Meta is ending its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, known as DEI, the company said Friday, becoming the latest company to back away from such practices in the wake of pressure from conservative critics and customers.
Meta is eliminating the company’s DEI team, ending “equity and inclusion programs and changing an hire and supplier practice,” according to a company memo obtained by CNN and sent to all global employees by Meta’s vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale.
A spokesperson for Meta confirmed the contents of the memo.
“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” Gale wrote. “The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision signals a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics.”
Gale also wrote that the term “DEI” has become “loaded” because some believe it implies “preferential treatment of some groups over others.”
The memo was first reported by Axios.
Meta’s chief diversity officer, Maxine Williams, will take on a new role focused on “accessibility and engagement,” the memo said. The company will no longer require managers to source candidates from underrepresented groups, and it will end efforts to hire minority-owned vendors and suppliers.
“We build the best teams with the most talented people,” Gale wrote. “This means sourcing people from a range of candidate pools, but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics (eg, race, gender, etc.),” Gale wrote.
“Instead of equity and inclusion programs,” Gale wrote, Meta plans to build programs “that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that reduce bias for everyone, regardless of background.”
The end of the DEI programs is tied to other major changes at the company that critics say caters to the right since President-elect Donald Trump won the election in November. Earlier this week, Meta announced that it was terminate their third-party fact-checking programs in the United States and change its policy on hateful behavioradding new types of content users can now post on meta-owned platforms that were previously prohibited.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with President-elect Donald Trump on Friday at Mar-a-Lago, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Meta declined to comment on the meeting between Zuckerberg and Trump.
And Zuckerberg also appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast the same day, saying he had been working on the changes announced this week “for a long time.”
“The whole point of social media is to give people the ability to share what they want. It goes back to, our original mission is to just give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg said he has been on a “journey” over the past decade, starting with “a lot for free speech, free speech,” but President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory and then pressure from the Biden administration to moderate Covid-19 misinformation on social media. the media changed his view.
“I think in 2016 and the aftermath I gave too much deference to a lot of people in the media who basically said, ‘Okay, there was no way (Trump) could have been elected except for disinformation. People actually can’t believe this,’” said Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg said fact-checking and content moderation got to the point where it “destroyed trust” in the platform.
At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Zuckerberg said Meta was under heavy pressure from the Biden administration to remove content the administration saw as misinformation on the platform.
“Basically, these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and want to yell at them and curse, and it’s like, this is documented, it’s all out there,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the administration tried to get Meta to remove a meme that suggested people who get the Covid-19 vaccine would face class action lawsuits.
“We’ve been pressure-tested on this for the last 8 to 10 years with these huge institutions that have just pressured us, and I feel like this is the right place to move forward,” he said.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Kate Sullivan and Clare Duffy contributed reporting.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
