Meta eliminates diversity initiatives stating DEI has become ‘too charged’

It is claimed that Meta has shut down all DEI programs that affected hiring and training of employees as well as company’s relations with vendors, in the present year. Potter also reported that, as seen in an internal memo obtained by Axios and confirmed to Ars, Meta’s vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, explained to Meta personnel the decision by stating that the actions are on account of the “legal and policy developments around diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the United States.”

Meta is another move which some people see as a part of a series of actions between the company and the incoming Trump administration politics. DEI programs at workplaces and college campuses came under fire in December after Trump vowed to put an end to it, The Guardian clarifying. Meta is slashing its fact-checking programme which began in 2016 following Trump’s first win and aimed to slow the spread of false information. When announcing Meta’s shift to something similar to X’s fact-checking model, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that fact checkers were ‘too politically biased’ and ‘eroded trust’ on Meta-owned platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

Trump has also pledged to continue his attacks on an alleged social media censorship while in power. Meta was criticised this week over leaked changes to its rules that soften the ban on hate speech, according to The Intercept, whose content Zuckerberg claimed was ‘tone deaf’. Such changes include previously prohibited slurs against Transgender such as a policy that makes it okay to call women ‘property’ and gay people ‘mentally ill’ as Mashable pointed out.

GLAAD published a statement where they said that removing safety guardrails was likely to turn Meta platforms into unsafe areas full of dangerous hate speech, violence, harassment and misinformation, while adding that Meta does not seem to be averse to ‘normalising anti-LGBTQ hatred for profit’.

Gale also identified that these DEI programs were also old since “the Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions that indicate how the courts will approach DEI,” and that “DEI” has also become problematic in its connotation because some people understand it as a practice that calls for the favoring of one group over the other.

Meta lays off DEI team members and stops representation targets

This was compounded, the memo noted, by five major DEI reversals that Meta needed to undertake, as Axios detailed. That included slashing its DEI team and replacing equity and inclusion initiatives with initiatives that promote “how, given your background, you can apply for fair and impartial standards for dealing with applications” without prejudice. It also included eliminating representation goals for women and ethnic minorities, which Gale pointed out, is “unfair” since it “gives the appearance that choices are being made racially or sexually.”

To the end of 2021, women constituted 37.1 % of Meta’s global workers, STATISTA indicated in December while some minorities were also underrepresented; 6.5 % identifying as Hispanic and 4.9 % as Black globally in 2022. Meta is also still party to a lawsuit it would now prefer to solve through arbitration over violation of its employment policies and unlawful retaliation and discrimination against women employees. Moreover, Meta stated that it would no longer look for diverse-owned businesses as suppliers while the firm should actively “support the small and medium businesses that drive so much of our economy ,” according to the memo.

And, Meta will alter its method of hiring from what it called the “diverse slate approach,” recruiting “people of diverse backgrounds”, to “I don’t know what other ways we can build an industry-leading workforce and-leverage teams made up of world-class people from all types of backgrounds.” According to the memo. Meta declined to comment but confirmed to Ars that all that has been reported by Axios about the memo is accurate.