Not Many Meta Employees Will Have to Move to Texas After All

Whether shifting teams to Texas will be anything more than symbolic is unclear. Common sense suggests if a person in California exhibits some sort of political preference, moving them to Texas isn’t likely to reshape their viewpoints immediately.

In the same town hall call, company leadership described the Texas relocation as an attempt to address the perception problem with California. That reasoning frustrated employees, who believe Meta is harming its workforce to appease Trump, the three staffers told WIRED. Meta and Trump remain in litigation in a northern California federal court over the temporary suspension of his account following the January 6, 2021, riot on the US Capitol. Trump alleges his constitutional right to speech was violated. Zuckerberg recently met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida to mediate the lawsuit, according to The Wall Street Journal.

This week, Meta unveiled plans to cut 5 percent of its workforce starting in February. The company said it plans to refill those positions throughout the year—a move that could see more employees hired in Texas. After Meta’s decision last week to shutter its diversity, equity and inclusion program, there will be no targets for hiring historically underrepresented groups.

Last week’s changes to hateful conduct rules allow users to post more acerbic criticism, including about gender and ethnicity. During the Rogan podcast, Zuckerberg said users would now be able to advocate on issues such as whether they should serve in military combat roles. Some employees have warned that Meta is now supporting the spread of misogyny and bigotry on its services, according to two of the workers.

On the town hall call with employees, an executive defended the policy changes by saying they would open the door to a multitude of perspectives, such as being able to call men lazy on Facebook without fear of being censored, according to one employee in attendance.

On the enforcement side, Meta is winding down its current fact-checking program, limiting use of automated filters to suppress allegedly offensive posts, and promoting a greater amount of political content in newsfeeds.

On Tuesday, 12 civil rights advocacy groups that say they have advised Meta for years wrote to the company to express “grave concern” with the revised policies. “These changes are devastating for free expression because they will subject members of protected groups to more attacks, harassment, and harm, driving them off Meta’s services, impoverishing conversations, eliminating points of view, and silencing dissenting and oft-censored voices,” wrote the group, which includes the Center for Democracy & Technology, Human Rights Campaign, and the National Black Justice Collective.

In the security and integrity town hall, management would not commit to continuing to publish statistics about the gender and racial makeup of the company’s employees. “It’s capitulating in the worst way,” one says.

Individually some managers have told their teams that they plan to continue pushing for diverse hiring, according to three employees.

Additional reporting by Steven Levy.