Meta allegedly forbade its employees from discussing abortion out of concern that it “could create a hostile work environment”. The social media giant has both banned this issue in the communication channels used in the workplace and deleted the relevant messages so far.
An employee expressed his frustrations with the situation on LinkedIn. “On our internal Workplace platform, moderators quickly removed and removed posts or comments mentioning abortion,” said software engineer Ambroos Vaes. “There is limited discussion in groups, but these groups are not open and are limited to 20.”
The issue of abortion has been intensely occupied by the US public for some time now. While the discussions are proceeding in two different poles, Meta does not seem to want to carry this polarization into the company.
In fact, this isn’t Meta’s first move to prevent its employees from discussing a controversial topic at work. The company updated its Respectful Communications Policy after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Since then, company employees can no longer discuss political and social issues on workplace channels.