The New Yorker’s social media editor Saira Khan went ballistic in a lengthy Twitter rant about her experience as a Facebook curator. Her tirade comes just three days after Facebook fired all human curators from its trending news operation.
Khan described “the most absurd” things she saw during her time working as a Facebook news curator. Some of them are actually pretty funny—and some of them are downright grim. She says that the most accurate story she’s ever read about the Facebook trending team was a Guardian post titled “I worked on Facebook’s Trending team–the most toxic work experience of my life.”
The Guardian post, written by a former curator, accused Facebook managers of “intimidation, favoritism, and sexism.” The report also said that “several women, including [the author], reported sexism by managers and editors to their direct supervisor and in their exit interviews to no avail.”
Khan’s rant provides more insight into the work experience of the curators. In Gizmodo’s original report about the trending team, one former curator told us that the role was “degrading as a human being.”
“We weren’t treated as individuals. We were treated in this robot way,” the individual said.
You can see Khan’s entire Twitter rant below:
We’ve reached out to Khan for more thoughts on her time at Facebook, and will update if we hear back from her. And if you’re a former curator, we’d love to hear from you.