Parent company of Facebook, Meta lays off 5% of its staff

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, plans to lay off around 3,600 employees deemed to be the worst performers, before hiring new people to fill their roles this year, according to an internal memo sent to its employees and reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday.

The Californian group confirmed to AFP the decision of its boss, Mark Zuckerberg, to fire 5% of the staff. Meta employed around 72,400 people in September.

“I have decided to raise the bar on performance management and eliminate low performers more quickly,” the CEO said in the memo.

Meta had already thanked several thousand employees in 2023, declared the “year of efficiency” at the end of the pandemic.

Firing a portion of employees based on performance is a common practice in large American companies. A similar decision was announced at Microsoft last week, according to Business Insider, affecting less than 1% of the IT group’s employees.

Meta’s move, however, is part of a series of announcements aimed at transforming the social media giant in the era of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg ended his fact-checking program in the United States, designed to combat misinformation on his platforms, and considered “censorship” against conservatives by the right American.

Instead of independent organizations, users will be able to add context to certain publications, such as on X, Elon Musk’s network.

The manager also ended programs designed to promote staff diversity, and content moderation rules on Facebook and Instagram were relaxed: more insults and calls for the exclusion of women and LGBT+ people from institutions are now authorized.

These two decisions are also aligned with the political views of Donald Trump, who will be president again on Monday, and his ally Elon Musk.

“I think a lot of our society has become … castrated, in a way, or emasculated,” Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan, the host of a popular conservative podcast, in a River interview broadcast Friday.

The boss is increasing his advances towards Donald Trump, like several of his neighbors and competitors.

He had dinner with him in November, donated $1 million to his inauguration ceremony on January 20 and appointed several of his allies to key positions.

AFP participates in more than 26 languages ​​in the Meta fact-checking program, which pays more than 80 media outlets around the world to use their “fact-checks” on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

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