Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly been undermined by repeated leaks of his comments and policy changes since agreeing to dismantle the censorship regime at Meta. That’s not a coincidence.
Zuckerberg announced on Jan. 7 that his platforms would cut ties with pro-censorship fact-checkers, allow free speech on “topics like immigration and gender,” and make other changes to reduce censorship on the platform. Since that announcement, Meta employees have repeatedly leaked Zuckerberg’s internal communications to the media.
Among the leaked content are announcements of additional changes to dismantle woke elements on Meta platforms and even Meta’s plans to step away from discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Zuckerberg discussed these changes during Meta's first all-staff meeting of 2024. Leftist news outlets such as Business Insider and The New York Times obtained recordings of the hour-long meeting, which was attended by over 70,000 people.
In response to this news, Dan Schneider, the vice president of MRC Free Speech America, warned that Zuckerberg was facing a revolt from committed pro-censorship and pro-DEI activists from within Meta. Schneider compared the state of affairs at Meta to an internal rebellion against X owner Elon Musk during the summer of 2023.
“The anti-free speech voices at Meta are outing themselves,” Schneider said. “Like the old Twitter regime, Silicon Valley leftists can’t bear the thought of free speech on their platforms. Discontented activists on Twitter didn’t stop at griping, they used their power to continue censoring voices and blocking long overdue transparency efforts.”
Schneider added, “These Meta rebels should probably rethink this in case Zuckerberg realizes that he can slash his workforce the same way Musk did. They both have their own deep state problems.”
Here’s what Musk was dealing with after he acquired Twitter. In June 2023, X flagrantly censored What is a Woman?, a pro-women documentary by The Daily Wire that exposed the absurdity at the heart of transgenderism. X first backed out of a deal to promote the documentary and then slapped a “Visibility Limited” label on the documentary, hindering its reach. When Musk moved to end the film’s censorship, two prominent employees, including Twitter’s head of trust and safety, stepped down.
This apparent insubordination was not an isolated incident. MRC Free Speech America unveiled that Twitter’s rank-and-file employees quietly censored more accounts than it did before Musk took over in March 2023.
“Based on our analysis it is clear that there is an internal revolt going on among the woke staff at Twitter,” Schneider said at the time. “I’m sure they don’t like that their new boss has dissolved the high-level censorship team, but Musk’s actions appear to have motivated the remaining staff to be even more aggressive toward regular conservatives on the platform.”
Now, Zuckerberg may face a similar predicament. Among other all-staff meeting leaks, Meta employees reported that Zuckerberg defended free speech during the meeting:
“There were a bunch of policies that we implemented over time that sort of narrowed what people could say on our services. Frankly, we were just way out of the mainstream. When we say that someone can say something on our services, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we agree with that thing. It just means that we want to be a platform where people can discuss things.”
Evidently, many employees disagree. Will they obstruct this new policy?
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