Zuckerberg Abolished SNS Fact-Checking Just Three Days Ago
The world's largest social media (SNS) platform Meta has decided to abolish its 'Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)' policy in line with the incoming U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's agenda, following the discontinuation of its fact-checking program on SNS. This move is seen as a response to Trump’s political and cultural views and is interpreted as an extension of the pro-Trump actions that many American companies are rapidly adopting.
According to U.S. internet media Axios and CNBC on the 11th (local time), Meta, which operates Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, announced in an internal memo sent to employees the day before that it will terminate the company's DEI policies applied to hiring, training, and supplier selection.
Meta explained, "The legal and policy environment surrounding DEI in the U.S. is changing," and while it will continue to seek employees from diverse backgrounds, it will abolish the existing method of selecting candidates based on diversity criteria.
The world's largest e-commerce platform Amazon also mentioned in a memo sent to employees last month that it is scaling back outdated programs related to diversity and aims to complete this process by the end of 2024.
Earlier, American companies introduced DEI policies one after another following the spread of the anti-racism movement after George Floyd, a Black man, died due to aggressive police suppression in 2020. However, the conservative camp in the U.S., which opposed DEI policies as discriminatory, intensified pressure on companies to abolish DEI after the federal Supreme Court ruled two years ago that affirmative action policies favoring minorities in admissions were unconstitutional. With Trump, who opposes DEI policies, successfully returning to power, companies such as McDonald's and Walmart have successively abolished their DEI policies.
Meta's abolition of its diversity policy came just three days after it discontinued the 'third-party fact-checking' program that identified fake news and verified facts on SNS platforms like Facebook. The discontinuation of fact-checking was also interpreted as a response to the Trump camp's demand to eliminate internal content censorship functions on SNS.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has continued actions that seem aimed at winning the favor of President-elect Trump, with whom he had a contentious relationship for years. Notably, he appointed Dana White, UFC CEO and a close associate of Trump, as a board member, and promoted Joel Kaplan, a well-known Republican figure, to global policy chief. CEO Zuckerberg expressed optimism about Trump's return to the White House, emphasizing, "I think he just wants America to win."
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