Meta Cracks Down on Internal Dissent Against Appointment of UFC’s Dana White to Board

Meta is downplaying internal criticism of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement Monday that Dana White will be added to its board of directors. 404 media Report Regarding deleting comments left by employees at work, an internal version of Facebook is accessible to employees Some comments highlighted video footage from 2022 of White, an outspoken Trump supporter and CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, slapping his wife at a New Year’s Eve party. He was never charged for the altercation.

According to 404Some employees expressed excitement or made humorous comments about the hiring. One employee, for example, wrote “W” while another wrote, “We hire Connor [McGregor] For after a work fight?” Conor McGregor, a UFC fighter, was convicted in a civil court of sexual assault in 2018 after a woman accused him of rape.

Others were displeased with Meta’s decision and celebratory comments from colleagues. “It’s kind of disheartening to see people commenting on a man on video assaulting his wife and celebrating a man who was recently convicted of rape,” one employee commented. “I can kind of excuse people for being ignorant, but Meta must have done their due diligence on White and concluded that what he did was good. I feel like I’m on another planet.”

Tech giants like Meta and Google were famous for allowing internal discussions and disagreements in their early days, believing it would make them enjoyable places to work and lead to better product decisions. But as these companies have metastasized into global companies with hundreds of thousands of employees, they have largely reduced open discussion or employee protests. Like high-profile controversies Anti-diversity memo A former Google employee’s writing caused much internal turmoil, and leadership teams across the industry eventually threw up their hands.

While removing the comments about White, a member of Meta’s “internal community relations” team explained to employees that they violated the company’s internal rules for discussions called “Community Engagement Expectations.” “I’m posting a comment here with a reminder about CEE, as multiple comments have been flagged for review by the community. It is important that we maintain a respectful work environment where people can do their best work. We need to remember that CEE applies to how we interact with our community members—including our board members. CEE is not affiliated with insulting, criticizing or opposing our colleagues or board members.”

Meta’s communications team insists 404 The company always has different rules for discussions internally and those that happen on its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram

Since winning re-election, Zuckerberg has been in a full-court press to please Trump. $1 million grant He inaugurated it.

Following White’s appointment on Monday, Zuckerberg made a series of announcements about content moderation in a video today that could be described as a masterclass in political theater. Announcements include that Meta will ditch its fact-checking machinery in favor of an X-style community notes system; Leaving a small moderation team in place which would be transferred from California to Texas “to eliminate bias”; allowing political content on Facebook and Instagram again after cracking down on it in recent years; and lifting restrictions on the content of discussions on gender and immigration.

On that last point, Meta has updated its community guidelines to allow this “When allegations of mental illness or abnormality are based on gender or sexual orientation, political and religious discourses about transgenderism and homosexuality are given.” In essence, it would now be okay to attribute being gay to mental illness.

In addition to concerns about misinformation and abuse raised by these changes, critics point out that Metar’s algorithms over-optimize on promoting anger-inducing content that achieves high engagement. Opaque algorithms are arguably themselves a form of censorship—at X, Elon Musk routinely tinkers with algorithms to suppress the kinds of content he wants to see and the ones he doesn’t.

Put together, Zuckerberg’s moves kill two birds with one stone. He has long hated being in a position to control content on his platform, and now he can stop doing so. And he can simultaneously appease Trump, who threatened under his first administration Lock up Zuckerberg for life For the moderation of his conservative content. But as he works to please conservatives and appease Trump, he will have to deal with resentment among the more liberal employees in his workforce.

Trump was asked about Zuckerberg’s decision to loosen content restrictions during a Mar-a-Lago press conference early Tuesday. After a reporter asked if Trump believed Zuckerberg was making the changes in response to his earlier threats, Trump response“Perhaps.”

We mentioned one A major antitrust case Going to court in April against Meta? Trump could save a lot of public grilling under oath by meta executives, including Zuckerberg.