Mark Zuckerberg Goes Mask-Off and Ditches Diversity

Mark Zuckerberg is finally ready to be his true self. Surprise: he sucks.

A new report from the New York Times details how Zuck tapped a small team of executives to help him reshape Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Threads how he sees fit. Thus far, that has included ending fact-checking, rolling back moderation rules that protected marginalized people, and ramping up the algorithm to promote more political content. Now, per a memo to employees obtained by Axios, you can add diversity, equity and inclusion to the list of principles that Zuckerberg’s businesses are done with.

The company announced that it will axe its DEI team, stop attempts to work with minority-owned supplier businesses, and end representation goals, among other policy reversals. The changes will go into effect immediately.

This shift to the right follows Zuckerberg’s trip to Mar-a-Lago over Thanksgiving, where he spent time with President-elect Donald Trump. But, per the Times, this has been bubbling inside Meta’s CEO for some time. He’s reportedly felt forced to take on “progressive” causes—you know, those radical left-aligned beliefs like “equal opportunity is good” and “you shouldn’t just get to lie about stuff”—by his employees and outside forces. Behind the scenes, the Times says he’s been talking with unhinged loon Marc Andreessen and others about how he wants to take a “free speech” approach to running his companies.

Interestingly, Zuckerberg’s techno-libertarian version of “free speech” looks a whole lot like “suppressing marginalized people” in practice. Zuck, along with his small circle of like-minded ghouls, rewrote company content moderation policies in a way that would prohibit saying “white people have mental illness” but would allow saying “gay people have mental illness,” for example.  The company also pulled transgender and nonbinary theme options from its Messenger chat app.

And then there’s the decision to end DEI programs. Meta claimed the reason it made the call was because “the legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing.” In the memo obtained by Axios, Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of human resources, cited the Supreme Court’s recent decisions “signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI”—an apparent reference to SCOTUS’ decision to strike down affirmative action programs in college admissions offices, as well as an upcoming “reverse discrimination” case the court will hear that could set a precedent for attacking DEI initiatives.

But more than that, it appears the decision is an extension of Zuckerberg’s worldview. His pals in Silicon Valley’s venture capital world have spent years harping on DEI programs, fancying themselves the kings of meritocracy and pooh-poohing the idea that someone from a less privileged background would face any discrimination if they were truly as capable as their counterparts. Of course, the reality is that meritocracy is a myth. In fact, studies have found that believing that achievements were the result of merit results in less empathy and more discriminatory behavior.

This is a decided departure from how the company presented itself in the last few years. After all, the company just successfully defended one of its DEI efforts in court this past summer. In 2023, Meta publicly stated, “Our commitment to DEI remains at the center of who we are as a company.” And just two years ago, Meta published a diversity report that highlighted how it had managed to attract more talent from marginalized communities by hiring more remote workers. (The company has since issued a return to office order that disproportionately affected those same workers.)

From all of the decisions that Zuckerberg has rolled out across his company in the past few weeks, it’s clear that there is one type of diversity that he is truly done with: Diversity of thought that disagrees with him.