• Some Meta workers impacted by Monday's job cuts were surprised since they said they had strong track records.
• Meta's layoffs targeted 5% of low performers. Some higher-rated staff said they were "blindsided."
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing to streamline the company's workforce.

Several Meta employees who said they received positive performance ratings in their mid-year reviews last year had their jobs cut Monday, as the company let go of nearly 4,000 workers in its latest round of job reductions.

Business Insider spoke to eight terminated employees, who said they received "At or Above Expectations" ratings — the middle tier in Meta's three-level mid-year review system — in their 2024 assessments. These employees said they were surprised to learn their ratings had been downgraded to "Meets Most," one of the lower tiers in Meta's year-end performance system that refers to meeting most, but not all, expectations and could make them eligible for Monday's cuts. They asked to be anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss internal company matters.

The job cuts stem from Meta's push to let go of roughly 5% of its lowest-performing employees, according to internal guidance sent to managers in January. While Meta framed these cuts as targeting underperforming workers, internal guidance sent last month by Hillary Champion, Meta's director of people experience, and viewed by BI, allowed managers to include employees from higher performance tiers if they couldn't meet their reduction targets from lower-rated employees alone.

Some employees said they were caught off guard by their inclusion in the cuts, as this guidance had previously only been shared with managers, not with the broader workforce.

"When I received the email I was surprised by it mostly because I have a very solid performance history and no indicators of the last six months of performance problems," one affected employee told BI.

Meta began its year-end performance review process for 2024 in December, although most employees wouldn't learn their final ratings until the coming weeks.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing to streamline Meta's workforce as the company pours billions into artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The cuts could become an annual event as Meta aims to regularly trim what it considers its lowest performers. Meanwhile, Meta plans to ramp up the hiring of machine learning engineers to work on AI.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Meta downgraded some employees' ratings

Multiple employees told BI that they felt frustrated that Meta had publicly framed the layoffs as targeting consistently low performers when some of those affected had previously received strong performance reviews.

In posts on Workplace, Meta's internal communications platform, several laid-off employees shared their performance histories, according to screenshots viewed by BI. One employee who said they were "unexpectedly" terminated posted documentation showing they had consistently met or exceeded expectations for four years before being downgraded to "Meets Most" in late 2024. Another employee reported being cut shortly after returning from parental leave, despite receiving an "At or Above Expectations" rating in early 2024.

"I am super confused how I got terminated," they wrote. "I still think this is an error."

The sudden downgrade in performance ratings left many employees feeling misrepresented by Meta's public stance on the layoffs. Some employees worried that being branded as a "low performer" publicly could harm future employment prospects.

"The hardest part is Meta publicly stating they're cutting low performers, so it feels like we have the scarlet letter on our backs," another employee told BI. "People need to know we're not underperformers."

"I would certainly challenge Meta's narrative about cutting only low performers," another affected employee said. "I have a really, really difficult time believing I was a low performer based on past feedback I was given by my manager."

Another employee said their manager had given them no indication that their job was at risk.

"We were told by leadership that if we would be impacted by this then we would already be expecting it, based on conversations our managers should have been having with us in our weekly one-on-ones," one former employee said. "But I was completely blindsided by this. My manager had been telling me that I have been doing great and did not provide any areas to be worked on. My manager even said that I would be fine and not impacted."

Likewise, another worker who received an "Exceeds Expectations" rating in their mid-year review said they were surprised to be "dropped two ratings" to "Meets Most" without explanation.

"We are not even able to see the feedback that our manager wrote for us," they said.

If you're a current or former Meta employee, or have an insight to share about the company, contact Pranav Dixit from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at [email protected].

Reach Jyoti Mann via email at [email protected] or via Signal at jyotimann.11. Get in touch with Hugh Langley at [email protected] or reach him on Signal at hughlangley.01

• Meta has begun to cut thousands of jobs to focus on AI investment and efficiency.
• Mark Zuckerberg is targeting low performers, part of a broader industry move toward leaner operations.
• Some employees told Business Insider they're anxious about the changes.

Meta has begun to cut thousands of jobs as the social media giant takes a tougher stance on underperforming employees and readies its finances for another year of heavy AI investment. Affected employees in Europe, Asia, and the US have started to be notified, per an internal post viewed by Business Insider.

The company has said it will eliminate roughly 5% of its workforce, which could mean almost 4,000 employees lose their jobs.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff in January he would "raise the bar" and move quickly to remove low performers, according to an internal memo seen by BI.

This is part of a broader push by Big Tech companies to make themselves leaner after a hiring spree during the pandemic. Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and others are collectively eliminating thousands of employees.

Zuckerberg has been at the forefront of this, announcing a "year of efficiency" in 2023 that has continued through last year and into 2025. Wall Street has rewarded Meta for this new focus, sending the company's shares soaring since the start of 2023 — a run that's added more than $1 trillion to Meta's market valuation. 

While Meta remained profitable through recent periods of heavy hiring and big spending, the company is now racing to keep up with rivals in the generative-AI race. This requires billions of dollars in infrastructure and related investment. That's likely putting pressure on Zuckerberg to seek cost savings elsewhere. 

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment.

Impact on some employees

Meta is offering impacted workers in the US a severance package that includes 16 weeks of pay and an additional two weeks for every year of service, according to two people familiar with the matter.

For some Meta employees, the efficiency drive is causing anxiety. These staffers asked not to be identified discussing sensitive topics.

"Mark is creating fear," a Meta employee told BI. "He's creating a culture where you have to be loyal to him or else."

Another employee said that working at Meta right now "feels like living in a George Orwell novel."

Even colleagues who have performed well "have been disappearing all year, and when you ask about it, you're just told, 'They're no longer with the company,'" this person said. "Self-censorship is rampant. At a company supposedly dedicated to connecting people, the human side of our work is disappearing, and everyone is acting more robotic."

Another Meta employee said reductions shouldn't be branded as performance-based cuts because this could damage people's reputations as they seek other opportunities.

"Now people have to go back out into the job market with a label that is incredibly unfair," this person added.

They expressed concern that good employees would be cut just to meet quotas and that this could have a negative impact on morale.

"What's the incentive to help a new hire ramp up if they're just going to stack rank us and probably do this all again next year?" this person added.

How Meta's latest job cuts may work

The job cuts are designed to target employees who receive "met some" or "did not meet" ratings, the bottom two categories in Meta's assessment system, in their performance reviews.

Internal guidance obtained by BI last month says managers must identify 12% to 15% of employees eligible for these ratings. Meta aims to reach 10% "nonregrettable attrition" by combining these cuts with previous departures. For example, if a team had 5% attrition in 2024, managers would need to identify another 7% to 10% of their employees for the bottom ratings to meet the target.

One Meta employee told BI that forcing managers to place team members into bottom categories for job cuts had spread anxiety through the management ranks as well as the rank and file.

On Friday, employees received a memo from Janelle Gale, Meta's vice president of human resources, detailing how the process should work. The memo, which was obtained by BI, said affected employees would be notified through their work and personal email addresses and lose access to company systems within an hour of being informed. They'll receive information on their severance packages in the same email, it added.

The notifications will be staggered across time zones, with employees in the Asia Pacific region being notified first, followed by those in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and then, finally, North and Latin America, the memo said.

Employees in European countries such as Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands will be exempt from this process because of local regulations and will instead follow local performance management processes, the memo said. Meta intends to backfill these roles, it added, but plans and timelines "may vary."

How Meta is reorganizing itself

Amid the cuts, the social media giant is also reorganizing some of its businesses and divisions.

The company is merging its Facebook and Messenger teams under Facebook's chief, Tom Alison, while Messenger's head, Loredana Crisan, is set to move to the generative-AI group, The Information said.

Meta's Reality Labs division, which has lost nearly $60 billion since 2020, is being more tightly integrated with Meta's main business, reversing some of Zuckerberg's 2021 reorganization. In an internal memo obtained by BI, Reality Labs' chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, said Reality Labs had "become a positive driver for Meta's overall brand."

• Meta has enacted rules that bar employees from discussing politics, health, and weapons at work.
• These Community Engagement Expectations restrict mocking topics within a protected category, like race.
• Some employees formed CEE Watch to monitor post removals.

Some Meta employees are questioning the company's removal of their posts and comments from its internal forum.

Employees created a group on its internal Workplace forum to share their experiences in posts that have been seen by Business Insider.

In 2022, Meta rolled out internal rules barring employees from discussing contentious topics such as politics, health, and weapons. The guidelines, which Meta calls Community Engagement Expectations, also ban comments and posts that are seen as mocking topics related to a protected category, such as race, gender, or religion.

Some Meta employees have accused the company of using the CEE system to censor valid discussions. A number of staffers recently created an internal employee resource group called CEE Watch so that Meta staff could flag when a post has been removed, according to internal documents seen by BI.

"CEE language is intentionally vague and we cannot know how it's being enforced without openly sharing our violations with each other," a welcome post on the CEE Watch page says.

CEE Watch had over 800 members at the time of publishing, a small fraction of Meta's 72,000-strong workforce.

A Meta spokesperson said the company didn't remove internal employee comments just because it doesn't agree with or like them. They added that many critical comments remained up on Meta's internal communications boards.

One employee wrote that multiple posts regarding Palestinians had been removed over the past year. The person questioned how employees could engage in discussions of "what are acceptable forms of identity to discuss at work."

Another person commented, saying that it was an "open secret" in the "Muslim@" employee resource group that "relatively" harmless posts had been removed.

A different person added that their post about grieving slain family members was removed.

While free speech is a fundamental constitutional right in public spaces, it does not extend to private corporations. As private entities, companies have the legal authority to establish their own policies regarding what employees can or cannot say in the workplace.

But US employees are allowed to discuss wrongdoing by their companies and other workplace-related issues, like safety, harassment, and accommodations for people with disabilities.

The CEE guidelines were last updated in October, according to a copy of them viewed by BI.

They say it's "not okay" for employees to share content that has the "potential to trigger disruptive comments" around topics including: "political movements or causes relating to states, nations, or people (e.g., opinions on forms of governments, political systems, or economic systems; sharing national flags in ways that imply opinions on political movements or causes or slogans like 'Free Puerto Rico'; 'Liberate Hong Kong'; 'Make America Great Again'; 'Build Back Better'; 'Free Palestine'; or 'Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow!')."

In a separate post, titled "communications around LGBTQ healthcare and health plans," one employee said they asked Meta's employment law group if LGBTQ+ employees and their children would continue to have access to gender-affirming care after Meta's public benefits page removed mention of it.

The person said they "heard back that there were no plans to update the plan, but that they would comply with applicable laws."

Another person said a drag performance group, which did an act for one of the company's pride employee resource groups, was investigated by the company and later banned because it claimed the group violated the CEE guidelines. This person said the performance was livestreamed across the ERG and was met with positive reviews.

"This feels like a disproportional punishment for this performer and impacts their livelihood," the person wrote. "I'm currently escalating this case now, but I thought it would be helpful to share that CEE also applies to guests of Meta (apparently even retroactively too)."

In a comment under the post, the original poster claimed that during his in-person conversation with the internal community relations team, "they said that 'those kinds of people are high risk for violating content' (referring to drag performers)." The poster added: "I left the conversation extremely upset."

This person shared a message from the internal community relations team that said the drag group's performance in 2022 violated the CEE and other company policies, "including multiple remarks degrading about various protected categories, and multiple instances of sexual content shared."

Meta employees are increasingly vocal about the company's content moderation on its internal forums, with some directly challenging what they view as censorship of workplace discussions.

"This is a free speech issue," one employee wrote after one of their posts was removed by Meta's internal moderators. It linked to a news article about Donald Trump saying that Meta's CEO was "probably" changing the company's direction in response to Trump's previous threats to jail him.

The employee questioned how Meta, a company meant to be "hardened against threats," could restrict internal discourse about its own leadership.

A six-year employee in Meta's civic integrity team described deteriorating trust between leadership and staff.

"When you tell people they should resign if they don't agree with your decisions, this belies a lack of trust in your people," they wrote.

The CEE guidelines say "consequences for violating this policy vary depending on the severity of the violation and other context such as a person's prior conduct." They list disciplinary action, including termination of employment, as one example.

One employee in Reality Labs, Meta's virtual reality division, said it was ironic to have "debate openly" as a core principle as posts were removed.

"Attempts to even have the most polite discussion that acknowledges how people are responding to policy changes" were deleted, they wrote. They also expressed concern about whether there would be retaliation in Meta's coming layoffs for discussing workplace conditions.

More employees wrote that there was a climate of fear around posting, with content sometimes being removed within minutes without explanation.

One worker said colleagues deleted comments and self-censored "because they were afraid they might be targeted by CEE and management for even reacting positively to a post."

"I have very mixed feelings about Meta at this point," the civic integrity employee wrote, a sentiment that was shared across multiple posts.

"The greatest value of this company is not its products or its technology but its people. They make all of it possible," this employee said. "The leadership of this company maybe understood that at some point, but they seem to have forgotten it."

Are you a Meta employee? Got insight to share? Contact the reporter Jyoti Mann via email at [email protected] or via Signal at jyotimann.11. Reach out from a nonwork device.

If you're a current or former Meta employee, contact Pranav from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at [email protected].

Got a tip? You can reach Hugh using the secure messaging app Signal (+1 628-228-1836) or secure email ([email protected]).

• A former director at Meta filed a lawsuit against the company on Monday.
• The plaintiff, Kelly Stonelake, alleges sex discrimination and harassment.
• Stonelake also alleges Meta has a "toxic pattern of silencing women who identify problems."

A former Meta employee filed a lawsuit Monday alleging the tech giant has a "toxic pattern of silencing women who identify problems."

Kelly Stonelake, a former director of product marketing for Meta's Reality Labs org, filed the lawsuit Monday in Washington state. The suit alleges sex discrimination and says Stonelake faced retaliation for "opposing Meta's illegal activity and violations of public policy."

Meta declined to comment on the suit.

Stonelake joined the company in 2009, back when Meta was still called Facebook. The lawsuit says she was laid off in January 2024 following a medical leave. In the complaint, Stonelake says she faced sexual harassment at the company and alleges she was sexually assaulted by a former boss at Facebook.

The lawsuit accuses Meta of wider problems, as well. The suit says that within the Horizon World org, female employees "reported feeling their voices were considered less valuable and that differential treatment was openly permitted." Stonelake's complaint says female staffers raised specific safety concerns in 2022 that were dismissed by Meta's "all-male Horizon product leadership team."

Specifically, the suit says that a female colleague of Stonelake's had advocated for a "quality pause" before expanding Horizon World to teens. She had expressed concerns that the product did not have "adequate" parental and safety controls and did not meet product quality, the suit says. Horizon World is a virtual-reality video game played on Meta's Quest headsets.

Stonelake escalated the concerns to Horizon's leadership, and was later excluded from weekly leadership meetings, the suit says.

"I was the only voice in a room that was otherwise all men advocating for a change," Stonelake told Business Insider in an interview.

She told BI she filed the suit to hold Meta "accountable to responsible, durable business."

"Discrimination in tech isn't just an ethical issue — it's anti-innovation, it's irresponsible, and it causes harm on a scale that only technology companies can achieve," Stonelake told BI.

She is seeking lost wages, as well as damages for emotional distress and attorney fees.

"This lawsuit has been a long time coming," Stonelake told BI. "As I've gotten further and further away from Meta, it's become clearer and clearer that in order to get accountability, I need to file a lawsuit."

The lawsuit comes at a charged moment for Meta, which recently announced sweeping changes to its content moderation and workplace policies.

In January, the company updated its hateful conduct guidelines to permit certain previously prohibited content. Meta also rolled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and eliminated its network of third-party fact-checkers.

Shortly after rolling out these changes, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan podcast, where he advocated for more "masculine energy" in corporate culture.

"I do think that there's just something … having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive," Zuckerberg said on the podcast.

Zuckerberg acknowledged on the podcast that women face systemic barriers in tech companies. He also said corporations had overcorrected in trying to address those challenges. The tech industry swung too far toward viewing masculinity as "toxic," he said.

These policy shifts come amid broader political pressures and changes.

The New York Times reported that Zuckerberg had met with Trump advisor Stephen Miller at Mar-a-Lago late last year, and that Miller had warned that Trump would target DEI culture at companies like Meta. The report said that Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg, Meta's former chief operating officer, for the company's inclusivity initiatives.

Zuckerberg denied the New York Times report on Threads, praising Sandberg as "a legend in the industry." Sandberg responded by thanking him for his friendship. Several prominent female executives at Meta including Naomi Gleit, its head of product, and Iska Saric, Zuckerberg's head of communications, also defended Zuckerberg on the platform. Gleit called him a "champion of women."

"I used to think the gap between Meta's public statements and the internal experience of working there was a bug or a misunderstanding to resolve," Stonelake told BI. "Now I believe it to be a feature, a core strategy of how Meta is able to keep really good people focused on really harmful work."

• DeepSeek's powerful, cheap AI models have taken the tech world by storm.
• Altman said OpenAI will embrace one of DeepSeek's popular approaches.
• The CEO said OpenAI has "been on the wrong side of history" when it comes to model weights.

When rivals take a different approach and succeed, it sometimes pays to change course.

This is what Sam Altman said OpenAI will do, according to a Reddit AMA session on Friday.

The discussion touched on several AI topics, but in particular Altman was asked about DeepSeek, which has taken the tech world by storm after rolling out top-performing AI models that are relatively cheap to use.

One Reddit user asked if OpenAI could show "all of the thinking tokens." This refers to the chain of thought that new "reasoning" AI models use to break tasks into smaller steps — similar to how humans think through complex challenges.

OpenAI's o1 and o3 models use this reasoning approach, however they don't show any of the intermediate thinking steps to users, and instead just show the final answer.

DeepSeek's reasoning models, such as its R1 offering, show every step to users. When Business Insider demoed DeepSeek with the Chinese lab's DeepThink setting, it shared about 16 pages of mathematical steps before providing the correct answer to a tough question.

On Friday, Altman said OpenAI would follow DeepSeek's approach. "Yeah we are gonna show a much more helpful and detailed version of this, soon. Credit to R1 for updating us," he wrote.

Open-source and open weights

Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has said the biggest takeaway from DeepSeek's success is the value of open-source AI models versus proprietary ones.

Meta's Llama models are mostly open-source, letting anyone access important details such as weights and parameters for free. Sharing the inner-workings of models like this allows other developers and many companies to customize these models for their own use.

Despite its name, OpenAI has taken a more closed approach to AI development so far. Most of its models are proprietary and the startup charges for access.

During the Reddit AMA on Friday, Altman was asked if OpenAI would consider releasing some of its model weights, and publishing some research.

"Yes, we are discussing. I personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open source strategy; not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it's also not our current highest priority," Altman replied.

Do you work at Meta? Contact this reporter from a nonwork email and device at [email protected] or [email protected]. You can also reach him securely via Signal at +1408-905-9124. Your identity will be protected.

• Mark Zuckerberg addressed several recent policy changes in a company all-hands meeting on Thursday.
• Zuckerberg admitted that the company was slow to respond to TikTok's rapid growth.
• The CEO also told employees to "buckle up" for an "intense" year ahead.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the company was slow to respond to TikTok's meteoric rise because executives didn't view it as truly social, offering a rare window into how the tech giant missed one of social media's biggest shifts in recent years.

"When I look back on TikTok, I think part of the reason why we were slow to it is because we didn't think TikTok was social," Zuckerberg said in a recording of an all-hands meeting obtained by Business Insider. "We looked at it and we thought, 'Oh, this is like, a little more like YouTube.'"

The admission came in response to an employee's question about whether Meta's current focus on artificial intelligence might cause the company to miss the next major social media trend, as it did with TikTok.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Zuckerberg explained at the meeting that Meta's traditional view of social interaction — centered around friends posting content and commenting — caused the company to initially misread TikTok's appeal. The company failed to recognize how users were sharing TikTok content through private messages, which has become a crucial form of social interaction across Meta's platforms.

"Because we were too dismissive up front, it wasn't just about people commenting in the feed. It was about people seeing stuff in their feed and then sharing it into message threads," Zuckerberg said, referring to the company's instant messaging platforms WhatsApp, Messenger, and direct messaging in Instagram, where "the majority of social interaction is happening."

Zuckerberg also addressed TikTok's uncertain future in the US. President Trump signed an executive order on January 20 that gave TikTok 75 more days to operate in the US, as owner ByteDance will either have to divest from TikTok or it will be banned in the US.

"We don't have control of what's going to happen to Tiktok," Zuckerberg said. "We have a lot of competitors, but they're an important one. So, who's gonna own Tiktok at the end of the year? What's gonna happen? I mean, that's a pretty big deal, something that's a card that we get to turn over."

Looking ahead, Zuckerberg emphasized that the company needs to avoid taking "too narrow of a view" of social interaction as it navigates the emergence of AI. He outlined a vision for AI-powered features in Facebook and Instagram feeds, including interactive AI agents that users can converse with and more immersive content experiences.

"I think the next trend here is there're going to be things that either AI can produce, that we can just put in there... I think this year we're gonna have stuff where it's like, okay, you have an AI agent, and you can just start talking to it," Zuckerberg said.

The Meta chief also pushed back against concerns that the company's AI investments might detract from its core social media business, noting that as a large company, Meta needs to be able to "walk and chew gum at the same time."

"If we can't build Facebook and [the] next platform at the same time, then, like, eventually game over," he said.

Do you work at Meta? Contact this reporter from a nonwork email and device at [email protected] or [email protected]. You can also reach him securely via Signal at +1408-905-9124. Your identity will be protected.

• Mark Zuckerberg says it's too soon to gauge DeepSeek's impact on Meta's AI spending.
• DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, says it can build powerful models at a fraction of US costs.
• Zuckerberg calls for an open-source AI standard that is "American."

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, says it's too soon to tell what kind of impact DeepSeek will have on the company's AI spending.

During Meta's earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg was asked by an analyst how DeepSeek — the Chinese AI startup that sent Silicon Valley into a tailspin by building powerful models at a reported fraction of the cost — will impact Meta's own investments in AI.

"They have advances that we will hope to implement in our systems, and that's part of the nature of how this works, whether it's a Chinese competitor or not," Zuckerberg said, adding DeepSeek had done "a number of novel things" that Meta is "still digesting."

But he said that probably won't change how Meta is investing in AI, at least for now.

"It's probably too early to really have a strong opinion on what this means for the trajectory around infrastructure and capex and things like that," Zuckerberg said.

Zuck says major AI infrastructure will still be needed

Meta and other US tech companies have recently faced questions on when their heavy investments on AI would start paying off. That scrutiny hit new levels this month when DeepSeek said it trained its AI models for a fraction of the cost that its US rivals spent, causing some tech stocks to tumble.

Last week, Zuckerberg said Meta planned to spend between $60 billion to $65 billion in capital investments in 2025.

During the earnings call on Wednesday, he defended those investments, saying that while the use of Meta's AI computing infrastructure could change, the need for it will not disappear.

"If anything, some of the recent news has only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on," he said, adding: "At this point, I would bet that the ability to build out that kind of infrastructure is going to be a major advantage for both the quality of the service and being able to serve the scale that we want to."

Open source, but American

On the earnings call, Zuckerberg also reaffirmed his commitment to open-source AI with a notable caveat: It should follow American standards.

"There's going to be an open-source standard globally, and I think for our own national advantage, it's important that it's an American standard," Zuckerberg said. "We take that seriously, and we want to build the AI system that people around the world are using."

Earlier in the call, he highlighted a shift in the relationship between Big Tech and Washington, pointing to a more supportive US administration that backs American companies in the global AI race.

"We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad," he said. "I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock."

Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, previously said that the lesson to take away from DeepSeek's success wasn't that China's AI is "surpassing the US," but rather that "open source models are surpassing proprietary ones."

• Mark Zuckerberg tipped his hat to X's Community Notes system during a Meta earnings call on Wednesday.
• He said it was more effective than Meta's prior system of using third-party fact-checkers.
• Zuckerberg and Musk have sparred over the years but seem to agree on this approach.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg praised Elon Musk's X and its Community Notes system during an earnings call on Wednesday and defended Meta's decision to replace third-party fact-checkers with a similar crowdsourced approach.

When asked by an analyst how Meta's recent decision to kill traditional fact-checking could impact content quality, user growth, and advertising, Zuckerberg said X's model, which lets users add context to posts, was "more effective" than Meta's prior system.

"I'm not afraid to admit when someone does something that's better than us. It's our job to implement the best system," he said, adding that Meta's platforms were "going to get better because of it."

Zuckerberg and Musk have sparred over the years, even threatening in 2023 to go at it in a cage fight. So it's notable when the tech billionaires agree on something.

Indeed, this is the second time in the past few weeks that Zuckerberg has publicly credited X's approach to content moderation. In a January 7 video announcing Meta's policy changes, Zuckerberg said the company was "going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes, similar to X."

Musk approved, writing in an X post, "This is cool."

Meta's chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, reiterated Zuckerberg's point in a blog post on Meta's website.

"We've seen this approach work on X — where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see," Kaplan wrote about Community Notes, adding that it was an approach that was "less prone to bias."

Community notes on Meta's platform, Kaplan said, would require people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives to agree with each other to prevent biased ratings.

"Just like they do on X," he wrote.

Do you work at Meta? Contact this reporter from a nonwork email and device at [email protected] or [email protected]. You can also reach him securely via Signal at +1408-905-9124. Your identity will be protected.

• Trump's administration is warning government workers about a "fork in the road" in a memo offering buyouts.
• It's the same subject line Musk used in an email telling Twitter staff they had to be "extremely hardcore" or quit.
• But can Musk's playbook for Twitter, now X, work for the US government?

This is all feeling a lot like Twitter circa 2022.

President Donald Trump's administration has launched a sweeping overhaul of the federal workforce, starting with a blunt offer this week: Take a buyout and leave, or commit to a new era of in-office mandates and performance that "exceeds expectations."

The move, detailed in an email to federal workers, follows a return-to-office order issued during Trump's first week in office — a directive requiring most federal employees report to physical offices five days a week.

The parallels to Elon Musk's tumultuous takeover of Twitter, now X, are impossible to ignore. In 2022, the tech billionaire sent a similar email to Twitter employees asking them to commit to an "extremely hardcore" schedule or leave. The subject line was "A fork in the road" — the same metaphor referenced by the Trump administration on Tuesday.

These are bets that aggressive workforce cuts, relentless productivity demands, and a culture of loyalty and long hours can reshape institutions. The question is whether Musk's playbook, which left Twitter financially shaky and culturally fractured, can work for the US government.

The White House didn't respond to a request for comment on Tuesday evening. 

Similar blueprints

The US Office of Personnel Management, which is sending out the email to federal workers, vowed to reward top performers and swiftly address underperformers. That mirrors Musk's midnight missive to Twitter staff, which demanded "exceptional performance" as the "only passing grade" and presaged job cuts that eliminated about 80% of the company's workforce.  

OPM also promised a leaner workforce, saying that while defense and security agencies might grow, most federal departments would face downsizing through layoffs, furloughs, and reclassifying roles as "at-will" employment, eroding civil-service protections that have shielded workers for decades. Federal employees must also meet heightened standards of reliability, loyalty, and trustworthiness, the OPM said.

The blueprint echoes Musk's rapid-fire restructuring of Twitter. Soon after acquiring the platform, Musk told employees they had 40 hours to commit to an "extremely hardcore" work environment or accept severance. More than 6,000 Twitter staff eventually left or were laid off, including engineers and content moderators. Musk also issued RTO mandates.

Risks and rising debt

The risks of Musk's approach are well documented. Twitter's user growth stalled post-takeover, and its brand reputation tanked as advertisers fled after controversial policy shifts.

For Trump, the gamble is potentially riskier. Twitter had about 7,800 employees pre-Musk; the federal government employs roughly 2.3 million. Mass layoffs or attrition could destabilize everything from Social Security processing to disaster response.

Yet the administration is charging ahead, framing the overhaul as an effort to reign in government spending and control the national debt.

When Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he said he'd overpaid after being forced to close the $44 billion transaction by a judge. It was a highly leveraged deal that left the company with a lot of debt and large interest payments. That partly drove Musk's drastic job cuts as he rushed to save money and prevent Twitter from defaulting.

By 2023, he'd cut more than 6,000 employees. He described the layoffs as "painful" and "one of the hardest things" he'd had to do as Twitter's boss.

The US government has also taken on a lot of debt in recent years. While no one expects a US default anytime soon, the national debt soared from about $3.4 trillion in 1980 to more than $35 trillion last year. Roughly $10 trillion in debt piled up from 2017 to 2024, according to Treasury Department data.

Rising rates have increased the cost of paying interest on this massive debt load. In 2023, these annual payments topped $1 trillion, stoking concern among some economists about government spending.

This is partly what's driving the Trump administration to try to make the US government more efficient. Trump has also pledged to pursue tax cuts, putting even more pressure on his administration to find other ways of controlling the ballooning national debt.

Trump's efficiency drive has already caused turmoil. Some government workers said his federal grant freeze had thrown agencies into disarray, creating confusion.

When Musk eliminated thousands of Twitter jobs, some employees at the company were concerned that the social-media platform might stop working because the cuts were so deep and fast. There were some outages, but the company's technical underpinnings have been running relatively smoothly over the past year or so.

• DeepSeek, a Chinese open-source AI firm, is taking over the discussion in tech circles.
• Tech stocks, especially Nvidia, plunged Monday.
• Companies leading the AI boom could be in for a reset as DeepSeek upends the status quo.

DeepSeek, a Chinese company with AI models that compete with OpenAI's at a fraction of the cost, is generating almost as many takes as tokens.

Across Silicon Valley, executives, investors, and employees debated the implications of such efficient models. Some called into question the trillions of dollars being spent on AI infrastructure since DeepSeek says its models were trained for a relative pittance.

"This is insane!!!!" Aravind Srinivas, CEO of startup Perplexity AI, wrote in response to a post on X noting that DeepSeek models are cheaper and better than some of OpenAI's latest offerings.

The takes on DeepSeek's implications are coming fast and hot. Here are eight of the most common.

Take 1: Generative AI adoption will explode

"Jevons paradox strikes again!" Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted on X Monday morning. "As AI gets more efficient and accessible, we will see its use skyrocket, turning it into a commodity we just can't get enough of."

The idea that as tech improves, whether smarter, cheaper, or both, it will only bring in exponentially more demand is based on a 19th-century economic principle. In this case, the barrier to entry for companies looking to dip their toe into AI has been high. Cheaper tools could encourage more experimentation and further the technology faster.

"Similar to Llama, it lowers the barriers to adoption, enabling more businesses to accelerate AI use cases and move them into production." Umesh Padval, managing director at Thomvest Ventures told Business Insider.

That said, even if AI grows faster than ever, that doesn't necessarily mean the trillions of investments that have flooded the space will pay off.

Take 2: DeepSeek broke the prevailing wisdom about the cost of AI

"DeepSeek seems to have broken the assumption that you need a lot of capital to train cutting-edge models," Debarghya Das, an investor at Menlo Ventures told BI.

The price of DeepSeek's open-source model is competitive — 20 to 40 times cheaper to use than comparable models from OpenAI, according to Bernstein analysts.

The exact cost of building DeepSeek models is hotly debated. The research paper from DeepSeek explaining its V3 model lists a training cost of $5.6 million — a harrowingly low number for other providers of foundation models.

However, the same paper says that the "aforementioned costs include only the official training of DeepSeek-V3, excluding the costs associated with prior research and ablation experiments on architectures, algorithms, or data." So the $5 million figure is only part of the equation.

The tech ecosystem is also reacting strongly to the implication that DeepSeek's state-of-the-art model architecture will be cheaper to run.

"This breakthrough slashes computational demands, enabling lower fees — and putting pressure on industry titans like Microsoft and Google to justify their premium pricing," Kenneth Lamont, principal at Morningstar, wrote in a note on Monday.

He went on to remind investors that with early-stage technology, assuming the winners are set is folly.

"Mega-trends rarely unfold as expected, and today's dominant players might not be tomorrow's winners," Lamont wrote.

Dmitry Shevelenko, the chief business officer at Perplexity, a big consumer of compute and existing models, concurred that Big Tech players would need to rethink their numbers.

"It certainly challenges the margin structure that maybe they were selling to investors," Shevelenko told BI. "But in terms of accelerating the development of these technologies, this is a good thing." Perplexity has added DeepSeek's models to its platform.

Take 3: Considering a switch to DeepSeek

On Monday, several platforms that provide AI models for businesses— Groq and Liquid.AI to name two — added DeepSeek's models to their offerings.

On Amazon's internal Slack, one person posted a meme suggesting that developers might drop Anthropic's Claude AI model in favor of DeepSeek's offerings. The post included an image of the Claude model crossed out.

"Friendship ended with Claude. Now DeepSeek is my best friend." the person wrote, according to a screenshot of the post seen by BI, which got more than 60 emoji reactions from colleagues.

Amazon has invested billions of dollars in Anthropic. The cloud giant also provides access to Claude models via its Amazon Web Service platform. And some AWS customers are asking for DeepSeek, BI has exclusively reported.

"We are always listening to customers to bring the latest emerging and popular models to AWS," an Amazon spokesperson said, while noting that customers can access some DeepSeek-related products on AWS right now through tools such as Bedrock.

"We expect to see many more models like this — both large and small, proprietary and open-source — excel at different tasks," the Amazon spokesperson added. "This is why the majority of Amazon Bedrock customers use multiple models to meet their unique needs and why we remain focused on providing our customers with choice — so they can easily experiment and integrate the best models for their specific needs into their applications."

Switching costs for companies creating their own products on top of foundation models are relatively low, which is generating a lot of questions as to whether DeepSeek will overtake other models from Meta, Anthropic, or OpenAI in popularity with enterprises. (It's already number one in Apple's app store.)

DeepSeek, however, is owned by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer and the same security concerns haunting TikTok may eventually apply to DeepSeek.

"While open-source models like DeepSeek present exciting opportunities, enterprises—especially in regulated industries—may hesitate to adopt Chinese-origin models due to concerns about training data transparency, privacy, and security," Padval said.

Security concerns aside, the software companies that sell APIs to businesses have been adding DeepSeek throughout Monday.

Take 4: Infrastructure players could take a hit

Infrastructure-as-a-service companies, such as Oracle, Digital Ocean, and Microsoft could be in a precarious position should more efficient AI models rule in the future.

"The sheer efficiency of DeepSeek's pre and post training framework (if true) raises the question as to whether or not global hyperscalers and governments, that have and intend to continue to invest significant capex dollars into AI infrastructure, may pause to consider the innovative methodologies that have come to light with DeepSeek's research," wrote Stifel analysts.

If the same quantity of work requires less compute, those selling only compute could suffer, Barclays analysts wrote.

"With the increased uncertainty, we could see share price pressure amongst all three," according to the analysts.

Microsoft and Digital Ocean declined to comment. Oracle did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Take 5: Scaling isn't dead, it's just moved

For months, AI luminaries, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have been predicting a big shift in AI from a focus on training to a focus on inference. Training is the process by which models are created while inference is the type of computing that runs AI models and related tools such as ChatGPT.

The shift in computing's total share to inference has been underway for a while, but now, change is coming from two places. First, more AI users means more inference demand. The second is that part of DeepSeek's secret sauce is how improvement takes place in the inference stage. Nvidia took a positive spin, via a spokesperson.

"DeepSeek is an excellent AI advancement and a perfect example of Test Time Scaling. DeepSeek's work illustrates how new models can be created using that technique, leveraging widely-available models and compute that is fully export control compliant," an Nvidia spokesperson told BI.

"Inference requires significant numbers of NVIDIA GPUs and high-performance networking. We now have three scaling laws: pre-training and post-training, which continue, and new test-time scaling."

Take 6: Open-source changes model building

The most under-hyped part of DeepSeek's innovations is how easy it will now be to take any AI model and turn it into a more powerful "reasoning" model, according to Jack Clark, an Anthropic cofounder, and a former OpenAI employee, wrote about DeepSeek in his newsletter Import AI on Monday.

Clark also explained that some AI companies, such as OpenAI, have been hiding all the reasoning steps that their latest AI models take. DeepSeek's models show all these intermediate "chains of thought" for anyone to see and use. This radically changes how AI models are controlled, Clark wrote.

"Some providers like OpenAI had previously chosen to obscure the chains of thought of their models, making this harder," Clark explained. "There's now an open-weight model floating around the internet which you can use to bootstrap any other sufficiently powerful base model into being an AI reasoner. AI capabilities worldwide just took a one-way ratchet forward."

Take 7: Programmers still matter

DeepSeek improved by using novel programming methods, which Samir Kumar, co-founder and general partner at VC firm Touring Capital, saw as a reminder that humans are still coding the most exciting innovations in AI.

He told BI that DeepSeek is "a good reminder of the talent and skillset of hardcore human low-level programmers."

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• Meta begins testing ads on Threads, aiming to monetize its X competitor launched in 2023.
• The ad rollout comes amid TikTok's challenges and advertisers' concerns with X.
• Meta reassures advertisers with brand safety measures and AI tools for ad placement.

Meta announced Friday that it's beginning to test ads on Threads. This marks the company's first attempt to generate revenue from its X/Twitter competitor since launching the platform in 2023.

The initial test will roll out to a small group of users in the US and Japan, where ads will appear as image posts within users' feeds. Advertisers can extend their existing Meta campaigns to Threads by simply checking a box, Meta's blog post said.

"We'll closely monitor this test before scaling it more broadly, with the goal of getting ads on Threads to a place where they are as interesting as organic content," Adam Mosseri, who heads Instagram and Threads, posted on the platform.

Threads is now used by 300 million active users each month, according to Meta, and three out of four Threads users follow at least one business account, the company said.

The timing of the ad rollout appears strategic, as the social media landscape faces upheaval. Meta's push into Threads advertising follows recent turmoil at TikTok, which faces potential restrictions in the US, and continued advertiser wariness around X under Elon Musk's ownership.

Meta executives have spent recent weeks reassuring advertisers about the company's decision to relax content moderation policies and end its third-party fact-checking program.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, Meta's head of global business, Nicola Mendelsohn, told Business Insider that the company's brand safety commitments would remain unchanged despite the shift toward what CEO Mark Zuckerberg called a return to "free expression."

"As with most things Meta does in the marketplace, timing is everything," Ted Harrison, former Head of Production at Twitter/X and founder of Neuemotion, told BI.

"Meta may have investments in a plethora of other areas, but this move at the moment is a clear capitalization for their core business on the signals audiences and advertisers are sending on wanting to find a home off of X."

Meta said that it is implementing brand safety measures to attract advertisers who may be hesitant about platform content. One of the company's brand safety measures includes AI-powered tools that let advertisers control what content their ads appear next to. Meta said it will expand third-party advertising verification tools and language support in the coming months as it gradually scales up the advertising program based on initial test results.

"One of the greatest benefits that Meta has over any stand-alone platform with similar content and ad units is that advertisers can programmatically place their ads across Meta's entire ecosystem based on real-time efficiency," Jack Johnston, senior social innovation director at Tinuiti, a digital marketing firm, told BI. "When Meta first rolled out Reels, that is how most advertisers purchased inventory so they could ease into the placement."

However, Meta executives have tempered revenue expectations in the past.

During the company's third-quarter 2024 earnings call, Susan Li, its chief financial officer, told analysts that while the company was "pleased" with Threads' growth, it didn't "expect Threads to be a meaningful driver of 2025 revenue."

Baruch Labunski, founder and CEO of digital marketing agency Rank Secure, told BI that "making great ads" would be a key differentiator for Threads from X.

"The user base on Threads has grown considerably, partially from those fleeing X after the Musk takeover," Labunski said. "It must focus on making great ads to compete."

Do you work at Meta? Contact this reporter from a nonwork email and device at [email protected] or [email protected]. You can also reach him securely via Signal at +1408-905-9124. Your identity will be protected.

• Meta's engagement is steady after the company cut fact-checking and diversity programs.
• A potential TikTok ban might've overshadowed concerns about the policy changes.
• Meta's in-app revenue increased, with global downloads rising.

In the days after Meta said it was eliminating fact-checking and scaling back diversity programs, thousands of users reportedly voiced their intention to leave the company's platforms.

The data tell a different story.

Engagement on Meta's core platforms is similar now to what it was earlier this month before the company announced it would replace third-party fact-checkers with community notes and roll back its DEI initiatives. New data from multiple analytics firms show a slight decline in engagement following the policy changes was reversed after news of a TikTok ban, which prompted users to return to Mark Zuckerberg's platforms.

"The data — especially the number of daily active users (DAUs) — tells the story that usage started to fall after all the headlines came out about the changes Meta was making," Thomas Grant, vice president of research at market intelligence firm Apptopia, told Business Insider. "But, then the news about the potential TikTok ban changed that trend and people started engaging with the [apps] more again."

Meta declined to comment when reached by BI.

Gen Z users support Meta doing away with fact-checking

According to Apptopia data, Facebook's daily active users, which had been down about 2% year-over-year for most of January, began showing year-over-year growth on January 18, as speculation intensified ahead of a Supreme Court decision on TikTok.

Instagram saw an even stronger rebound, with DAUs rising on January 18 and continuing to grow above previous year's levels on both January 19 and 20.

"It seems like people did start leaving the app as all the headlines about changes in policies hit, but then that whole movement got swamped by the TikTok ban news," Grant said.

Leading up to the initial TikTok ban, Meta's Instagram Reels, its short-form video platform, was named as an alternative to TikTok by some users. "TikTok refugees" also flocked to RedNote, a China-based social media app.

Notably, a CivicScience survey of 1,346 Americans found that 36% of participants support Meta's move to kill fact-checking in favor of Community Notes, compared to 32% who oppose it (the remaining 32% were neutral). Support was particularly strong among Gen Z users ages 18-24, with 53% backing the changes.

Meanwhile, download and revenue data from market intelligence firm App Figures tells yet another story.

Meta's in-app purchase revenue is up

While US downloads for Meta's apps did decline slightly after the policy changes — Facebook downloads were down 8% and Instagram downloads were down 5% — the revenue that Meta earns from in-app purchases on Facebook and Instagram increased during the same period (Threads, Meta's X-clone, does not offer in-app purchases yet).

"After looking at the download and revenue data for Meta's social apps, I was unable to detect any substantial or out-of-the-ordinary decline," Randy Nelson, head of insights at App Figures, told BI. "In fact, in some cases there were increases," he said.

App Figures' comparison of the 13 days before and after Meta's announcement to put an end to fact-checking shows that US in-app purchases on Meta's platforms grew to $1.9 million for Facebook and $3 million for Instagram, representing increases of 5% and 3%, respectively.

The company saw similar gains worldwide, with Facebook's in-app revenue reaching $5.2 million and Instagram's hitting $8.9 million. However, these figures, don't include Meta's primary revenue source: advertising.

Globally, the download numbers are favorable for Meta.

Instagram's worldwide downloads increased by 5% after the changes were announced, while Facebook saw a modest 1% uptick, according to App Figures.

More data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower reinforces these findings. The firm found that user activity across Meta's apps has remained steady since the policy changes.

Only Instagram saw a brief 1% weekly decrease in average DAUs immediately following the announcements, but quickly recovered the following week, according to data shared with BI.

The bottom line? The recent policy changes haven't dented Meta's numbers. For now, the company's platforms, used by more than three billion people around the world, remain as entrenched as ever.

Do you work at Meta? Contact this reporter from a nonwork email and device at [email protected] or [email protected]. You can also reach him securely via Signal at +1408-905-9124. Your identity will be protected.

• Mark Zuckerberg praised Sheryl Sandberg in a Threads post on Friday.
• He also denied a report that said he blamed Sandberg for an inclusivity program at Facebook.
• Meta recently said it was rolling back its DEI initiatives.

Mark Zuckerberg praised former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg on Friday and denied reporting that said he had blamed her for an inclusivity program at the company.

"Sheryl did amazing work at Meta and will forever be a legend in the industry. She built one of the greatest businesses of all time and taught me much of what I know," Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads.

The post was sent in response to another user who shared a Business Insider article from last year with the headline, "Mark Zuckerberg jokes that Sheryl Sandberg raised him 'like a parent.'" The user said it "didn't age well."

Sandberg responded in a Threads post: "Thank you, @zuck. I will always be grateful for the many years we spent building a great business together — and for your friendship that got me through some of the hardest times of my life and continues to this day."

Representatives for Sandberg declined to comment when reached by BI. Neither Meta nor Zuckerberg responded to Business Insider's request for comment.

In a Threads post sent a few hours later, Zuckerberg wrote: "I answered a question about where the phrase 'bring your whole self to work' came from, and now there's a whole bogus narrative saying I blamed Sheryl for a bunch of stuff that I never did and never will."

The quote "bring your whole self to work" has previously been attributed to Sandberg, who has pushed for women's empowerment in the workplace and wrote the book "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead."

Zuckerberg appeared to be referencing a New York Times report published Thursday that described a meeting between the Meta CEO and Stephen Miller, an advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, at Mar-a-Lago late last year.

The Times said Miller told Zuckerberg Trump would target DEI culture, including at companies like Meta. Zuckerberg assured Miller he would not stand in Trump's way, the Times reported, citing three unnamed sources.

The outlet also reported that one source said Zuckerberg blamed Sandberg for an inclusivity initiative at Facebook during the same meeting.

The reporting was met with some backlash online and support for Sandberg, who was sometimes referred to as the "adult in the room" at Facebook while she was there.

Zuckerberg appears to be reshaping Meta ahead of the incoming Trump administration. Meta told employees last week it was rolling back its DEI programs in addition to ending the use of third-party fact-checkers in favor of a community notes system.

During an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast last week, Zuckerberg said "masculine energy" was needed in the workplace.

"Masculine energy, I think, is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think that corporate culture was really trying to get away from it," he said in an interview on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast. "It's like you want feminine energy; you want masculine energy."

January 17, 2025: This story has been updated to include a post from Mark Zuckerberg denying reporting that he blamed  Sheryl Sandberg.

• Meta is adopting a more aggressive approach to workforce management.
• This shift marks a departure from Silicon Valley's traditional talent retention strategy.
• Tech firms now prioritize lean teams over retaining talent to prevent competition gains.

Meta is adopting a more performance-focused approach to workforce management, one that Amazon embraced years ago: systematically pushing out under-performers to maintain lean, high-performing teams.

This week, Meta announced internally that it plans to cut 5% of its lowest-performing employees, a first for the social media giant, as part of a border strategy to "raise the bar" according to a memo from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

This stance mirrors Amazon's longstanding philosophy of maintaining strict annual turnover targets known as unregretted attrition (URA). Amazon managers are expected to regularly shed a set percentage of employees deemed dispensable. Even Andy Jassy, the company's CEO, has had a URA target in the past to replace 6% of his team annually, Business Insider reported.

"The overarching trend is that corporations feel they have more power over their employees," Laszlo Bock, who oversaw the tremendous growth in Google's workforce as the company's head of people operations from 2006 to 2016, told BI. "The current political environment emboldens these CEOs to take drastic actions."

Donald Trump was reelected US President in November and tech companies, which had championed progressive workplace policies and employee-friendly initiatives in 2016, are now taking a markedly different approach, Bock added.

The shift in how Meta manages employees marks a significant departure from Silicon Valley's traditional talent strategy. Leading tech companies notoriously overpaid for talent for years — even those workers who were not fully productive — to keep them away from competitors.

"Their business model thrived on tremendous margins, so they hired freely, knowing that if some employees underperformed, at least they weren't boosting the competition," Bock explained.

That line of thinking seems to have changed.

Weeding out underperformers

At Meta, managers have been instructed to identify under-performers through a tiered rating system, according to a memo from Hillary Champion, Meta's director of people development growth programs seen by BI.

Last week BI reported that Microsoft is also planning to make performance-based job cuts.

"At Microsoft we focus on high performance talent," a spokesperson previously told BI. "We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action."

Google, too, had its own version of performance culling under Bock's leadership that the company kept secret.

Every quarter, the company identified the bottom 5% of employees in any group of at least 200 people (such as a division), combining smaller teams until they hit that threshold, a process that was separate from regular performance reviews, Bock told BI.

He said some of these people were still good performers. "If your worst person is better than my best person, you're still going to have a bottom 5%," he said. Google then coached, transferred, or terminated these workers. Google did not respond to a request for comment from BI and Meta declined to comment on this report.

Today's tech CEOs, however, are taking a more direct approach.

"Everyone at these companies still gets performance ratings and goes through the motions," Bock said, "But, I think the CEOs are seeing an opportunity in the marketplace and the political environment and saying 'We're just going to pull the bandaid off.' They feel employees are entitled."

The message is clear: If you're not building the future, you might just be history.

If you're a current or former Meta employee, contact this reporter from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at [email protected].

• Meta may plan for annual performance-based job cuts to boost employee performance.
• The strategy aims to increase "non-regrettable attrition" and remove the lowest performers.
• Affected employees will still receive bonuses and stock vesting despite the layoffs.

Meta's performance-based job cuts could become an annual occurrence, according to an internal FAQ document viewed by Business Insider.

The document, shared with employees by Hillary Champion, Meta's director of people development growth programs, addresses whether Meta's upcoming performance-related layoffs will happen every year.

"We are committed to a culture of high performance and are trying to raise the bar by increasing our annual non-regrettable attrition and moving faster to move our lowest performers out," Champion's memo says. "We may use future performance cycles to do that."

The development comes amid an already intense review process designed to cut about 5% of Meta's workforce deemed to be its lowest performers. These cuts are set to be finalized by February 10 for US-based employees, with some international notifications occurring later.

The FAQ also reassures employees that location will not influence their ratings or termination risk and confirms that anyone impacted by the performance reviews will still receive their February 15, 2025 vesting, any due dividends, and bonuses if any are eligible.

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• Meta plans to cut 5% of low-performing employees.
• The cuts are part of a strategy to improve performance.
• Meta aims for 10% "non-regrettable attrition," combining last year's and this year's targets.

A memo from one of Meta's human-resources executives explained to managers on Tuesday how the company's performance-based job cuts would work in the coming weeks.

Hillary Champion, Meta's director of people development growth programs, instructed managers to categorize employees into performance tiers based on their contributions over the past year, according to the memo, a copy of which was obtained by Business Insider.

Champion wrote in the memo that Meta aimed to reach 10% "non-regrettable attrition" by the end of this performance cycle, combining last year's 5% with an additional 5% this year. These are employees that the company wouldn't consider a loss if they left.

She signaled that Meta was ramping up pressure on underperformers and trying to more quickly decide who stays and who goes.

"We have really ambitious goals, so we need to manage our workforce in a way that ensures we have the strongest talent working here and can move faster in managing out low performers so that we can bring new people in," Champion said.

Her guidance for managers came shortly after Meta told employees it was preparing to cut about 5% of its lowest-performing staffers as part of an effort to "raise the bar." Meta said it intended to backfill these roles in 2025.

Meta's performance ratings, and who will be cut

BI also obtained a copy of Meta's internal performance guidance on Tuesday. This document describes several categories, one of which is "met most expectations." Other ratings include "met some" and "did not meet."

"Anyone who receives a rating of 'Met Some' or 'Did Not Meet' will be automatically added to the performance termination list," Champion told Meta managers.

"The number of people in the 'Met Most' category to be terminated will vary," she added.

This depends partly on whether Meta's target of 10% non-regrettable attrition is met. Champion shared a theoretical example: If a team had 5% non-regrettable attrition in 2024 and then put 3% of employees in the "met some" rating, an extra 2% of workers from the "met most" group would need to be cut to hit the 10% total.

The coming job cuts are part of a broader strategy to reshape Meta's workforce and become more efficient amid huge investments in AI, virtual reality, and the future of social media.

Last week the company rolled back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and disbanded its third-party fact-checking program.

Here's the memo from Champion:

Manager Update for the Performance@ Process

Following up on Mark's announcement today, I want to share some details about the role you will need to play through this performance cycle, and offer some guidance on how to lead through this.

What's Happening

• We have really ambitious goals, so we need to manage our workforce in a way that ensures we have the strongest talent working here and can move faster in managing out low performers so that we can bring new people in. As a result, we are exiting approximately 5% of our lowest performers.
• Calibrations continue to be our process for differentiating performance, recognizing impact, and making promotion decisions. In addition to the process overview shared in December, we will be using the calibration window to identify the lowest performers for performance termination.
• Company-wide, we expect to reach 10% non-regrettable attrition by the end of this Performance cycle, inclusive of ~5% non-regrettable attrition from 2024. This means we are aiming to exit approximately another 5% of our current employees who have been with the company long enough to receive a performance rating. The exact percentage will vary by org depending on their non-regrettable attrition in 2024.
• Those who are terminated for performance will receive generous severance packages, in line with previous cuts.
• Org leaders will share more on the the specific backfill process for your Org.

How Performance Calibrations will Work

Below is a topline view of what to expect. HRBPs will guide teams through this and provide more details during calibrations.

- This will be a normal calibration process and we will use the time to identify our strongest performers in addition to our lowest. We will discuss all ratings, flags, edge cases and promotions as usual.

• Consistent with our distribution guidance, teams will need to identify 12-15% of employees who are eligible to receive a performance rating as Met Most and Below ("MMB"). This includes any 2024 non-regrettable attrition, which will be visible in the performance tool and shared with team leaders during calibrations.
  • Example: If your org's 2024 NR attrition was 5%, then your team will need to identify 7-10% to receive MMB ratings in order to meet the 12-15% total.
• As you go through calibrations, your HRBP will also help you differentiate performance by utilizing the Met Some rating more than we have in the past.
• Anyone who receives a rating of "Met Some" or "Did Not Meet" will be automatically added to the performance termination list.
• Later in the calibration process, your Director and VP will review those with a "Met Most" rating to determine who will be terminated to meet the required 10% target. The number of people in the "Met Most" category to be terminated will vary, depending on your org's 2024 non-regrettable attrition rate and how many people are rated "Met Some" or "Did Not Meet"
  • Example: If your org had 5% non-regrettable attrition in 2024, and through calibrations put 3% in the "Met Some" rating, Directors and above will need to select an additional 2% from the "Met Most" group in order to reach the 10% total.
• You should use the flag and notes features within the performance tool to make any recommendations about whether someone with a "Met Most" rating should be included in the performance terminations or not.

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• Tech leaders, including an early Facebook investor, launch a $30M campaign for independent social media.
• Free Our Feeds aims to counter billionaire control with the open-source AT Protocol.
• The campaign is led by executives from Mozilla, Social Web Foundation, and other tech nonprofits.

Days after Meta announced controversial changes to its content moderation policies, a group of prominent technology leaders and nonprofit executives launched an ambitious $30 million campaign to build a social media ecosystem free from "billionaire control."

The initiative, called "Free Our Feeds," aims to create independent infrastructure around the AT Protocol, an open-source technology that powers the Bluesky social network, and allows anyone to build their own social media applications, similar to how open web protocols let anyone build websites.

The project comes at a critical moment when traditional social platforms are facing intense scrutiny over their concentrated ownership and control.

"For the first time, we have a clear pathway to securing the future of social media as a tool for connection, creativity, and joy," Nabiha Syed, Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation and one of nine custodians overseeing the project, said in a statement. "But it will take community-driven resources and independent infrastructure to ensure it remains free from the pressures of venture capital and billionaire capture."

The campaign's immediate goal is to raise $4 million as part of a larger $30 million three-year effort. The funds will be used to establish a public interest foundation supporting the AT Protocol and build independent infrastructure including a second "relay" system. The relay is effectively a backup index of all content on the network that ensures developers and users can access posts even if Bluesky restricts access to its data. The capital will also be used to fund developers to create new applications on the protocol.

At the time of publishing, the campaign had raised nearly $18,000 from 273 donors on GoFundMe.

According to Syed, one of the Foundation's key goals is to operate the AT Protocol infrastructure independently from Bluesky.

"The greater the number of stakeholders who build on AT Protocol, the more countervailing power they have with regards to Bluesky or any other large company involved in the network," she told Business Insider. "The Foundation will operate AT Protocol infrastructure independently from Bluesky to ensure that there is always an alternative."

Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor turned tech critic who is backing the initiative, told BI that the project comes at a time when users are increasingly frustrated with existing platforms.

"We're in a world right now where every new startup is either crypto or AI," McNamee said. "Show me something that might actually make the world a better place. If this works, it's going to make the world a much better place."

Over the last few months, Bluesky has seen explosive growth. BI reported last week that the company is in the final stages of raising new funding led by Bain Capital Ventures that would value it at around $700 million. The platform reached nearly 26 million users by the end of 2024, with nearly half joining in the last six weeks of the year following Donald Trump's election victory.

While Bluesky has positioned itself as an alternative to X, Free Our Feeds' backers argue that even Bluesky's venture capital-backed structure could eventually face similar pressures as other commercial platforms.

"Bluesky is built on values we share, by people we admire. However, founders are not companies," the project's FAQ states. "They will come under the same pressure all businesses face to maximize return to their investors."

The campaign's nine custodians include executives from Mozilla, the Social Web Foundation, and other nonprofit technology organizations. Development Gateway, a US nonprofit organization, will hold funds raised through the crowdfunding campaign.

The timing of the announcement comes just as Meta significantly scaled back its fact-checking program and as X continues to struggle with advertiser exodus under Musk's leadership. The initiative's backers argue that these recent developments highlight the risks of concentrated ownership of social platforms.

"We've gone a really long time since people in Silicon Valley actually solved a problem that existed," McNamee noted, arguing that the project represents a rare opportunity to address fundamental issues with how social media platforms are structured and controlled.

The foundation aims to be operational by the end of 2025. While ambitious in scope, the project's backers acknowledge the challenges ahead but argue that recent events at major platforms have created an opening for fundamental change in how social media operates.

"Centralized ownership of platforms — our digital public square — leads to a constantly shifting, opaque digital environment in which people can lose their digital public square and livelihoods from a single billionaire's decision," Syed said.

"We can do better. The internet doesn't need to be like this, and if we work together, it won't be."

• Meta's chief marketing officer Alex Schultz is concerned that "too much censorship" is harmful.
• Schultz's comments come after Meta updated several policies, including content moderation.
• The new guidelines change what is permissible to be said about LGBTQ+ people.

Meta's chief marketing officer warned that greater censorship on its platforms could "harm speech" from the LGBTQ+ community aiming to push back against hate.

Alex Schultz posted his feelings on Meta's decision to change its policy on hateful conduct earlier this week in a post on its internal forum.

"My perspective is we've done well as a community when the debate has happened and I was shocked with how far we've gone with censorship of the debate," Schultz wrote in the post, seen by Business Insider.

He added that his friends and family were shocked to see him receive abuse as a gay man in the past, but that it helped them to realize hatred exists.

"Most of our progress on rights happened during periods without mass censorship like this and pushing it underground, I think, has coincided with reversals," he said.

"Obviously, I don't like people saying things that I consider awful but I worry that the solution of censoring that doesn't work as well as you might hope. So I don't know the answer, this stuff is really complicated, but I am worried that too much censorship is actually harmful and that's may have been where we ended up."

Earlier this week, the company adjusted its moderation guidelines to allow statements on its platforms claiming that LGBTQ+ people are "mentally ill" and removed trans and nonbinary-themed chat options from its Messenger app, features that had previously been showcased as part of the company's support for Pride Month.

Schultz also said that he does not think that censorship and cancel culture have helped the LGBTQ+ movement.

He wrote, "We don't enforce these things perfectly," and cited an example of a mistake of taking down images of two men kissing and removing a slur word toward gay people rather than a deliberate move by a "bigoted person in operations."

Schultz added, "So the more rules we have, the more mistakes we make…Moderation is hard and we'll always get it wrong somewhat. The more rules, the more censorship, the more we'll harm speech from our own community pushing back on hatred."

The company's latest decision to roll back its DEI programs has sparked intense internal debate and public scrutiny. The announcement, delivered via an internal memo by VP of HR Janelle Gale, said that the company would dismantle its dedicated DEI team and eliminate diversity programs in its hiring process.

The company said Tuesday it will replace third-party fact-checkers on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads with a community notes system, mirroring the approach used on Elon Musk's platform, X.

Schulz told BI in an interview earlier this week that the election of Donald Trump and a broader shift in public sentiment around free speech played significant roles in these decisions.

He acknowledged that internal and external pressures had led Meta to adopt more restrictive policies in recent years, but the company is now taking steps to regain control over its approach to content moderation.

Meta's internal forum, Workplace, saw reactions ranging from anger and disappointment to cautious optimism about the company's direction.

One employee lamented the rollback as "another step backward" for Meta, while others raised concerns about the message it sends to marginalized communities that rely on Meta's platforms.

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 may require sanitary products, The New York Times reported on Friday.

Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

You can email Jyoti Mann at [email protected], send her a secure message on Signal @jyotimann.11 or DM her via X @jyoti_mann1

If you're a current or former Meta employee, contact this reporter from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at [email protected].

• Mark Zuckerberg dismisses concerns over users leaving after Meta ends U.S. fact-checking.
• Meta plans to replace third party fact-checking with a crowdsourced Community Notes system like X's.
• Zuckerberg is confident Community Notes will improve user experience and attract new users.

Mark Zuckerberg dismissed concerns about users leaving Meta platforms in response to the company's decision to end its U.S. fact-checking program, saying any exits would be "virtue signaling."

In a reply on Threads to a user's post criticizing Meta's influence and suggesting that people feel trapped on the platform, Zuckerberg struck a defiant tone.

"No – I'm counting on these changes actually making our platforms better," he wrote.

I think Community Notes will be more effective than fact-checkers, reducing the number of people whose accounts get mistakenly banned is good, people want to be able to discuss civic topics and make arguments that are in the mainstream of political discourse, etc. Some people may leave our platforms for virtue signaling, but I think the vast majority and many new users will find that these changes make the products better.

Zuckerberg's response to the Threads user named Mary-Frances Makichen, who has 253 followers and is a "Spiritual Director" and author according to their bio, came just one day after Meta announced it would replace its third-party fact-checking partnerships with a crowdsourced Community Notes system similar to the one used by X.

Mass departures from social media platforms for symbolic reasons are not unprecedented.

On Election Day in the US, more than a quarter million X users deleted their accounts in protest against owner Elon Musk's deepening ties to the Trump administration.

Zuckerberg, however, appears unfazed, betting that Community Notes will enhance Meta's user experience and attract new audiences rather than drive them away.

If you're a current or former Meta employee, contact this reporter from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at [email protected].

• Meta plans to end US fact-checking partnerships in March, with payments to continue through August.
• Meta has cited "changing free speech perceptions" as part of the reason for their decision.
• Meta's global fact-checking support remains, including an IFCN Business Continuity Fund.

Meta's US fact-checking partnerships will officially end in March, and payments to partners will continue through August, Business Insider has learned.

Details of an exchange between Meta and Angie Holan, the director of the International Fact-Checking Network, were revealed during a private IFCN meeting attended by more than 150 members, the audio of which was obtained by Business Insider. These details have not been previously reported.

Meta informed the IFCN it was ending its fact-checking partnerships just 45 minutes before the company published a blog post about the decision, written by Joel Kaplan, Meta's new head of public policy who has long-standing ties to the Republican Party.

The company said its new approach was prompted by "changing perceptions of free speech" and a desire to "allow for more free speech."

Severance and a support fund for fact-checkers

Contracts with all 10 fact-checking organizations in the US will end in March, with payments continuing until August. Organizations that have not signed contracts for 2025 were offered the option to participate in a severance program.

Kaplan's post said that Meta will replace its fact-checking partnerships with X-style community notes — but the Meta executive told Holan that the rollout of community notes is expected to take time.

Meta indicated that the system would be built and implemented throughout 2025. When asked whether the company intends to expand community notes globally, Meta gave a noncommittal response, saying it would first monitor the program's effects in the US and consider the regulatory landscape in other countries.

Participation guidelines for the program remain unclear.

When Holan pressed Meta on how the IFCN should navigate the divide between US changes and the status of global programs, Meta's response was vague, advising the IFCN to "stay present for both constituencies."

Holan expressed disappointment during the conversation, describing Meta's fact-checking program as one that "positively influenced a whole ecosystem of fact-checking" and emphasized that the work was never about censorship.

"This seems like politics," she told the Meta executive, who declined to confirm or deny political motivations, stating only that they were "personally proud" of the program's legacy.

Meta's support for other IFCN initiatives will remain unchanged. This includes the IFCN's new Business Continuity Fund, designed to provide temporary financial assistance to fact-checking organizations affected by natural disasters, civil unrest, military conflicts, or state repression.

The fund aims to help organizations resume their normal operations as quickly as possible and ensure the safety and well-being of their team members. Meta also confirmed that a separate WhatsApp-related grant program would continue.

However, when asked whether Meta would continue sponsoring Global Fact, IFCN's flagship annual conference, the executive had no definitive answer, suggesting that IFCN "stay in conversation" about the issue.

Despite the end of its US fact-checking program, the executive left the door open for continued communication with IFCN, saying Meta was "open to keep talking" about ways to support public information efforts.

IFCN partners blindsided financially

Many IFCN partners were blindsided by the announcement, as they had assumed that their work with Meta would continue.

"Several of the signatories were waiting for their new contracts," Holan said in the meeting. "The new contracts did come over the winter break. Things just seemed on course with the program in the US. We didn't have any alerts or messages that something like yesterday's news was coming."

The abrupt end left partners reeling.

Jesse Stiller, the managing editor of Check Your Fact, a Meta US fact-checking partner for five years, described the fallout.

"We had just signed our contract for 2025, and it looked like we were going to sign another one for 2026 if everything went to plan," Stiller said in the meeting. "We found out about the news literally when we woke up the next morning. The first thing I saw was a news notification — I thought it might be a mistake. Everything was thrown into chaos."

Stiller said that Check Your Fact is almost entirely reliant on Meta's funding. "We don't have any other external funding. Meta is our primary revenue source," he said.

Check Your Fact's team of 10 faces an uncertain future, he said. "The best-case scenario is that we last a few more months with the severance package. But honestly, we're done by March."

During the meeting, several fact-checkers voiced frustration not only with the program's termination but also with Zuckerberg's recent comments about fact-checkers.

Jency Jacob, the managing editor of the India-based fact-checking organization Boom, suggested that US fact-checkers formally call on Zuckerberg to retract his remarks.

"Basically, what he's done is he's literally burnt the house down," Jacob said. "For many years to come, his statements will continue to be used against fact-checkers."

Holan acknowledged the emotional toll but urged attendees to maintain professionalism.

"We do want to maintain a certain level of civility so that we can continue the relationships with Meta in the future when circumstances change or the political environment shifts," she said. "We don't want to say things that aren't necessary and could end dialogue."

The ripple effects of Meta's decision were felt globally.

Justin Arenstein, the cofounder and CEO of Code for Africa, an African network of data journalism labs, said that Meta's Middle East and North Africa team was also blindsided.

"The decision caught many of Meta's MENA team by surprise. They were discussing the expansion of our contract to new countries as recently as two weeks ago," Arenstein wrote in the meeting chat.

If you're a current or former Meta employee, contact this reporter from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at [email protected].