Meta employees rip Mark Zuckerberg for ending fact-checking, adding Dana White to board: Extremely concerned

Meta employees blasted the company’s decision to do away with third party fact-checkers and to add pro-Trump voices including Ultimate Fighting Championship head Dana White to the board of directors, according to a report.Workers at the Silicon Valley giant vented their displeasure on the company’s internal messaging forum on Tuesday in response to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Meta will remove restrictions on free expression when it comes to controversial, hot-button topics.Zuckerberg, who wore a $900,000 Swiss watch while admitting to engaging in “too much censorship,” said that discussions about sensitive subjects such as immigration and gender will no longer be subject to strict content moderation rules on Meta’s major platforms including Facebook, Instragram and Threads.One Meta employee wrote on the Workplace chat forum that they were “extremely concerned” about the move, which they attribute as Meta “sending a bigger, stronger message to people that facts no longer matter, and conflating that with a victory for free speech.”Another employee wrote that “simply absolving ourselves from the duty to at least try to create a safe and respective platform is a really sad direction to take,” according to CNBC.Still another feared that the change will lead to an “influx of racist and transphobic content” across Meta platforms.Other employees, however, praised the move.

One worker wrote that adopting the “Community Notes” model used by Elon Musk’s X has “proven to be a much better representation of the ground truth.”Another employee suggested that the company “provide an accounting of the worst outcomes of the early years” which initially pushed management to hire third-party fact-checkers and whether the new policies would prevent the same type of fallout from happening again.Meta management also deleted internal employee criticism of Zuckerberg’s decision to add White to the board of directors, according to the 4...