It’s unclear whether the teams’ move to Texas will be more than symbolic. Common sense suggests that if a person in California has a political preference, moving him to Texas probably won’t immediately change his point of view.
In the same town hall call, company executives described the company’s move to Texas as an attempt to address the perception problem in California. This reasoning has frustrated employees who believe Meta is harming its employees to appease Trump, three employees told WIRED. Meta and Trump remain in court proceedings in a northern California federal court over the short-lived suspension of his account following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Trump alleges that his constitutional right to speech was violated. Zuckerberg reportedly recently met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to mediate the lawsuit. Wall Street Journal.
This week’s Meta exposed plans from next month, lay off 5 percent of the workforce. The company said it plans to fill those positions throughout the year, which could result in hiring more workers in Texas. Following last week’s decision by Meta to close its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program, there will be no hiring targets for historically underrepresented groups.
Last week’s changes to the hateful conduct policy allow users to post more strident criticism, including around gender and ethnicity. During Rogan’s podcast, Zuckerberg said that users will now be able to voice their opinions on issues such as whether they should serve in the military. According to two employees, some employees have warned that Meta now supports the spread of misogyny and bigotry on its services.
According to one current employee, during a town hall call with employees, the executive defended the policy changes, saying they would open the door to many perspectives, such as the ability to call men inactive on Facebook without fear of being censored.
On the enforcement side, Meta is phasing out its current fact-checking program, limiting the apply of automatic filters to suppress allegedly offensive posts and promoting more political content in news feeds.
On Tuesday, 12 civil rights groups said they have been advising Meta for years wrote to the company to express “serious concern” about the changed policies. “These changes are devastating to free speech because they expose members of protected groups to more attacks, harassment and harm by pushing them off Meta services, impoverishing conversations, eliminating viewpoints, and silencing dissent and often censored voices,” wrote the group, which includes includes the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Human Rights Campaign and the National Black Justice Collective.
In a safety and integrity town hall, management would not commit to continuing to publish statistics on the gender and race of the company’s employees. “It’s capitulation in the worst way,” says one of them.
Some managers individually told their teams they planned to continue pushing for diverse hiring, according to three employees.
Additional reporting by Steven Levy.