Meta employees typically vote on which questions executives should address at companywide meetings. Ahead of such a gathering scheduled for Thursday, several of the most-endorsed questions were related to DEI. But Meta leadership have told employees that the popularity of a certain question no longer guarantees that it will be answered by company leadership, according to one of the employees. The New York Times earlier reported the change.
A number of US companies, including in the tech industry, removed mentions of diversity goals and programs in their annual filings about a year ago amid growing public criticism of the initiatives in the form of civil lawsuits and pressure from activist investors. A new round of cutbacks have been announced by retailers, restaurants, manufacturers, and tech developers as President Donald Trump returned to the White House this month.
Trump has repeatedly criticized DEI policies and programs, calling them “nonsense” and “discriminatory.” After he was inaugurated on January 20, Trump quickly moved to end DEI programs at agencies across the federal government.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has sought to warm his once-frosty relationship with the president over the past few months. On Wednesday, Meta and Trump reached an agreement to settle a lawsuit Trump filed over the temporary suspension of his user account after the January 6 Capitol insurrection, according to a federal court filing. Meta agreed to pay about $25 million, with most of the funds going toward Trump’s future presidential library, The Wall Street Journal reported. Dani Lever, a Meta spokesperson, confirmed the reporting to WIRED. Trump’s attorneys in the case did not respond to requests for comment.
Zuckerberg didn’t acknowledge the settlement on the company’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, but did applaud the president. “We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad,” he said. “And I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unwind.”
At Meta, the effect of the DEI cuts may be muted, in part, because the company has been working on trimming them for some time behind the scenes, according to a former Meta employee directly familiar with the changes. “It’s been a slow, painful death,” they say. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, then chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg spearheaded the company’s increased commitments to diversity, including commissioning an internal civil rights audit. In its 2022 diversity report, Meta noted that it had doubled the number of women and Black staff members since 2019 as part of its diversity goals.
With Sandberg’s support, the former Meta employee says, “there was like this huge rush of energy to make a difference.” But in July 2022, Sandberg announced her departure from day-to-day operations at the company. Around that same time, the tech giant announced that it would start identifying teams to let go during upcoming widespread layoffs, which took place several months later. The eventual cuts affected some 11,000 people and were the first blow to Meta’s progress on diversity, the former employee alleges.
