crushed, and almost was. What went wrong? [[Spotify / Peter Kafka and Rani Molla](] [Read more from Vox](#) [The new Hamilton movie, now on Disney+, underlines what makes the musical radical]( [5 first-time protesters on why they showed up for Black lives now]( [Who voters want to be Joe Biden’s vice president, according to the polls]( [The Trump administration is targeting homeless trans people in the middle of a pandemic]( [Breonna Taylor was killed by police in March. 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