Meta is making more significant changes, with the parent company of Facebook and Instagram on Friday saying it is ending a number of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Moving forward, Meta will be focused on building “programs that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background,” according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC.
Axios was the first outlet to report Meta’s decision to end its DEI programs.
Janelle Gale, Meta’s VP of people, said the shifting “legal and policy landscape” surrounding DEI in the U.S. was a key driver in the company’s decision.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms long standing principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics,” Gale said.
She added: “The term ‘DEI’ has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.”
Meta will no longer have a DEI team, Gale said, and the company’s Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams will move into a new role. The company will continue to “source” employees from “different backgrounds,” Gale added, but it will not continue to use the “Diverse Slate Approach,” which looks to push minority candidates to the top of its hiring pool.
The big change comes a few days after Meta said it would end its third-party fact checking operation. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, while appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Friday, likened the fact checking operation to George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984.”
Zuckerberg said the operation was a “slippery slope” towards too much censorship, and that it “just got to a point where it’s just ‘OK, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States.”
(You can read what tech analysts, free speech advocates and critics of Meta had to say about Zuckerberg’s decision by clicking here.)
Meta is not the only tech giant to announce an end to several DEI programs on Friday, either. Amazon, in an internal memo obtained by CNBC on Friday, decided last month it would be “winding down” many of its DEI efforts. Apple, on the other hand, is fighting a shareholder proposal to ditch its “radical” DEI programs.
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