• Americans visiting the UK now need to apply for an Electronic Travel Authorization.
• It's also necessary if you have a layover at an airport in the UK.
• Applying costs about $12 and should only take 10 minutes using the app.

The UK has changed its entry requirements, so most visitors need to apply for permission to travel to the country.

This is also necessary if you have a layover at a UK airport.

It encompasses all parts of the UK — England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland — as well as British Overseas Territories, which include Anguilla, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and Turks and Caicos.

As of January 8, US and Canadian citizens are among 48 nationalities who will need an Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA).

It is similar to systems already used in the US and Canada, as the UK is moving to a digital border system.

You would be exempt if you have a UK visa or legal residency or if you are traveling on an Irish passport.

Otherwise, you must apply for an ETA before you travel to the UK.

How to apply for a UK ETA

It shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes to apply — although there is a fee of £10, or around $12.

The easiest way to apply is through the government's mobile app called "UK ETA." If you can't download the app, you can also apply through the UK government's website.

You first need to take a picture of your passport's photo page.

If you have a biometric passport, shown by the e-passport symbol on the cover, then the app can scan it.

You then scan your face with your phone's camera and take a photo of yourself.

You will also need to answer questions about your address, job, criminal history, and any other nationalities. If you're under 18, you also need to give contact details for someone with parental responsibility for you.

Afterward, you'll get an email confirming your application. Another will arrive when a decision has been made — usually within three working days.

What you can do with an ETA

The ETA is valid for two years, during which time you can travel to the UK as much as you want.

You can stay in the UK for up to six months for tourism, visiting family and friends, business, or short-term study. You can also transit through a UK airport.

With an ETA, you can't do paid or unpaid work in the UK unless you're doing a permitted paid engagement or have a Creative Worker visa concession.

You can travel to the UK while awaiting a decision as long as you've already applied.

Being approved for an ETA doesn't guarantee entry to the UK, as you'll still need to pass border control.

• Jean Kang spent a decade working in various roles and companies throughout Silicon Valley.
• She would've navigated her career differently had she known things like there are no 'dream jobs.'
• Job-hopping, personal branding, and exploration were also crucial to her career development.

When I graduated from college in 2014, I thought I'd finally made it. Before graduation, I landed a role in Silicon Valley and was excited to start.

Looking back now, after nearly a decade of working at companies like Meta, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Figma and hopping roles more times than I can count, I realize my early impressions were overly rosy — and a bit naive.

Silicon Valley taught me a ton and helped me boost my salary to more than I thought possible, but there are a few things I wish someone had sat me down and told me when I was fresh out of college.

These insights might've saved me from a few late-night spirals or could've helped me navigate my career a bit more strategically. They also gave me the courage to leave behind my $300,000-a-year job and build a multi-six-figure business on my terms once I learned them.

Here are five pieces of advice I wish I could've told my younger self.

1. Job hopping isn't quitting

I probably would've laughed if you'd told me in my early 20s that switching companies multiple times within a few years would help me stand out. I assumed staying put and showing loyalty was the "safe" path.

Yet, in Silicon Valley, some of my biggest leaps in salary, responsibility, and growth came after I decided to hop from one role to another. This was especially true during market shake-ups, like mass layoffs.

When teams are rebuilding, they hire for high-impact roles that are often critical to moving the needle. If you're still employed and apply for one, it sends a loud and clear message: "I'm confident, I'm valuable, and I'm here to make a difference."

If I'd known that earlier, I would've pounced on opportunities sooner rather than waiting and hoping things would improve at a company that no longer fit.

2. Build your personal brand before you 'need' it

I used to think personal branding was a bit fluffy, but just under two years ago, I saw a void on LinkedIn for real, honest career stories. I started sharing my insights — what it's like to be a program manager, the differences between project and product roles, and how to combat imposter syndrome — and people cared. Before I knew it, I had tens of thousands and now over 160,000 followers across LinkedIn, Instagram, and my newsletter.

My personal brand served as a jumping board for lucrative opportunities and increased my confidence. Brand sponsors started reaching out. Clients wanted me as a career coach. I realized that your name could carry weight outside your company — and that's crucial when layoffs hit, or you're considering going solo.

Had I started building my brand earlier, I could've leveraged it to negotiate better offers and land roles that excited me and made me feel less chained to any employer's fate.

3. Your early career is about exploring

For the first few years, I beat myself up for not having a linear career path. I tried sales, account management, customer success, and program management. While it felt like I was throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something stuck, something magical happened.

Those pivots gave me a fuller understanding of how companies operate, what kind of work lit me up, and where I could deliver unique value.

Silicon Valley rewards curiosity. When I realized that program management was my zone of genius, my diverse skill set made me a stronger candidate for all sorts of roles.

If someone had told me early on that it's perfectly fine — even advantageous — to experiment, I wouldn't have wasted energy feeling guilty about my "lack of focus." Instead, I'd have embraced my pivots as a strategy to discover my impact.

4. Your manager matters more than you think

Getting starstruck by big brand logos, flashy products, and employee perks is easy. I thought working at dream companies would solve all my problems and set me up for steady career growth.

Over time, I realized that your immediate environment — your manager and your direct team — plays a far bigger role in your day-to-day happiness and long-term development than the company logo on your résumé.

A great manager who champions your ideas, respects your time, and encourages growth can make an imperfect organization feel worth it. Conversely, a manager who sees you as a cog in the machine or doesn't invest in your potential can make a dream company feel like a nightmare. I've now experienced both.

If I'd known earlier how critical the right boss is, I would've factored that into my decision-making more heavily, maybe asked more pointed questions in interviews, or trusted my gut when something felt off.

5. There are no 'dream jobs'

Silicon Valley loves to hype "dream jobs" — the unicorn startups and tech giants everyone would love to join. I'm grateful I got to experience some of those "it" companies firsthand. For a while, it was exhilarating, but over time, I learned that no matter how cool the company or how impressive the perks are, there might come a day when you wake up and think, is this really it?

You may find yourself staying late to meet arbitrary deadlines, supporting products you're not passionate about, or feeling disconnected from the outcomes. That doesn't make you ungrateful; it makes you human.

Recognizing that even "perfect" roles can lose their sparkle gave me relief. This realization was a big reason I eventually left corporate life behind.

I feel blessed and want to pay it forward

I don't regret my time in Silicon Valley. It taught me incredible lessons, gave me the financial runway to start my own business, and connected me with brilliant people, but knowing these five things up front would've saved me from second-guessing myself, feeling guilty about not having a perfectly linear path, and putting all my self-worth into a job title.

Today, as a career coach, creator, and solopreneur who's replaced and surpassed her Big Tech salary, I can say that Silicon Valley is still a place of immense possibility — but go in with open eyes.

Jean Kang is the founder and CEO of Path to PM and a LinkedIn Learning Instructor who is paving the way for future program managers.

The fusillade of major announcements from Meta this month — including the termination of its fact-checking and DEI programs and the ascension of its enigmatic content-moderation czar, Joel Kaplan, to head global policy — prompted a familiar churn of political reaction across the left and right. But virtually everyone agrees on one thing: Meta's changes are designed, at least in part, to please the incoming administration of Donald Trump.

That is why the most consequential announcement involves Joel Kaplan, Zuckerberg's tight-lipped political consigliere. For the coming years, Kaplan will be the face in your living room, justifying Meta's handling of whatever crisis, catastrophe, or hypocrisy the new Trump era is likely to ring in. He will speak at Davos, before committees, and on "Good Morning America," defending Meta publicly — and Mark Zuckerberg personally — from the right, the left, and quite possibly from Trump himself.

Kaplan is not widely known. Yet he arguably has done more to shape the modern internet — and quicken its consolidation with and capture of American politics — than any non-CEO in the world. With his ascension to the chief policy position at Meta, Kaplan etches his name into the pantheon of great political actors on the Washington stage — akin to a combination of Rahm Emanuel and Henry Kissinger, if they'd had every major global tech CEO on speed dial.

You can understand Kaplan's value to Meta by appreciating the two dimensions that account for his rise: Kaplan as the talented political fixer, and as the free-speech intellectual. Two distinct stories capture both dimensions of Kaplan's impact on Meta and on Zuckerberg.

Months before Trump was suspended from Facebook in 2021 following the attack of January 6, Trump's account was very nearly curtailed in an entirely separate ordeal. During the George Floyd protests and riots of 2020, Trump wrote a message on Facebook that ignominiously warned, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." Per Facebook's rules, which prohibit incitement to violence, Trump's post possibly merited a takedown.

For Meta, this was a problem from hell. Not removing Trump's post would inflame liberal America. Removing it would enrage conservatives — not to mention the sitting president, who just days before had threatened to punish Meta for its alleged anti-conservative bias.

Then something miraculous happened: Trump called Zuckerberg. As Zuckerberg would tell it — mirroring a version later to be widely retold — Trump called Zuckerberg to plead his case, while Zuckerberg lectured Trump about using the platform responsibly. Hours later, another miracle followed: Trump wrote a follow-up post to finesse his point, quelling the discord.

The crisis was averted. Equally important, however, was the supposed lesson of this story: Trump — desperate to keep his account intact — needed Meta.

This story has been broadly reported. But stories that involve Kaplan tend to have a carefully hidden trap door.

As it turned out, there was a problem with this account: It was precisely backward. In the early morning of May 29, 2020, White House staffers gathered around on speakerphone and listened in disbelief to the voice on the other end: It was Mark Zuckerberg — calling them, at Kaplan's arrangement — asking for a personal word with Trump. Those familiar with this call would later say Zuckerberg's request was tinged with vulnerability, as he and Kaplan, also on the call, described the inevitable liberal revolt at Meta's headquarters if something weren't done about Trump's post. "I have a staff problem," Zuckerberg explained, according to those with knowledge of the call. (Meta has previously denied Zuckerberg said anything to this effect, maintaining that Zuckerberg was unequivocal in condemning the post.) When Trump rang Zuckerberg's cell later that afternoon, it wasn't contrition he was showing Zuckerberg — it was a favor.

This story, and its turns, illuminates several key things. First, it suggests the lengths Meta will go to convince the public that Trump — just like its 3 billion users — was dependent upon Meta for relevance. It shows the cunning of Kaplan in finding a way to project that image — through a half story that was widely repeated in official Washington — while simultaneously defusing a serious crisis (Kaplan had put out a "four-alarm fire," one of his former staffers previously told me).

Above all, it illustrates the dependency that animates Zuckerberg and Trump's relationship, and hints at what direction it runs in: Meta needs Trump — perhaps a lot more than Trump needs Meta.

For much of his life, Kaplan has played exactly this sort of role: attendant lord and advisor to princes. After finishing at the top of his class at Harvard Law School and serving as an officer in the Marine Corps, Kaplan clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; played a pivotal role in the events leading to Bush v. Gore; and became a senior advisor to George Bush during all eight years. He was among the closest advisors to his longtime friend Brett Kavanaugh, counseling the judge at the darkest hour of his confirmation fiasco.

But it's his role serving Zuckerberg that is the male relationship that defines Kaplan's professional life and achievements. Since joining Meta in 2011, Kaplan has helped navigate Zuckerberg's path and entry into official Washington. Initially, that entailed accompanying a young Zuckerberg to President Barack Obama's Oval Office, or overseeing Zuckerberg's preparation for congressional hearings. But with the explosion of MAGA, Kaplan's role grew dramatically, charting a path that would bring Zuckerberg and a fast-changing Republican Party into something resembling — if not goodwill — then a mutual accord.

Half of this Zuckerberg achieved himself, by slotting Kaplan into a major role overseeing content moderation. But the human side of Washington — never Zuckerberg's strong suit — was Kaplan's métier: arranging Oval Office huddles with Zuckerberg and Trump, or organizing a series of private dinners with mostly conservative (and some liberal) influencers. Kaplan, as Meta staffers and Washington Republicans told me, made sure that MAGA Republicans knew they always had a seat at Zuckerberg's proverbial table. (Meta did not provide new comment for this story.)

This growing authority inside Meta left many idealist staffers convinced of Kaplan's thralldom to conservative ideology. But Kaplan is also beloved and defended by many Democrats at Meta and throughout Washington — a fact that explains, in part, Meta's successful evasion of any significant tech regulation during the Biden presidency.

And yet Kaplan's most remarkable achievement is playing out right now: the extraordinary — once unthinkable — political romance between Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump. A decade ago, the chasm separating these individuals seemed as insurmountably wide as that between the Capulets and the Montagues. Yet the two men have spent years running toward each other, barreling through and against the gauntlet of their respective tribes: Zuckerberg through the leftist principles of the Bay, Trump through Republican Washington.

In this slow-motion marriage plot, Joel Kaplan is their Friar Laurence, bringing his artful guile and influence to bear in the improbable effort to knit their two families together. Kaplan has "helped make sure the ties were never irrevocably broken — even through Trump being deplatformed," observes Katie Harbath, a Republican who served as public policy director under Kaplan for a decade and who now heads the tech consulting firm Anchor Change. "Joel was sort of the captain of that ship."

Beginning with Trump's rise in 2016, Kaplan grew into another significant role: a de facto superintendent of the platform's rules around speech and content moderation. It's in this role — as a legal intellectual offering a distinct philosophy of free expression — that colleagues say Kaplan has shaped the company publicly, and Zuckerberg personally.

It was Kaplan, for example, who appeared on Fox News last week to explain the end of the fact-checking program, characterizing the decision as an effort to "reset the balance in favor of free expression." This echoed Zuckerberg's own video announcement, in which he lamented that the program had become "just too politically biased."

These comments are of a piece with Kaplan's own philosophy on free expression, which colleagues have summed up in the adage by Justice Louis Brandeis: that the remedy for false or misleading speech isn't "enforced silence," but instead "more speech."

It is tempting to view the complex issues at Meta as a simple proxy battle between "pro" and "anti" free expression. The fact-checking program was not without errors, as any complex program will be. And it is a genuine win for free expression that restrictions on user speech — on topics such as immigration, or gender and sexuality — are now lifted. Same for the nixing of DEI programs, which too often function to manufacture consensus on live issues at the internal staff level.

But the truth is there have long been meaningful objections to Kaplan's — and increasingly Zuckerberg's — Brandeisian "more speech" rationale that Meta so often proffers for its decisions.

The first is that, when it comes to political expression, the basis for Meta's decisions often manifests not as high principle, but as political expediency.

The fact-checking program is a case in point. Few programs were so vocally targeted — and fervently manipulated — by conservative critics. For any conservative media publisher dinged for misinformation by Meta's algorithm, Kaplan's cellphone effectively functioned as a personalized, interlocutory appeals process. Such was the case with articles by Breitbart, or the Instagram posts of Charlie Kirk, who successfully appealed to Kaplan to intervene, and to have their flags or strikes removed. Or in the case of Meta's filter against "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior," which Kaplan and other executives quickly froze, around the time they learned that its classifier had begun flagging posts from The Daily Wire and Sinclair.

The second problem is that Kaplan's defenders have fallen under a common misreading of Brandeis. Unlike Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., his fellow Supreme Court justice— who generally prized individual autonomy — Brandeis believed the ultimate purpose of free expression was the preservation of democratic self-government itself. The reason "more speech" offers an effective remedy is that, in Brandeis' view, the freedom of unlimited speech was inextricably married with duty: what he called "the political duty of public discussion." Duty is a word that generally conveys the foregoing of certain liberties, to achieve a higher purpose. The Brandeisian view, in essence, described the First Amendment as a kind of bargain struck with Americans at large: In exchange for a near-bottomless freedom to purvey unlimited speech, Americans accepted an implied duty to yield to the necessary prerogatives of well-ordered public discussion.

Yet under Kaplan's Policy team, content decisions at Meta consistently tacked away from Brandeis' view. Perhaps no controversy illustrates the point better than a project called Common Ground.

Conceived by Meta staff in response to the 2016 election, Common Ground was a proposal to remake Facebook into a forum for healthier public discussion. In a bundle of proposed algorithm changes — detailed in internal memos — the program would replace users' self-segregation with more "exposure to cross-cutting viewpoints," downplay "incivility," recommend that users join more politically diverse groups, and boost news outlets with high bipartisan readership.

Though perhaps idealistic-sounding, Common Ground was not a left-wing chimera. In fact, its premise was drawn in part from the research of the New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt — a famously vocal critic of progressive ideology in college campuses and workplaces — whose findings Meta staffers had studied rigorously. It was precisely the sort of project that would make liberals more likely to encounter, say, a Wall Street Journal op-ed article opposing mask mandates.

Kaplan and his team, however, correctly sensed that such proposals — no matter how "nonpartisan" in fact — would be castigated as partisan in appearance. In internal review sessions, Kaplan's team raised its concerns that the proposal would have a disparate effect on conservative users.

But the true killer lurked in a crucial detail: Exposure to this more ennobled strain of public discussion tended to reduce the engagement that users had with the platform. In a business model in which enragement equals engagement, it turns out, Brandeisian discussion is an unwarranted expense.

Kaplan's defenders backstop these choices with a common refrain: Kaplan's team has ensured Meta's content policies remain "defensible." By "defensible," Meta staffers intend to invoke the importance of public accountability. What they tend to mean, though, is policies that can adequately be explained during a grilling before Congress — an understandable concern for a company that's been hauled before Congress more than 30 times.

That is perfectly plausible reasoning. But one thing it certainly isn't is a vindication of First Amendment values — a bulwark in the Constitution whose singular purpose, after all, is to prevent meddling by Congress, and government generally. Zuckerberg now says he regrets caving to pressure from the Biden administration during the COVID pandemic. But does anyone doubt that, the next time Trump calls Zuckerberg, the CEO won't be all ears? (Just as he was avidly listening when Jared Kushner similarly pressured Zuckerberg in 2020, arm-twisting repeatedly to cooperate with Trump's COVID response.) Kaplan is there to ensure the message, even if not followed upon, gets through loud and clear.

Putting a chief Washington lobbyist largely in charge of speech policy may be politically savvy. But it is the opposite of how a company would take seriously its obligations to free expression — an invitation, essentially, to a Republican Congress, or a Democratic White House, to inject politicians' notions about public discourse into your news feed. "One thing I notice," Harbath notes thoughtfully, "is that after every major election since 2016, Mark has done this big recalibration about how the company handles content, based upon the electoral results."

Critics of Kaplan's supposed right-leaning bias, then, miss the point. It's that Kaplan and Zuckerberg's commitment to Brandesian free expression, as Gandhi might say, would make for an excellent idea. And some of Meta's changes — relaxing the restrictions on immigration and gender — are indeed aligned with liberal principles of free expression. But unavoidably, the platform remains a Death Star of bad reasoning, amplifying the worst of the left and right. Nor would Brandeis recognize Kaplan's enthusiasm for the incoming President Trump and his administration as "big defenders of free expression" — a man who sues local newspapers as retribution for polls, publicly invites violence on journalists, and suggests the US military shoot protesters for exercising their First Amendment rights — perhaps the most anti-First Amendment candidate for president since Woodrow Wilson. Both on the platform and off, Meta's commitment reflects the opposite of Brandeis' well-ordered public discussion: a world of all freedom, and no duty.

One silver lining to Meta's termination of fact-checking, then, is that it has the potential to clarify a new consensus: one that recognizes the futility of the agonizing efforts of the past 10 years attempting to liberalize social media — as fruitless and naive as environmentalists who implore oil and gas companies to cease being oil and gas companies. Scholars such as Yuval Noah Harari and Jonathan Rauch have separately argued that social media at scale is inherently inimical to liberal values — and that its mob-like pathologies, with its viral lies and conspiratorial reasoning, eerily resemble the same tendencies of pre-Enlightenment, medieval Europe.

That sort of tragedy can be laid at the feet only of generations, not individuals. And that is the deep and common bond that Zuckerberg and Trump share. Both are men whose vast seizure of power was made possible by the energy and unique pathology of the mob — allowing one to build a company, the other a political movement — as they leveraged its bizarre vise grip on our attention along with the mob's enduring ability, as Holmes warned, to "set fire to reason." In bringing these men to power, the best and brightest of their generation — Joel Kaplan, Sheryl Sandberg, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk, nearly all the same age — ushered in a new strain of faithlessness, turning social media into a prison, and making our public life a hostage of the internet.

Zuckerberg and Kaplan's announcement is not an embrace of the right, or repudiation of the left. It's another example of what Meta does too often: wrap its business and political decisions into the language of liberal values and free expression. In reality, Meta does have a clear policy around free expression — but it doesn't follow the philosophical quotations of Louis Brandeis, or Oliver Wendell Holmes. Rather, under Zuckerberg and Kaplan, Meta's North Star will always faithfully resemble the old chestnut from Lyndon B. Johnson: "Power is where power goes."

Benjamin Wofford has written for Wired, Politico Magazine, Vox, and Rolling Stone, and is a graduate of Stanford Law School.

• Meta announced big changes to kick off the new year, including ending third-party fact-checking and DEI programs.
• The moves illustrate the latest evolution in Mark Zuckerberg's leadership.
• You might call it Zuckerberg 3.0 — and it comes as Donald Trump takes power.

Mark Zuckerberg has shown himself to be the ultimate Silicon Valley shapeshifter, and in the first couple weeks of 2025, we got our best look yet at the latest version of the Meta CEO.

To kick off the new year, Zuckerberg made some big changes at his company, including ditching third-party fact-checking and slashing DEI initiatives.

He appears to be remaking Meta, which did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, at least partly in the image of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And he doesn't seem too concerned about the backlash he's facing in some quarters, including from the same people who villainized him during the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the 2016 election, or even his own Meta employees — many of whom have reacted negatively to his latest decision to roll back DEI efforts.

His recent moves hint that he's entering a new era, one in which his leadership increasingly reflects Trump's tastes.

Zuckerberg's transformation

For years, Zuckerberg was known as an almost robotic presence in Silicon Valley. Some people criticized him for copying ideas rather than innovating, and others held onto his image as a wunderkind wearing hoodies or too much sunscreen.

By the end of 2023, though, the Meta CEO had undergone a substantial makeover and was garnering praise in business and cultural circles.

Zuck got shredded and was winning jiu-jitsu competitions. He went on popular podcasts, like Joe Rogan's, to discuss his workouts and make fun of himself.

As a business leader, he acted as the adult in the room and led Meta's "year of efficiency," which turned the company's stock around.

In 2024, he continued his transformation: He ditched his jeans and hoodie uniform for designer T-shirts and gold chains. And his adoration for his wife Priscilla Chan — as evidenced through gifts like a statue of her, a custom Porsche minivan, and his very own version of "Get Low" — won him fans.

His newfound swagger grew into a new kind of boldness.

In the fall of last year, he said his biggest regret in his two decades of running Meta was taking responsibility and apologizing for problems that he believed weren't Meta's fault.

Zuck's next era comes as Trump takes power

Cut to 2025. Zuckerberg now appears to embrace some of the "anti-woke" ideas favored by some political billionaires like Musk, Peter Thiel, and, of course, Trump.

While Zuckerberg didn't endorse Trump — or Harris — in the 2024 election, he and other tech CEOs were quick to congratulate Trump on his victory. Zuck met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago weeks after the election and, through Meta, donated $1 million to his inaugural committee.

Now, he's taking what he calls "masculine energy" and putting it into action at Meta.

"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 that aired on Friday. "It's like you want feminine energy, you want masculine energy."

"But I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung toward being this somewhat more neutered thing," he added.

He started the new year by putting Dana White, the UFC CEO and Trump's longtime ally, on Meta's board and replacing the company's head of policy, liberal Nick Clegg, with former GOP lobbyist Joel Kaplan.

Then, he ended third-party fact-checking on Meta platforms, which some conservatives have criticized, in favor of a more hands-off approach. Like X, Meta will now use "community notes" to allow users to police each other.

"The recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech," Zuckerberg said while announcing the changes, implying that the choice was, at least in part, a response to the political landscape.

Meta's CMO, Alex Schultz, also told BI that Trump's election influenced the policy change.

The decision has come under scrutiny, with some saying the lack of content moderation opens the door to hate speech.

Under the policy, Meta users can say that members of the LGBTQ+ community are mentally ill for being gay or transgender, for example.

Dozens of fact-checking organizations have signed a letter calling it "a step backward for those who want to see an internet that prioritizes accurate and trustworthy information."

Still, others, including Musk and Trump, lauded the change.

"Honestly, I think they have come a long way, Meta, Facebook," the president-elect said on Tuesday.

In the recent Rogan interview, Zuckerberg said while some may see the timing of the content changes as "purely a political thing," it's something he has been thinking about for a while.

"I feel like I just have a much greater command now of what I think the policy should be and like, this is how it's going to be going forward," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg's recent decision to cut Meta's DEI initiatives could also placate conservatives, who have criticized such policies.

While Trump has not commented on the DEI decision, he has criticized DEI policies in the past.

On Friday, Meta's vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, said in an internal memo that the company would no longer have a team focused on DEI or consider diversity in hiring or supplier decisions.

"The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing," she said in a memo.

The decision sparked a backlash among some. Internally, nearly 400 employees reacted with a teary-eyed emoji to the announcement; one called it "disappointing," and another said it was a "step backward," BI reported on Friday.

"Wow, we really capitulated on a lot of our supposed values this week," another employee commented, seemingly referring to both the DEI and fact-checking moves.

Others, though, did seem to support the move: 139 employees "liked" the post, and 57 responded with a heart emoji.

• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has had a longstanding feud with Apple.
• He once again took shots at Apple in a recent interview with Joe Rogan.
• The CEO said Apple hasn't innovated in a while and criticized the ecosystem the iPhonemaker built.

Mark Zuckerberg is taking more shots at Apple.

In an interview on the "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast that was published Friday, the Meta CEO shared several issues he has with Apple, continuing his decadelong feud with the Cupertino company.

Zuckerberg said on the podcast that Apple has been slow to innovate since the iPhone. He added that the few ways the company has been able to profit since then is by imposing developers' fees and creating an ecosystem that's difficult for other companies to penetrate.

The Facebook creator credited Apple for making one of the most popular smartphones in the world, but he said Apple hasn't "really invented anything great in a while" since the iPhone.

"It's like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and now they're just kind of sitting on it 20 years later," he told Rogan.

To make up for declining sales in iPhones, Zuckerberg said Apple has been "squeezing people" by imposing what he called a "30% tax" on developers and creating an enclosed ecosystem around Apple's popular products.

"They build stuff like Airpods, which are cool, but they've just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way," he said.

Zuckerberg said Meta experienced this when it was developing the Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

The CEO said Apple declined to let Meta use the same "protocol" Apple uses for Airpods in order to allow the Meta glasses to connect seamlessly to iPhones. Zuckerberg said he believed Apple was using privacy and security concerns as an excuse to keep a wall around the Apple ecosystem.

Meta's chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth echoed a similar sentiment in an October interview with "Stratechery."

"The thing I worry about with Apple specifically is that they have their phones and devices so locked down that they can self-preference a ton," he said, pointing to Airpods as one example.

Spokespeople for Meta and Apple did not respond to a request for comment sent during the weekend.

Zuckerberg has been undergoing his own brand transformation as he preps for a second Trump administration, walking back on content moderation and rolling back DEI initiatives at his company. But his feud with Apple goes back to at least 2014.

Previously, Zuckerberg has criticized Apple's prices, its app store and privacy policies, and, more recently, the company's Vision Pro VR headsets.

Still, Zuckerberg said on the podcast that he remains optimistic.

"I mean, the good news about the tech industry is that it's just super dynamic and things are constantly getting invented," he said. "And I think companies — if you just don't do a good job for like 10 years, eventually you're just going to get beat by someone."

• Mark Zuckerberg explained why Meta is replacing fact-checkers on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
• He said the change aims to address ideological censorship concerns and enhance user voice.
• Critics argue the move is a setback for accuracy.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained his rationale for changing the company's content moderation policies during Friday's episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Earlier, on Tuesday, Zuckerberg posted a video message to Meta's blog announcing that he would replace fact-checkers with community notes, a system similar to what Elon Musk uses on X.

The announcement was criticized by dozens of third-party fact-checking groups, which signed an open letter to Zuckerberg denouncing the changes as a "step backward" for accuracy.

Zuckerberg told Rogan his reason for the changes was "censorship."

"You only start one of these companies if you believe in giving people a voice," he said. "It goes back to our original mission, it's just give people the power to share and make people more open and connected."

Zuckerberg said that over the past 10 years, there's been a greater push for "idealogical-based censorship" on the platform, fueled especially by the 2016 election, Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic. "We just faced this massive, massive institutional pressure to start censoring content on ideological grounds," he said.

Zuckerberg initially gave into the pressure, believing it stemmed from genuine concerns about misinformation. After the 2016 election, he implemented a system of third-party fact-checkers tasked with correcting statements like "the earth is flat." However, the system quickly veered into gray areas, leading to accusations that the company's moderators were biased.

Pressure on Meta's content moderation policies continued, reaching a fever pitch during the COVID-19 pandemic when the Biden administration rolled out its vaccine program. "While they're trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it," Zuckerberg said. "They pushed us super hard to take down things that were, honestly, were true."

That means he has been considering changing Meta's content moderation policies for a while now.

"I think that this is going to be pretty durable because, at this point, we've just been pressure tested on this stuff for the last 8 to 10 years with like these huge institutions just pressuring us," he said. "I feel like this is kind of the right place to be going forward."

• Mark Zuckerberg said Meta will start automating the work of midlevel software engineers this year.
• Meta may eventually outsource all coding on its apps to AI.
• Meta also plans to replace fact-checkers with community notes and reduce DEI initiatives.

This year coding might go from one of the most sought-after skills on the job market to one that can be fully automated.

Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta and some of the biggest companies in the tech industry are already working toward this on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience on Friday.

"Probably in 2025, we at Meta, as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of midlevel engineer that you have at your company that can write code."

It may initially be an expensive endeavor, but Zuckerberg said Meta will reach the point where all of the code in its apps and the AI it generates will also be done by AI. According to a salary tracking site, midlevel software engineers at the company now earn close to mid-six figures in total compensation.

Zuckerberg's interview with Rogan came after a big week of changes for the company.

On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced that Meta plans to replace third-party fact-checkers with community notes, similar to Elon Musk's X, and bring back more political content. The announcement has elicited alarm from dozens of fact-checking groups, who signed an open letter to Zuckerberg saying the changes would be "a step backward" for the company.

Meta is also planning to roll back several of its DEI initiatives. In a memo sent to staff on Meta's internal communications platform, Workplace, its vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, wrote, "We will no longer have a team focused on DEI."

• Donald Trump and Dana White have enjoyed a decadeslong friendship predating presidential politics.
• In each of Trump's three presidential campaigns, White lined up behind the president-elect.
• During the 2024 race, the mixed martial arts leader also appeared on Trump's first TikTok video.

Donald Trump might be the only person who can attend an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight and outshine the headliners — even UFC CEO Dana White doesn't draw the same type of reaction.

In November, Trump set the crowd off by walking into UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden to join his entourage, which included Elon Musk, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Trump's cabinet nominees.

White stands at the center of it all. In just under three decades, White has turned his sport, once on the fringe of pop culture, into a spectacle that even a president-elect couldn't resist.

Trump and White's decades-long friendship has been mutually beneficial. White has repeatedly said he will never forget how Trump offered a grand stage to his sport when few others would. Trump successfully deployed White's cohort of podcasters and influencers, led by Joe Rogan, in his 2024 election win.

"Nobody deserves this more than him, and nobody deserves this more than his family does," White told the energetic crowd at Mar-a-Lago as it was apparent that Trump had been elected to a second term. "This is what happens when the machine comes after you."

Here's a look at the decadeslong relationship between Trump and White over the years:

Donald Trump gave a big early boost to UFC

In 1990, Trump opened Trump Taj Mahal, a billion-dollar prized jewel in Atlantic City, that businessman billed as the 8th Wonder of the World. At its peak, it was the biggest casino in town.

Trump needed big acts to fill the casino's arena, which Elton John had christened. In 2001, Trump took a chance on the UFC, which was still trying to escape its brutalist stigma. The sport that then-Sen. John McCain, famously called "human cockfighting" in the 1990s, couldn't even put on an event in Las Vegas.

Trump's UFC event came at a pivotal moment

Shut out of Nevada, UFC staged its fights in a series of smaller venues around the country and the world. White considered the invitation to the Taj Mahal a sign of legitimacy.

"Nobody took us seriously," White has repeatedly said. "Except Donald Trump."

Trump's backing came during a crucial time in the company's history. In January 2001, a month before the Trump-hosted fight, casino moguls Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta purchased UFC. They picked White, Lorenzo's friend and a manager for two of mixed martial arts' biggest fighters, as the president.

Under White's leadership, UFC's popularity skyrocketed

By September 2001, UFC was in Vegas. Four years later, White led UFC onto the airwaves on SpikeTV, cashing in the popularity of reality TV competitions with "The Ultimate Fighter."

It helped that in 2004, Trump welcomed Tito Ortiz, one of the sport's biggest stars, onto the first season of NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice," the glitzier spin-off to Trump's smash reality TV hit.

The Ultimate Fighter was a big success, increasing the company's popularity.

White locked in UFC's voice

If White is the face of UFC, Rogan is undoubtedly its voice. His association with the company even predates White's time as president. After the Fertitta brothers purchased UFC in 2001, White offered Rogan a full-time gig as a color commentator. Rogan has said it's in his contract that he'll leave the UFC if White ever exits, too.

Rogan's profile grew alongside the UFC, considering his association with mixed martial arts was part of why he became the host of NBC's "Fear Factor."

The comedian cashed in on his bigger profile in 2009, starting what was then a weekly commentary show. By the time Trump first ran for president in 2016, "The Joe Rogan Experience" was one of the most popular podcasts in the world.

Business didn't get in the way of Trump and White's friendship.

While he's known for real-estate, Trump has sought out many other partnerships and business ventures to varying degrees of success. In 2008, Trump partnered with Affliction, a clothing brand, to launch a competitor in the mixed-martial arts space. Their promotion even landed Russian fighter Fedor Emelianenko, whom White and the UFC had previously sought to sign.

The venture lasted only two fights. According to The New York Times, White sometimes criticized his friend, pointing out his inexperience in operating such a company, "Donald Trump owns casinos."

White and Trump remained close. The UFC head even vowed that he would never fully go after Trump, a nod to the real estate mogul's early support.

White was once far from a conservative firebrand

In 2010, White campaigned with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada as he sought to hang onto his seat amid a difficult year for Democrats. Reid won, and Democrats held onto a slimmer US Senate majority.

According to The Times, White's politics mirrored Trump's in that both businessmen viewed the enterprise through a transactional lens. Trump faced criticism in the 2016 GOP primaries for previously supporting leading Democrats like Hillary Clinton.

White spoke as if he was a stranger at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Few major establishment Republicans spoke at Trump's 2016 convention. Enter White, one of a handful of longtime Trump friends who extolled the virtues of the man who would soon become the Republican Party's presidential nominee.

White even alluded to the fact that his attendance might appear odd.

"My name is Dana White. I am the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I'm sure most you are wondering, 'What are you doing here?'" White told the crowd in Cleveland. "I am not a politician. I am a fight promoter, but I was blown away and honored to be invited here tonight, and I wanted to show up and tell you about my friend, Donald Trump — the Donald Trump that I know."

White returned to the trail again in 2020.

Ahead of Trump's reelection bid, White said Trump's time in the White House only deepened their relationship.

"We've actually become even closer since he's become the President of the United States," White said during a 2020 campaign rally. "When somebody becomes the President of the United States, you don't ever expect to hear from them again. And I understand it. It absolutely makes sense. This guy is so loyal and such a good friend."

The COVID-19 pandemic made White a conservative star

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the live event business. Sports, including the UFC, were no exception. White saw an opening as the four major professional leagues struggled through discussions on how to return.

White tried to get the UFC to return with an event on tribal land in California, but that effort was postponed amid Disney and ESPN's uneasiness. In turning to Gov. Ron DeSantis' Florida, White found a much more receptive audience — even if the first fight didn't allow any fans. UFC 249 in May was the first major sporting event since the pandemic's beginning.

Trump delivered a video message congratulating White on the event.

"Get the sports leagues back, let's play," Trump said in a video recorded outside of the Oval Office. "Do the social distancing, and whatever you have to do, but we need sports. We want our sports back."

Out of power, Trump found refuge at the UFC

After leaving the White House, Donald Trump wasn't welcomed in many places. Following the January 6 Capitol riot, the two biggest professional golf governing bodies rebuked him. The Professional Golf Association even stripped one Trump-owned course of the right to host one of the PGA's major four tournaments.

In July 2021, the Manhattan District Attorney indicted the Trump Organization, setting off an array of legal headaches that didn't abate until after the 2024 election. A week later, Trump entered to mostly cheers in Las Vegas as he prepared to take in UFC 264.

Trump made the UFC central to his 2024 bid

Trump officially launched on TikTok at UFC 302 in June 2024. The fighting promotion's audience was also the perfect place for the former president's campaign, given his advisors' emphasis on attracting young men.

White's broader orbit suddenly intertwined with the former president's comeback campaign. Trump, and later his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, made a point of appearing on podcasts geared toward this demographic. The Nelk Boys, Theo Von, Adin Ross, and "Bussin' with the Boys" all shared close ties to White. Trump appeared on each of their respective shows.

@realdonaldtrump

Launching my TikTok at @UFC 302.

♬ original sound - President Donald J Trump

White spoke at Trump's pre-election rally at Madison Square Garden.

White energized the crowd at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally just days before the election, where he said that Vice President Kamala Harris wouldn't bring "change" to the country.

And he emphatically praised Trump in advance of an election that was seemingly tied in most of the swing states.

"He is the most resilient, hardest-working human being that I've ever met in my entire life," White said during his remarks.

Celebrating his win, Trump turned the mic over to White

Dana White just thanked

Adin Ross, Theo Von, Nelkboys and Joe Rogan for the Trump victory #Election2024 pic.twitter.com/GYye6c9onc

— FADE (@FadeAwayMedia) November 6, 2024

As Trump spoke to an adoring crowd at Mar-a-Lago and to the nation, he invited White to make remarks, and the UFC president wasted no time singing the praises of the president-elect.

"He keeps going forward — he doesn't quit," White bluntly said. "He deserves this. They deserve it as a family."

White also name-checked podcast hosts that had welcomed Trump into the so-called "Manosphere."

A former UFC spokesperson will have a key role in Trump's White House

One of Trump's key White House aides also has ties to UFC. Steven Cheung, who will be the White House communications director, was a spokesperson for UFC before he left to join Trump's 2016 campaign.

Cheung's brash statements, particularly those bashing DeSantis during the 2024 primary season, received considerable attention and drew comparisons to how closely they mirrored Trump's own rhetoric.

Just before Trump took office, Meta tapped White for a new role.

Trump may have helped out White again. In January 2024, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the UFC executive would join the technology company's board. Zuckerberg's move was widely seen as a play to curry favor with Trump and his orbit.

White might be done in the political arena

White wasn't very political before he campaigned for Trump. He has said that his outspokenness may be an exception only reserved for his friend.

"I'm never fucking doing this again," White recently told The New Yorker. "I want nothing to do with this shit. It's gross. It's disgusting. I want nothing to do with politics."

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his decision to scale back Meta’s content moderation policies in a Friday appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Zuckerberg faced widespread criticism for the decision, including from employees inside his own company. “Probably depends on who you ask,” said Zuckerberg when asked how Meta’s updates have been received. The key updates […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

• Former DEI lead Maxine Williams tried to cushion the blow of Meta's plan to rollback DEI programs.
• The company has several employee-resource groups, known as MRGs.
• After more than a decade as Meta's Chief Diversity Officer, Williams is taking on a new role.

Meta Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams told staff in a memo on Friday that the company's decision to back off DEI efforts won't impact employee-resource groups, according to an internal post viewed by Business Insider.

Employee-resource groups, or ERGs, are worker-led communities that create a sense of belonging at a company. Meta has several of these groups. MRGs are Meta employee resource groups, and BRGs are Black employee resource groups.

In a post to an internal forum, Williams tried to cushion the blow of Meta's decision on Friday to rollback its diversity, equity, and inclusion program. Some staff criticized the move, while at least one worker called it "pretty reasonable."

"I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that these changes may be difficult to understand and process since they represent a significant shift in our strategies for achieving the cognitive diversity we value," Williams wrote.

She stressed that the changes won't impact Meta's support for MRGs and BRGs.

"You play a critical role in creating a place for community and connection — among us and with the company," she added.

"I have watched you show support, share resources, and bond through learning, understanding, and appreciating our various backgrounds. Our Global Communities contribute to the richness of our experiences as we learn from each other and leverage our different backgrounds, working together to build products for the world."

Williams has been Meta's chief diversity officer for more than a decade. On Friday, she told staff that she's taking on a new role focused on Accessibility and Engagement.

"But I, and my team, will continue to support you as contribute to our global community at Meta," she wrote. 

Do you work at Meta? Contact BI reporters from a nonwork email and device at [email protected] and [email protected].

• 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 told Joe Rogan he's "optimistic" about how Trump will impact American businesses.
• On the nearly 3-hour podcast episode, Zuck said he thinks Trump will defend American tech abroad.
• The conversation comes days after Meta got rid of third-party fact-checkers.

Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan in a podcast episode on Friday that he thinks President-elect Donald Trump will help American businesses, calling technology companies in particular a "bright spot" in the economy.

"I think it's a strategic advantage for the United States that we have a lot of the strongest companies in the world, and I think it should be part of the US' strategy going forward to defend that," Zuckerberg said during the nearly three-hour episode of 'The Joe Rogan Experience.' "And it's one of the things that I'm optimistic about with President Trump is, I think he just wants America to win."

Zuckerberg told Rogan the government should defend America's tech industry abroad to ensure it remains strong, and that he is "optimistic" Trump will do so.

The episode dropped just days after Meta significantly altered its content moderation policies, replacing third-party fact checkers with a community-notes system similar to that on Elon Musk's X. Trump praised the change earlier this week and said it was "probably" a response to threats he's made against the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg, clad in a black tee and gold necklace emblematic of his new style, told Rogan that the change reflects the nation's "cultural pulse" as it was reflected in the presidential election results. At the beginning of the episode, Zuckerberg bashed how President Joe Biden's administration handled content moderation, especially during the pandemic.

A representative for Biden didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

The episode and Meta's flurry of changes are part of efforts from Zuckerberg to improve his relationship with Trump. Meta has confirmed to BI that it's donating $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund, along with other tech companies like Microsoft and Google.

Meta has reportedly ended diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that influenced staff hiring and training, as well as vendor decisions, effective immediately.

According to an internal memo viewed by Axios and verified by Ars, Meta's vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, told Meta employees that the shift was due to "legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing."

It's another move by Meta that some view as part of the company's larger effort to align with the incoming Trump administration's politics. In December, Donald Trump promised to crack down on DEI initiatives at companies and on college campuses, The Guardian reported.

Read full article

Comments

In the wake of Meta’s decision to remove its third-party fact-checking system and loosen content moderation policies, Google searches on how to delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads have been on the rise. People who are angry with the decision accuse Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of cozying up to the incoming Trump administration at the expense […]

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• On Meta's internal forum, its employees criticized its decision to roll back DEI initiatives.
• It follows changes to Meta's content-moderation policies, which got rid of third-party fact-checkers.
• Meta's VP of HR said the term DEI had "become charged" and "suggests preferential treatment."

Meta employees spoke out on its internal forum against the tech giant's decision Friday to roll back its diversity, equity, and inclusion program.

Staffers criticized the move in comments on the post announcing the changes on the internal platform Workplace. More than 390 employees reacted with a teary-eyed emoji to the post, which was seen by Business Insider and written by the company's vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale.

Gale said Meta would "no longer have a team focused on DEI." Over 200 workers reacted with a shocked emoji, 195 with an angry emoji, while 139 people liked the post, and 57 people used a heart emoji.

"This is unfortunate disheartening upsetting to read," an employee wrote in a comment that had more than 200 likes.

Another person wrote, "Wow, we really capitulated on a lot of our supposed values this week."

A different employee wrote, "What happened to the company I joined all those years ago."

Reactions were mixed, though. One employee wrote, "Treating everyone the same, no more, no less, sounds pretty reasonable to me." The comment had 45 likes and heart reactions.

The decision follows sweeping changes made to Meta's content-moderation policies, which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday. The changes include eliminating third-party fact-checkers in favor of a community-notes model similar to that on Elon Musk's X.

As part of the changes to Meta's policy on hateful conduct, the company said it would allow users to say people in LGBTQ+ communities are mentally ill for being gay or transgender.

"We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird,'" Meta said in the updated guidelines.

One employee wrote in response to the DEI changes that, in addition to the updated hate-speech guidelines, "this is another step backward for Meta."

They added: "I am ashamed to work for a company which so readily drops its apparent morals because of the political landscape in the US."

In the post announcing the decision to drop many of its DEI initiatives, Gale said the term DEI had "become charged," partly because it's "understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others."

"Having goals can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender," she said, adding: "While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it."

One employee told BI the moves "go against what we as a company have tried to do to protect people who use our platforms, and I have found all of this really hard to read."

Meta did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Do you work at Meta? Contact the reporters from a nonwork email and device at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

Axios reports that Meta is eliminating its biggest DEI efforts, effective immediately, including ones that focused on hiring a diverse workforce, training, and sourcing supplies from diverse-owned companies. Its DEI department will also be eliminated.   In a memo leaked to the outlet, Meta said it was making these changes because the “legal and policy landscape […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

• Meta is dropping many of its DEI initiatives, BI confirmed.
• The company sent a memo announcing the changes on Friday.
• Meta's VP of human resources said the legal and policy landscape in the US was changing.

Meta is rolling back its DEI programs, Business Insider has learned.

The company's vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, announced the move on its internal communication platform, Workplace, on Friday, which was seen by BI.

"We will no longer have a team focused on DEI," Gale wrote in the memo.

"The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing," she wrote. "The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI."

She added the term DEI has "become charged" partly because it is "understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others."

Meta confirmed the changes when contacted by Business Insider.

On Monday, Meta said that it is also replacing fact-checkers with community notes on its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Meta is the latest company to back away from DEI in the wake of backlash, legal challenges, and the reelection of Donald Trump as president.

Read the full memo:

Hi all,

I wanted to share some changes we're making to our hiring, development and procurement practices. Before getting into the details, there is some important background to lay out:

The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics. The term "DEI" has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.

At Meta, we have a principle of serving everyone. This can be achieved through cognitively diverse teams, with differences in knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. Such teams are better at innovating, solving complex problems and identifying new opportunities which ultimately helps us deliver on our ambition to build products that serve everyone. On top of that, we've always believed that no-one should be given - or deprived of -opportunities because of protected characteristics, and that has not changed.

Given the shifting legal and policy landscape, we're making the following changes:

• On hiring, we will continue to source candidates from different backgrounds, but we will stop using the Diverse Slate Approach. This practice has always been subject to public debate and is currently being challenged. We believe there are other ways to build an industry-leading workforce and leverage teams made up of world-class people from all types of backgrounds to build products that work for everyone.
• We previously ended representation goals for women and ethnic minorities. Having goals can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender. While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it.
• We are sunsetting our supplier diversity efforts within our broader supplier strategy. This effort focused on sourcing from diverse-owned businesses; going forward, we will focus our efforts on supporting small and medium sized businesses that power much of our economy. Opportunities will continue to be available to all qualified suppliers, including those who were part of the supplier diversity program.
• Instead of equity and inclusion training programs, we will build programs that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background.
• We will no longer have a team focused on DEI. Maxine Williams is taking on a new role at Meta, focused on accessibility and engagement.

What remains the same are the principles we've used to guide our People practices:

1. We serve everyone. We are committed to making our products accessible, beneficial and universally impactful for everyone.
2. We build the best teams with the most talented people. This means sourcing people from a range of candidate pools, but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, gender etc.). We will always evaluate people as individuals.
3. We drive consistency in employment practices to ensure fairness and objectivity for all. We do not provide preferential treatment, extra opportunities or unjustified credit to anyone based on protected characteristics nor will we devalue impact based on these characteristics.
4. We build connection and community. We support our employee communities, people who use our products, and those in the communities where we operate. Our employee community groups (MRGs) continue to be open to all.

Meta has the privilege to serve billions of people every day. It's important to us that our products are accessible to all, and are useful in promoting economic growth and opportunity around the world. We continue to be focused on serving everyone, and building a multi-talented, industry-leading workforce from all walks of life.

Do you work at Meta? Contact the reporters from a non-work email and device at [email protected]; [email protected]; and [email protected].

Meta deleted nonbinary and trans themes for its Messenger app this week, around the same time that the company announced it would change its rules to allow users to declare that LGBTQ+ people are “mentally ill,” 404 Media has learned.

Meta’s Messenger app allows users to change the color scheme and design of their  chat windows with different themes. For example, there is currently a “Squid Game” theme, a “Minecraft” theme, a “Basketball” theme, and a “Love” theme, among many others. 

These themes regularly change, but for the last few years they have featured a “trans” theme and a “nonbinary” theme, which had color schemes that matched the trans pride flag and the non-binary pride flag. Meta did not respond to a request for comment about why the company removed these themes, but the change comes right as Mark Zuckerberg’s company is publicly and loudly shifting rightward to more closely align itself with the views of the incoming Donald Trump administration. 404 Media reported Thursday that many employees are protesting the anti LGBTQ+ changes and that “it’s total chaos internally at Meta right now” because of the changes.

The trans theme was announced for Pride Month in June 2021, and the nonbinary theme was announced in June 2022 in blog posts that highlighted Meta’s apparent support for trans and nonbinary people. Both of these posts are no longer online. Other blogs about updates to Messenger have been moved over from the old website they were originally published on to new URLs on the Meta newsroom, but these two blog posts have not.

“This June and beyond, we want people to #ConnectWithPride because when we show up as the most authentic version of ourselves, we can truly connect with people,” the post announcing the trans theme originally said. “Starting today, in support of the LGBTQ+ community and allies, Messenger is launching new expression features and celebrating the artists and creators who not only developed them, but inspire us each and every day.” 

• The International Fact-Checking Network warned of Meta's move to crowdsourced fact-checking.
• A group of 71 fact checkers said the change is "a step backward" for accuracy.
• The group proposed crowdsourcing in conjunction with professionals, a "new model."

The fact-checking group that has worked with Meta for years wrote Mark Zuckerberg an open letter on Thursday, warning him about the company's move toward crowdsourced moderation in the US.

"Fact-checking is essential to maintaining shared realities and evidence-based discussion, both in the United States and globally," wrote the International Fact-Checking Network, part of the nonprofit media organization Poynter Institute.

As of 11:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, 71 organizations from across the world had signed the letter. Poynter is updating its post as the list of organizations grows.

The group said Meta's decision, announced Tuesday, to replace third-party fact-checkers with crowdsourced moderation on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the US "is a step backward for those who want to see an internet that prioritizes accurate and trustworthy information."

Meta told the IFCN about the end of its partnership less than an hour before publishing the post about the switch, Business Insider reported. The change could have serious financial repercussions for the fact-checking organizations that rely on Meta for revenue.

The organization said Meta has fact-checking partnerships in more than 100 countries.

"If Meta decides to stop the program worldwide, it is almost certain to result in real-world harm in many places," IFCN wrote. Meta has not announced plans to end the fact-checking program globally.

Meta said it plans to build a crowdsourced moderation system this year similar to the community notes used by Elon Musk's X, where people can weigh in on posts ranging from the serious to the mundane. Musk laid off hundreds of X's trust and safety workers after he bought the company in 2022, and X has since been slow to act on some misinformation, BI previously reported.

IFCN wrote that community notes could be used in conjunction with professional fact-checkers, a "new model" for collaboration.

"The need for this is great: If people believe social media platforms are full of scams and hoaxes, they won't want to spend time there or do business on them," IFCN wrote.

Nearly 3.3 billion people used a Meta product every day in September, according to the company's most recent financials — more than 40% of the world's population.

Ad insiders who spoke to BI this week said they didn't expect the changes to hurt the company's business. Meta has more than a fifth of the US digital ad market — in second place behind Google, per data from BI's sister company EMARKETER.

A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment.