Alibaba lays off 10 people for publicizing an employee’s sexual allegations

Details:

• Last week, Alibaba announced internally that it has dismissed a group of employees for sharing details of an incident revealed by a colleague with the surname Zhou, who accused a former manager of rape. Additionally, another three employees have reportedly been pulled up for making inappropriate comments in public forums.
• The group of employees were allegedly fired because they shared screenshots of the woman’s post in the public domain after removing watermarks that contained details on their identities.

Dive deeper:

• The development comes amid a fierce debate on the rampant sexism across China’s tech industry after the employee reported the incident of sexual assault on August 2.
• In response to the incident, Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang vowed to increase protection for women across the company. He also acknowledged the firm’s failure to act on the same.