Williams explained in her letter that “‘Prayers for…’ may be taken down in any location where a war is underway, but prayers for those affected by a natural disaster, for example, may remain.” She continued: “We know people may not agree with this approach, but it is one of the compromises we have made to ensure that we have a productive place for everyone.”
Pain and distress
Meanwhile, Arab and Muslim employees expressed disappointment that last month’s World Refugee Week commemorations at Meta included discussions about human rights projects and the experiences of refugees, and lunches featuring Ukrainian and Syrian food, but no mention of Palestinians. (WIRED reviewed the internal program for the week.)
They were also upset that Meta's Oversight Board, which advises on substantive policy, wrote in Hebrew, but not Arabic, asking for public comment on the Palestinian human rights phrase “from the river to the sea,” including whether it is anti-Semitic. A spokesperson for the Oversight Board did not respond to a request for comment.
Employees also remain frustrated that Meta has failed to meet their December demands to remove the Instagram accounts of anti-hate watchdog groups Canary Mission and StopAntisemitism, which have shamed Palestinian supporters in alleged violations of the platform’s anti-bullying policies. PWG leaders met with Meta executives, including Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs, who promised to keep the dialogue with employees open. But the accounts remain active, and Canary Mission and StopAntisemitism have each added about 15,000 followers since the demands were drafted.
The workers saw it as a sign of the uphill battle they were fighting, and recently took to Instagram to post a photo of Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta’s Global Business Group, posing next to Liora Rez, founder and executive director of StopAntisemitism. Rez told WIRED that her group did not hesitate to call out individuals with anti-Semitic views and alert their employers, but declined to comment further. Canary Mission said in an unsigned statement that “there must be accountability” for anti-Semitism.
The disagreements over Meta’s response to the Gaza discussions have had a cascading effect. In May, Meta’s internal community team halted a number of planned Memorial Day commemorations honoring military veterans at the company. An employee asked for clarification in an internal forum with more than 11,000 members, prompting a response from Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, who wrote that polarizing discussions about “regions or territories that are not recognized” required, in part, a rethink of the planning and oversight of various activities.
While honoring veterans was “apolitical,” Bosworth wrote in the post seen by WIRED, CEE rules had to be applied consistently to survive under labor laws. “There are groups who are eager to find any excuse to undermine our company policies,” he wrote.
Some Arab and Muslim employees felt Bosworth's comments were aimed at them. “I don't want to work anywhere that actively discriminates against my community,” said one Meta employee who is on the verge of leaving. “I feel sick to my stomach working for this company.”
Meta has not stopped enforcing CEE in recent weeks. Employees are still not allowed to hold internal vigils. As a result, they were planning to gather tonight at the company’s offices in New York and San Francisco to commemorate colleagues who lost family members to the war in Gaza, according to Meta4employees’ Instagram account and two of the sources. They are curious to see how the company will try, if at all, to stop the commemoration, which will be open to the public.
Ashraf Zeitoon, who headed Facebook’s Middle East and North Africa policy from 2014 to 2017 and still mentors many of Meta’s Arab employees, says dissatisfaction among those workers has skyrocketed. He used to push longtime employees to quit if they were frustrated; now he has to convince recent hires to stay long enough to give the company a chance to evolve.
“Unprecedented levels” of restrictions and enforcement have been “extremely painful and stressful for them,” Zeitoon says. It seems that the emotions Meta wanted to avoid by keeping talk of war out of the workplace are not so easily suppressed.
