| More Trump winning — nine days before he takes the reins. |
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that the company would be ending its controversial fact-checking practices and lifting restrictions on speech to "restore free expression" across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its content moderation practices had "gone too far."
By Friday, Meta had ended its major diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
The New York Times reported on these changes Friday in a piece headlined, "Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Sprint to Remake Meta for the Trump Era," warning, "The repercussions are just beginning."
Along with removing transgender and nonbinary customization themes on its Messenger app and changing its "Hateful Conduct" policy to allow criticism of gender identity, the company took an active role in changing the corporate culture at the office, according to The Times.
At "Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley, Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads, two employees said," The Times reported.
LGBTQ employees reportedly groused on internal resource channels, with at least one announcing a resignation, while others said they would look for new jobs.
Fox News Digital reached out to Meta for comment.
Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan told Fox News Digital Friday that the move to end its diversity, equity and inclusion programs will ensure that the company is "building teams with the most talented people."
He added that "This means evaluating people as individuals, and sourcing people from a range of candidate pools, but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics like race or gender."
As for the timing of the changes to Meta's fact-checking programs, Kaplan told Fox News Digital the company has "a real opportunity now."
"We have a new administration coming in that is far from pressuring companies to censor and [is more] a huge supporter of free expression," Kaplan said. "It gets us back to the values that Mark founded the company on."
These changes appear to follow trends among other major companies as they shift away from DEI and related ideologies during the new Trump era.
| If everybody, or even just many, does/do everything a little better, the virtuous cycle is going to be awesome. And Mr. Zuckerburg has seriously earnt my revaluation of his character and ability — this is not the behaviour of someone reluctantly accepting a power shift. |
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