Meta DEI programs are being discontinued. Read the notice

Meta on Friday he told the staff his plans to end several internal programs designed to increase the company’s recruitment of various candidates, the last dramatic change before the president Donald Trumpthe second White House term.

Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of people, made the announcement on the company’s Workplace internal communications forum.

Changes include Meta’s “Multiple views of the board“to consider qualified candidates from underrepresented groups for its open positions. The company is also finalizing its diversity provider program and its equity and inclusion training programs.

Gale also announced the disbanding of the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, team, said Meta Diversity CEO. Maxine Williams will move into a new role focused on accessibility and engagement.

Several Meta employees responded to Gale’s post with comments criticizing the new policy.

“If you don’t stick to your principles when the going gets tough, they’re not values. They’re hobbies,” one employee posted in a comment that received backlash from over 600 colleagues.

The DEI policy change this month has resulted in the social media company reversing several policies. Last week, Meta replace head of global affairs Nick Clegg With Joel Kaplan, a company veteran with longstanding ties to the Republican Party. on tuesday Mark Zuckerberg announce a new speech policy including ending the company’s third-party fact-checking program.

Axios was the first the report DEI changes in the social network company. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Below is Gale’s full internal memo, obtained by CNBC.

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share some of the changes we are making to our recruiting, development and hiring practices. Before we get into the details, some important background should be laid out:

The legal and policy climate surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The United States Supreme Court has recently issued decisions that signal a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms the long-standing principles that discrimination based on inherent characteristics should not be tolerated or encouraged. The term “DEI” has also become loaded, in part because some understand it as a practice that suggests favoring some groups over others.

At Meta, we have a principle of serving everyone. This can be achieved through cognitively diverse groups with differences in knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. Such teams are better at innovating, solving complex problems, and identifying new opportunities that ultimately help us fulfill our ambition to build products that serve everyone. Furthermore, we have always believed that no one should be given a chance – or taken away – because of protective features, and that has not changed.

Due to the changing legal and policy landscape, we are making the following changes:

• In recruitment, we will continue to receive candidates from different backgrounds, but we will stop using the Multiple Board Approach. This practice has always been subject to public debate and is now being questioned. We believe there are other ways to build an industry-leading workforce and leverage teams of people from all backgrounds around the world to create products that work for everyone.

• We previously ended the representation targets for women and ethnic minorities. Targeting can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender. Although this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate the impression of it.

• We are finalizing our supplier diversity effort as part of our broader supplier strategy. This effort focused on sourcing from multi-property businesses; going forward, we will focus our efforts on supporting the small and medium-sized enterprises that drive a large part of our economy. Opportunities will be available to all qualified suppliers, including those who are part of the supplier diversity program.

• Instead of equity and inclusion training programs, we will build programs that explore how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for everyone, regardless of your background.

• From now on we will not have a group dedicated to DEI. Maxine Williams is taking on a new role at Meta with a focus on accessibility and engagement.

What remains the same are the principles we have 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 recruiting people from diverse candidate pools, but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics (eg, race, gender, etc.). We will always evaluate them as individuals.
3. We encourage consistency in employment practices to ensure fairness and objectivity for all. We do not give preferential treatment, additional opportunities or undue credit to anyone based on protected characteristics. We will also evaluate the impact based on these features.
4. We build connection and community. We support the communities of our employees, the people who use our products, and those in the communities. Our employee community groups (MRGs) remain open to everyone we operate.

Meta is privileged to serve billions of people every day. It is important to us that our products are accessible to all and useful for promoting economic growth and opportunity around the world. We remain focused on serving everyone and building a multi-talented, leadership workforce across all sectors.

SEE: Meta is returning to the tradition of free speech, says Chris Kelly, Facebook’s former privacy chief