Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, plans to lay off around 3,600 employees, those deemed to be the worst performers, before hiring new people to fill their roles starting this year, according to an internal memo sent to its employees and reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday January 14.
The Californian group confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP) the decision of its boss, Mark Zuckerberg, to dismiss 5% of the staff. Meta employed around 72,400 people in September. “I decided to raise the bar on performance management and weed out low performers more quickly”the CEO said in the memo.
Meta had already thanked several thousand employees in 2023, decreed “year of efficiency” coming out of the pandemic. Firing a portion of employees based on performance is a common practice in large American companies. A similar decision was announced within Microsoft last week, according to Business Insider, affecting less than 1% of the IT group's employees.
Nice fact-checking
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 disinformation on his platforms, but considered by the American right as a « censure » conservatives. Verifications will no longer be carried out by independent organizations, but by certain users, who will be able to add context to publications, as is already made possible 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 opinions of Donald Trump, who will be president again on Monday, and his ally Elon Musk. “I think a large part of our society has become (…) castrated, in a way, or emasculated”Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan, the host of a very popular conservative podcast, in a long interview broadcast Friday.
The boss is increasing his advances towards Donald Trump, like several of his competitors. He had dinner with him in November, donated $1 million for his inauguration ceremony on January 20, and appointed several of his allies to key positions.
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