Meta employees were told not to discuss sensitive issues like abortion, gun control, pending legislation and the effectiveness of vaccines at work. fortune has reported about these changes, citing a leaked internal statement from Lori Goler, chief of staff at Meta.
“As Mark recently mentioned, we need to make a number of cultural changes to help us meet our priorities,” Goler wrote in a company report, according to Fortune. “We do this to ensure that internal discussions remain respectful, productive, and allow us to focus. This comes with the trade-off that we will no longer allow all forms of expression at work, but we believe this is the right thing to do for the long-term health of our internal community."
Meta took a similar stance in June, when a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. according to a document which the New York Times obtained at the time, Meta said that "discussing abortion openly at work has a greater risk of creating a hostile work environment."
“We deeply value expression, open discussion and a company culture based on respect and inclusion,” said Kadia Koroma, a spokesperson for Meta. “We have updated our employee expectations to provide guidance on what is appropriate for our people in the workplace so that we can reduce distractions while maintaining an environment that is respectful and inclusive and where people can do their best work.”
Meta employees who must discuss these topics in order to do their jobs are exempt from the policies; these guidelines do not extend outside of the workplace.
As a company, Meta is in a period of financial turmoil as its investments in the metaverse do not pay off. At the beginning of the year, Meta shares were trading at around $330 per share; now, it has been reduced to $115 per share. Over the summer, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees in a general call that he would raise expectations and set more aggressive goals. "Realistically, there are probably a lot of people in the company who shouldn't be here," he said. to the team. The following month, Meta cut 11.000 jobs, representing 13% of its workforce.
These new mandates to avoid discussion of sensitive topics are in line with Zuckerberg's desire to increase the intensity at work. The changes are positioned as a way to keep employees focused by "minimizing disruption," Goler's note says, according to Fortune. Goler also referred to the way in which Meta is positioned in public policies.
“We are often asked to sign endorsement letters on topics that are important, but not directly related to our work. This can distract us from focusing on issues that are not central to our mission,” Goler wrote. "Going forward, as a company, we will only make public statements on topics that are critical to our business, which means they are necessary to provide our service."
Coinbase took a similar approach in 2020, when CEO Brian Armstrong released a culture memo stating that discussions of political issues and social causes they were not allowed — if the employees didn't like it, they could ask for compensation and leave.
The policy was controversial. For many tech workers, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, current events have a palpable impact on their day-to-day lives, and that includes work. Even Jack Dorsey, former Twitter CEO and Bitcoin evangelist, spoke against of Coinbase's anti-activism policy, which writes that cryptocurrencies are "direct activism against an unverifiable and exclusionary financial system that negatively affects much of our society." Dorsey said Armstrong's stance "leaves people behind."
At Meta, a company that operates social media platforms that billions of people use every day, it's hard to imagine that these prohibited topics won't inevitably emerge.
