After Nuking Fact-Checkers, Dialing Back DEI, Zuckerberg Plans 5% Job Cuts At Meta

One week after Trump’s longtime friend, UFC CEO Dana White, joined Facebook’s board, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg nuked “politically biased” fact-checkers from Facebook and Instagram in favor of a system similar to Elon Musk’s Community Notes on X and dialed back the company’s DEI unit, a new internal memo obtained by Bloomberg reveals that the company plans to reduce headcount by about 5%, equivalent to several thousand workers. 

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Zuckerberg said in the memo to an internal message board. 

He continued: “We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle – – with the intention of backfilling these roles in 2025.” 

The coming layoffs continue Zuck’s 2023 “year of efficiency” to eliminate 10,000 positions. He said 2025 will be an “intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams.” 

Full memo: 

Meta is working on building some of the most important technologies in the world – – AI, glasses as the next computing platform, and the future of social media. This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams. I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster. We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle – – with the intention of backfilling these roles in 2025. We won’t manage out everyone who didn’t meet expectations for the last period if we’re optimistic about their future performance, and for those we do let go we’ll provide generous severance in line with what we’ve provided with previous cuts. We’ll follow up with more guidance for managers ahead of calibrations. People who are impacted will be notified on February 10 — or later for those outside the US. Letting people go is never easy. But I’m confident this will strengthen our teams and help us build leading technology to enable the future of human connection.

Last week, Zuckerberg not only eliminated “politically biased” fact-checkers from Facebook and Instagram but also scaled back the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, signaling that wokeism and censorship are no longer the main priorities for the social media giant.

As of the third quarter of 2024, Meta employed about 72.4k people, so a 5% reduction would be around 3,600 jobs. The bull market in job additions has been over since the end of 2022. 

What Zuck needs to do…

BREAKING: Elon Musk literally enters Twitter HQ with a ‘sink’ pic.twitter.com/Xzhvcl2i9I

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) October 26, 2022

Zuck nuking biased fact-checkers has reportedly sent “morale for queer staff into the shitter.”