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FIRST ON FOX: Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan told Fox News Digital that the move to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs will ensure the company is “building teams with the most talented people.”
target, announced on Friday that it has ended its major DEI programs, effective immediately.
META TERMINATES CORPORATE DEI PROGRAM
Mete Vice President of Human Resources Janelle Gale sent a memo, first obtained by Axios, to employees explaining that “the legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion is changing.”
Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, discussed the decision with Fox News Digital on Friday afternoon.
The Meta logo can be seen at the Vivatech trade show in Paris, France on June 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus/AP Newsroom)
“This is ultimately about doing what’s best for our company and making sure we’re serving everyone and building teams with the most talented people,” Kaplan told Fox News Digital. “That means evaluating people as individuals and finding people from a pool of candidates, but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics like race or gender.”
Kaplan pointed to recent Supreme Court decisions “that signal a shift in how courts will approach DEI.”
“It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination based on inherent characteristics should not be tolerated or promoted,” Kaplan told Fox News Digital.
Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, DC, on Friday, January 5, 2024. (Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
He added: “Clearly there is movement on this issue from a political and legal perspective, and we foresee more of that happening in the future, and we want to ensure that our programs are in a long-term and sustainable position.”
Several other prominent companies have rolled back DEI policies in recent months.
TRUMP SAYS META ‘TRAVELED FAR’ AFTER ZUCKERBERG ENDED PLATFORM FACT CHECKING
McDonald’s announced on Monday that it was ending some of its DEI policies, saying that while it was committed to inclusion, it was abandoning its “aspirational representational goals” as well as ending its DEI pledge for suppliers. The company also changed the name of its diversity team to the Global Inclusion Team and ended external research on the topic.
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The fast-food giant’s decision follows similar changes made in 2024 by Walmart, Ford Motor Co., John Deere, Lowe’s and Toyota.
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon joins ‘The Bottom Line’ with reaction to Meta’s decision to end the tech giant’s fact-checking program.
In mid-December, a federal appeals court rejected Nasdaq’s diversity rules previously approved by the Securities Commission.
Meta’s move to end its DEI programs comes just days after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would end its fact-checking programs on its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
Zuckerberg said his company will “return to its roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
Meta plans to replace fact-checking with a “Community Notes” model similar to the one used on X.
Meta’s third-party fact-checking program was introduced after the 2016 election and has been used to “manage content” and misinformation on its platforms, largely due to “political pressure,” executives said, but acknowledged that the system “has gone too far.”
President-elect Donald Trump reacted at Meta’s end its fact-checking program on Facebook, Instagram and other platforms, telling Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview that the company “came a long way.”
Trump said he thought Meta’s “presentation was excellent.”
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As for the timing of the changes to Meta’s fact-checking programs, Kaplan told Fox News Digital that the company now has a “real opportunity.”
“We have a new administration coming in that is far from pressuring companies to censor and [is more] a big supporter of freedom of expression,” Kaplan said. “It brings us back to the values that Mark founded the company on.”
Last year, Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in which he acknowledged that he felt pressure from the Biden administration, particularly regarding content about COVID-19 and even topics such as satire and humor.
“The thing is, as American companies, when other governments around the world that don’t have our tradition or our First Amendment, when they see the United States government pressuring American companies to take down content, it’s just open season for those governments to do more pressure [on their companies]” Kaplan explained. “We think it’s a real opportunity to work with the Trump administration and to work on free expression at home.”
Kaplan also said that Meta sees “opportunities to partner” with the Trump administration, not only on issues of freedom of expression but also in “advancing American business and America’s technological advantage.”
“These are issues of great importance to Meta and our sector,” Kaplan said. “And we’re excited to work with the Trump administration to advance those goals.”
