Meta kills diversity initiatives, relaxes hate speech rules, removes ‘trans’ theme from app

Less than a week after Meta said it would end its fact-checking program because fact-checkers have been “too politically biased,” the social media giant is telling employees it will immediately drop multiple initiatives aimed at increasing diversity within the company.

A memo announcing the end of the “Diverse Slate Approach” was shared in an internal forum on Friday by Janelle Gale, the vice president of human resources at Meta Platforms, which owns services like Facebook and Instagram. As part of that program will Hiring managers were expected to “consider candidates from underrepresented backgrounds when interviewing for an open position.” Although the approach is now rejected, the company will “continue to recruit candidates from diverse backgrounds,” the memo said.

Gale added that Meta will also eliminate its team focused on DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion.

“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” she wrote, in what many saw as a tacit acknowledgment that the shift is intended to support the incoming Republican presidential administration to satisfy the party.

“The term ‘DEI’ has also become loaded,” Gale said, “in part because it is perceived by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.”

The announcement comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke with newly elected President Donald Trump at his Florida estate in November. After that meeting, Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

In one video shared online Tuesday, Zuckerberg had said it was time for Meta “to get back to our roots around free speech” and claimed he was “starting to build social media to give people a voice.” (Zuckerberg’s predecessor to Facebook, a site known as Facemash, existed for this purpose of judging the attractiveness of his classmates at Harvard.)

In addition to expanding the DEI team and ending practices like the Diverse Slate Approach, Gale’s memo reaffirmed that Meta has already eliminated “representation goals for women and ethnic minorities” and announced an end to “efforts in of supplier diversity.”

“This effort focused on sourcing from companies with diverse ownership; Going forward, we will focus our efforts on supporting small and medium-sized businesses that power much of our economy,” Gale said.

The memo was first reported by Axioswhich one published the document completely.

Meta’s abrupt shift matches Meta’s new content moderation guidelines that allow various types of hateful and dehumanizing comments against transgender people, immigrants and women.

Tech journalist Casey Newton highlighted some of the alarming changes in an article Thursday on the news site Platformerpublishing a series of examples – created by Meta for internal moderator training – of exactly the types of posts it now allows:

“There is no such thing as trans children.”
“God created two genders, ‘transgenders’ don’t really exist.”
“This whole non-binary thing is made up. Those people don’t exist, they just need therapy.”
“A trans woman is not a woman, she is a pathetically confused man.”
“A trans person is not a he or she, it is an it.”

In a separate, but related development highlighted by the publication 404 MediaMeta removed “trans” and “non-binary” themes from its Messenger app this week. Themes allow users to change the appearance of chat windows, for example by changing the color or design.

Other themes, such as those celebrating “Basketball,” “Minecraft,” and “Love,” will remain.