“We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control,” one employee wrote on an internal message board, the documents show.

“Hang in there everyone,” Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, wrote on a message board, calling for calm as he explained the company’s approach to the riot, according to the documents.

In response to Schroepfer’s message, Facebook employees said it was too little too late.