Mark Zuckerberg is finally able to be his true self. Surprise: it sucks.
New report from the New York Times. details how Zuck enlisted a small team of executives to assist him transform the Meta Facebook, Instagram and Threads platforms as he saw fit. So far this has included completing fact checking, withdrawing moderation rules that protected marginalized people, and improving the algorithm to advertise more political content. Now in the note to employees obtained by Axiosyou possibly can add diversity, equity and inclusion to the list of policies that Zuckerberg’s firms have had enough of.
The company announced that it will reverse the policy, lay off its DEI team, stop attempting to work with minority-owned vendors and end its representation goals, amongst other changes. The changes will take effect immediately.
This rightward shift follows Zuckerberg’s trip to Mar-a-Lago on Thanksgiving, where he hung out with President-elect Donald Trump. But in response to the Los Angeles Times, it has been bubbling in Meta’s CEO’s head for a while. He reportedly felt compelled to handle “progressive” causes – you understand, those radical leftist beliefs like “equal opportunity is good” and “you shouldn’t just lie like that” – from his employees and outside forces. The Times reports that he spoke behind the scenes with unstable lunatic Mark Andreessen and others about how he desired to take a “free speech” approach to running his firms.
Interestingly, Zuckerberg’s technolibertarian version of “freedom of speech” in practice resembles “the suppression of marginalized people.” Zuck and his small circle of like-minded ghouls, the company’s content moderation policies have been rewritten in a way that might prohibit the claim that “white people have mental illness” but would allow saying, for instance, that “homosexuals have mental illness”. The company too transgender and non-binary theme options drawn from the Messenger chat app.
The decision is then made to finish DEI programs. Meta claimed it made the call because “the legal and policy landscape regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States will change.” In a memo obtained by Axios, Janelle Gale, Meta’s vp of human resources, cited recent Supreme Court decisions “signaling a shift in the courts’ approach to DEI” — an apparent reference to the SCOTUS decision abandon affirmative motion programs at university admissions offices, in addition to upcoming ones a case of “reverse discrimination”. the court will hear, which could set a precedent for attacking DEI initiatives.
Moreover, this decision appears to be an extension of Zuckerberg’s worldview. His enterprise capital buddies in Silicon Valley have been working for years harassment with DEI programsimagining themselves as kings of meritocracy and regurgitating the notion that somebody from a less privileged background would face any discrimination in the event that they were as capable as their counterparts. Of course, the reality is that this Meritocracy is a myth. In fact, research has shown that believing that achievements are the results of merit leads to less empathy and more discriminatory behavior.
This is a stark departure from how the company has performed over the past few years. After all, it’s just an organization successfully defended one in every of its DEI efforts in court last summer. In 2023, the finish line shall be public he stated“Our commitment to DEI remains at the heart of who we are as a company.” Just two years ago, Meta released a diversity report highlighting the way it was in a position to attract more talent from marginalized communities by hiring more distant employees. (The company has since released back to office order This disproportionately affected these same employees.)
From all the decisions Zuckerberg has made at his company over the past few weeks, it’s clear that there is one form of diversity he’s truly fed up with: diversity of thought that disagrees with him.
