Meta employee calls out company for limiting staff’s free speech

An employee at Meta  (META) , which operates social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, has called out the company for “internal censorship” after she was placed under investigation for raising concerns about the company allegedly limiting free speech on its platforms.

“I was placed ‘under investigation’ at Meta on Dec 19 after being kicked out of all internal systems, for circulating a signature-collecting letter to Meta leadership expressing our collective concerns around external and internal bias and censorship due to the Israel-Gaza conflict,” wrote the employee in an Instagram post.

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She claims that even after the letter gained 500 signatures and about 100 personal testimonials from other Meta employees, leadership deleted the letter, and copies of it from employees’ computer drives and emails, and allegedly overall “ignored it, and never addressed it again.”

During the investigation, she said that the company did not provide her any details about why she was being investigated until after it was completed.

“I was not given any information for 2 months, until HR reached out mid-February to say they ‘concluded’ the investigation,” she wrote. “My system access was reinstated on March 14 and I returned to work this past Monday. I am only being told that my system access was disabled for "repeatedly violating the CEE*" and they were investigating "concerns about the alleged inappropriate use of our systems to disseminate the open letter."

CEE stands for Meta’s Community Engagement Expectations, which are rules that Meta allegedly enforced in 2022 that bans employees from discussing “disruptive topics” such as certain health issues, political and legal matters, rights, etc.

“We’re increasing the number of topics that can no longer be discussed at work based on what we’ve seen to be very disruptive in the past,” wrote Meta Head of People Lori Goler in a memo to employees in 2022.

In the Instagram post, the employee called Meta’s CEE “toxic” and urged the company to get rid of it.

“@meta, please stop internally censoring employees and get rid of the toxic CEE*” wrote the employee.

Meta has recently been adjusting its approach to political content on its social media platforms. Last month, the company announced that it will be using its artificial intelligence system to restrict recommending political content to users through features on Instagram and Threads such as Reels, Explore and In-Feed Recommendations.

“We aim to avoid making recommendations that could be about politics or political issues, in line with our approach of not recommending certain types of content to those who don’t wish to see it,” Meta said in the announcement.

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