(Credit: Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Meta is cracking down on leakers, firing around 20 people it says shared confidential information.
"We tell employees when they join the company, and we offer periodic reminders, that it is against our policies to leak internal information, no matter the intent,” Meta tells The Verge. "We recently conducted an investigation that resulted in roughly 20 employees being terminated for sharing confidential information outside the company, and we expect there will be more."
At an all-hands meeting last month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees that he wouldn’t address all their questions since he didn’t find value in discussing stuff that would eventually get leaked. “We try to be really open, and then everything I say leaks. It sucks,” he said.
After details about that meeting leaked, Meta sent an internal memo warning employees that it would “take appropriate action, including termination” against leakers. How do we know? Well, that memo got leaked, too.
This is not a new phenomenon. In 2021, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, handed over files to The Wall Street Journal for a series it dubbed The Facebook Files. Haugen appeared on 60 Minutes and testified before Congress, telling lawmakers that Facebook had shirked its responsibility to its most vulnerable users, largely because profit is king.
The terminations come weeks after Meta began company-wide performance-based layoffs, impacting around 5% of its global workforce, or 3,600 people.
According to The New York Post, there’s unrest among Meta employees after the company scrapped its DEI and fact-checking policies. While both moves appear to be Meta's way of cozying up to President Trump, they haven’t done much to help Zuckerberg’s approval ratings.