Meta employees criticize the company’s new speech policy, the board adds

Target employees criticized the company’s decision to stop third party fact checking at his services two weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Company employees expressed concern after Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer and former White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush, announced changes to the content policy on Workplace, an internal communications tool.

“We are optimistic that these changes will help us return to that core commitment to free expression,” Kaplan wrote in a post reviewed by CNBC.

The announcement of the content rules follows a series of decisions that appear to be aimed at pleasing the incoming administration. On Monday, Meta added new members to its boardincluding UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime friend of Trump, and the company confirmed last month that it was contributing $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

Among the latest changes, Kaplan announced that Meta will end its fact-checking program and switch to a user-generated system like X’s Community Notes. Kaplan, who took up his new role last week, also said Meta would lift restrictions on certain topics and focus its enforcement on illegal and serious violations, while giving users “more personalized access to political content.”

One worker wrote that they were “extremely concerned” by the decision, saying that Meta “seems to be sending a bigger, stronger message to people that facts no longer matter, and it’s conflating that with a victory for free speech.”

Another employee commented that “simply being relieved of our duty to at least try to create a safe and respectable platform is a really sad direction to take.” Other comments expressed concern about the impact the policy change could have on discourse around topics such as immigration, gender identity and gender, which could result in “an influx of racist and transphobic content,” according to one employee.

Another employee said he feared “we’re entering a really dangerous area by paving the way for further disinformation to spread.”

The changes were not universally criticized, as some Meta workers congratulated the company’s decision to do away with third-party fact-checking. One wrote that X’s Community Notes feature “turned out to be a much better representation of the underlying truth.”

Another employee commented that the company should “ensure an accounting of the worst outcomes of the early years” that required the creation of a third fact-checking program and whether the new policies would prevent the same type of outage from happening again.

As part of the company’s major layoffs in 2023, Meta also discontinued the internal fact-checking projectCNBC reported. That project would allow third-party fact-checkers like the Associated Press and Reuters, along with credible experts, to comment on flagged articles to verify content.

Although Meta announced the end of its fact-checking program on Tuesday, the company was already withdrawing it. In September AP spokesperson told CNBC that “the fact-checking agreement between the news agency and Meta ended back in January” of 2024.

After the announcement of White’s addition to the board on Monday, employees also posted criticism, questions and jokes on Workplace, according to posts reviewed by CNBC.

White, who has managed the UFC since 2001, has been mired in controversy in 2023 after a video released by TMZ showed him slapping his wife at a New Year’s Eve party in Mexico. White issued a public apologyand his wife, Anne White, issued a statement to TMZ, calling it an isolated incident.

Commenters on Workplace joked about whether performance reviews would now include mixed martial arts-style fights.

In addition to White, John Elkann, CEO of the Italian auto holding company Exor, was appointed to Meta’s board of directors.

Some employees questioned what value executives from the auto and entertainment sectors could bring to Meta and whether White’s addition reflected the company’s values. One post suggests that new board appointments would help with political alliances that could be valuable, but could also change company culture in unintended or unwanted ways.

Workplace comments alluding to White’s personal history were flagged and removed from the discussion, according to posts from the internal app read by CNBC.

An employee who said he was on Meta’s internal community relations team posted a reminder on Workplace about the company’s “community engagement expectation,” or CEE, policy for using the platform.

“Multiple comments have been flagged by the community for review,” the employee posted. “It’s important that we maintain a respectful work environment where people can perform at their best.”

A member of the internal community relations team added that “insulting, criticizing or antagonizing our colleagues or board members is not in line with CEE.”

Several workers responded to the note saying that even respectful posts, if critical, were removed, a corporate form of censorship.

One worker said the person wanted to express support for “women and all voices,” as critical comments were removed.

Meta declined to comment.

— CNBC’s Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report.

WATCH: Meta adds Dan White, John Elkann and Charlie Songhurst to its board of directors.