- Meta has enacted rules that bar employees from discussing politics, health, and weapons at work.
- These Community Engagement Expectations restrict mocking topics within a protected category, like race.
- Some employees formed CEE Watch to monitor post removals.
Some Meta employees are questioning the company’s removal of their posts and comments from its internal forum.
Employees created a group on its internal Workplace forum to share their experiences in posts that have been seen by Business Insider.
In 2022, Meta rolled out internal rules barring employees from discussing contentious topics such as politics, health, and weapons. The guidelines, which Meta calls Community Engagement Expectations, also ban comments and posts that are seen as mocking topics related to a protected category, such as race, gender, or religion.
Some Meta employees have accused the company of using the CEE system to censor valid discussions. A number of staffers recently created an internal employee resource group called CEE Watch so that Meta staff could flag when a post has been removed, according to internal documents seen by BI.
“CEE language is intentionally vague and we cannot know how it’s being enforced without openly sharing our violations with each other,” a welcome post on the CEE Watch page says.
CEE Watch had over 800 members at the time of publishing, a small fraction of Meta’s 72,000-strong workforce.
A Meta spokesperson said the company didn’t remove internal employee comments just because it doesn’t agree with or like them. They added that many critical comments remained up on Meta’s internal communications boards.
One employee wrote that multiple posts regarding Palestinians had been removed over the past year. The person questioned how employees could engage in discussions of “what are acceptable forms of identity to discuss at work.”
Another person commented, saying that it was an “open secret” in the “Muslim@” employee resource group that “relatively” harmless posts had been removed.
A different person added that their post about grieving slain family members was removed.
While free speech is a fundamental constitutional right in public spaces, it does not extend to private corporations. As private entities, companies have the legal authority to establish their own policies regarding what employees can or cannot say in the workplace.
But US employees are allowed to discuss wrongdoing by their companies and other workplace-related issues, like safety, harassment, and accommodations for people with disabilities.
The CEE guidelines were last updated in October, according to a copy of them viewed by BI.
They say it’s “not okay” for employees to share content that has the “potential to trigger disruptive comments” around topics including: “political movements or causes relating to states, nations, or people (e.g., opinions on forms of governments, political systems, or economic systems; sharing national flags in ways that imply opinions on political movements or causes or slogans like ‘Free Puerto Rico’; ‘Liberate Hong Kong’; ‘Make America Great Again’; ‘Build Back Better’; ‘Free Palestine’; or ‘Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow!’).”
In a separate post, titled “communications around LGBTQ healthcare and health plans,” one employee said they asked Meta’s employment law group if LGBTQ+ employees and their children would continue to have access to gender-affirming care after Meta’s public benefits page removed mention of it.
The person said they “heard back that there were no plans to update the plan, but that they would comply with applicable laws.”
Another person said a drag performance group, which did an act for one of the company’s pride employee resource groups, was investigated by the company and later banned because it claimed the group violated the CEE guidelines. This person said the performance was livestreamed across the ERG and was met with positive reviews.
“This feels like a disproportional punishment for this performer and impacts their livelihood,” the person wrote. “I’m currently escalating this case now, but I thought it would be helpful to share that CEE also applies to guests of Meta (apparently even retroactively too).”
In a comment under the post, the original poster claimed that during his in-person conversation with the internal community relations team, “they said that ‘those kinds of people are high risk for violating content’ (referring to drag performers).” The poster added: “I left the conversation extremely upset.”
This person shared a message from the internal community relations team that said the drag group’s performance in 2022 violated the CEE and other company policies, “including multiple remarks degrading about various protected categories, and multiple instances of sexual content shared.”
Meta employees are increasingly vocal about the company’s content moderation on its internal forums, with some directly challenging what they view as censorship of workplace discussions.
“This is a free speech issue,” one employee wrote after one of their posts was removed by Meta’s internal moderators. It linked to a news article about Donald Trump saying that Meta’s CEO was “probably” changing the company’s direction in response to Trump’s previous threats to jail him.
The employee questioned how Meta, a company meant to be “hardened against threats,” could restrict internal discourse about its own leadership.
A six-year employee in Meta’s civic integrity team described deteriorating trust between leadership and staff.
“When you tell people they should resign if they don’t agree with your decisions, this belies a lack of trust in your people,” they wrote.
The CEE guidelines say “consequences for violating this policy vary depending on the severity of the violation and other context such as a person’s prior conduct.” They list disciplinary action, including termination of employment, as one example.
One employee in Reality Labs, Meta’s virtual reality division, said it was ironic to have “debate openly” as a core principle as posts were removed.
“Attempts to even have the most polite discussion that acknowledges how people are responding to policy changes” were deleted, they wrote. They also expressed concern about whether there would be retaliation in Meta’s coming layoffs for discussing workplace conditions.
More employees wrote that there was a climate of fear around posting, with content sometimes being removed within minutes without explanation.
One worker said colleagues deleted comments and self-censored “because they were afraid they might be targeted by CEE and management for even reacting positively to a post.”
“I have very mixed feelings about Meta at this point,” the civic integrity employee wrote, a sentiment that was shared across multiple posts.
“The greatest value of this company is not its products or its technology but its people. They make all of it possible,” this employee said. “The leadership of this company maybe understood that at some point, but they seem to have forgotten it.”
Are you a Meta employee? Got insight to share? Contact the reporter Jyoti Mann via email at [email protected] or via Signal at jyotimann.11. Reach out from a nonwork device.
If you’re a current or former Meta employee, contact Pranav from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at [email protected].
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