Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has been mired in controversy for over a decade, but the last few years have come to a head. As the social media giant chases The Metaverse, more and more issues are coming out of the tech juggernaut.
As the company wastes billions on the Metaverse, Meta has started to layoff thousands of employees. Even the company’s infamous internships have been canned, sending would-be employees back to their countries of origin. Just this year, Meta was sued for alleged human trafficking of employees in Kenya.
While Meta’s workers issues have typically avoided western regions, the company has now introduced a fascistic doctrine. Employees working at the tech giant are now restricted from discussing certain topics at the workplace or via work channels.
Via Business Insider, new internal guidelines forbid employees from talking about topics that are deemed “very disruptive”. These include discussions about abortion rights, gun rights, vaccinations, elections and political movements such as Black Lives Matter.
Meta’s “Head of People”, Lori Goler, said that the decision to silence employees has been done to “ensure that internal discussions remain respectful, productive, and allow us to focus.” They stated that “this comes with the trade-off that we'll no longer allow for every type of expression at work, but we think this is the right thing to do for the long-term health of our internal community.”
Meta restrictions have forbidden employees from discussing important political events in America. For example, in 2020, workers were barred from discussing the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. In recent months, staff has been restricted from discussing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, an event that has stripped American women of their rights.
That doesn’t mean that topics aren’t discussed within the company. As a company still attempting to keep a good face, social media managers are allowed to post about huge events on official pages. Furthermore, some roles at Meta require the discussion of major world events, but this can only be done for work purposes.
Meta’s silencing of workers is a concerning trend. While employees have expressed their upset at the company’s business decisions, the company’s fascistic rules of politics censorship take away workers’ freedoms. How very un-American of them.