Meta told employees on Friday that it plans to end several internal programs the company has designed to hire diverse candidates, the latest dramatic shift ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second White House term. is

Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president, made the announcement at the company’s Workplace Internal Communications Forum.

Among the changes, Metta is ending the company’s “diverse slate approach” of considering qualified candidates from underrepresented groups for its open roles. The company is also ending its diversity supplier program and its equity and inclusion training programs. Gale also announced the disbanding of the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) team, and she said Meta Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams will move into a new role focused on access and engagement.

Several Meta employees responded to Gale’s post with comments criticizing the new policy.

“If you don’t stick to your principles when things get tough, they’re not values, they’re passions,” one employee posted in a comment that drew more than 600 colleagues’ reactions.

The DEI policy change follows a number of backlashes from the social media company over the policies this month. Last week, Metta replaced global affairs chief Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan, a company veteran with long-standing ties to the Republican Party. On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced a new speech policy that included ending the company’s third-party fact-checking program.

Axios was the first Report DEI changes in social media company. Metta had no immediate comment.

You can read Gale’s memo, obtained by CNBC, in full below:

hello everyone,
I wanted to share some of the changes we are making to our recruiting, development, and procurement practices. Before going into the details, some important background is to be provided:

The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The United States Supreme Court has recently made decisions that signal a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms long-standing principles that discrimination based on inherent characteristics should not be tolerated or promoted. The term “DEI” has also become charged, in part because it is perceived by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.

At Meta, we have a principle of service to all. This can be achieved through academically diverse teams with differences in knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. Such teams are better at innovating, solving complex problems, and identifying new opportunities that ultimately help us achieve our desire to create products that serve everyone. On top of that, we’ve always believed that no one should be given — or denied — opportunities because of safety features, and that hasn’t changed.

In light of the legal and policy change, we are making the following changes:

• When recruiting, we will continue to seek candidates from diverse backgrounds, but we will stop using the diverse slate approach. This practice has always been the subject of public debate and is currently being challenged. We believe there are other ways to build an industry-leading workforce and leverage teams made up of world-class people from all backgrounds to create products that work for everyone. .

• We previously scrapped representation targets for women and ethnic minorities. Targeting can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender. Although this has never been our custom, we want to dispel any impression of it.

• We are phasing out our supplier diversification efforts as part of our broader supplier strategy. The effort focused on acquiring businesses with diversified ownership. Going forward, we will focus our efforts on supporting the small and medium-sized businesses that power our economy. Opportunities will remain available to all eligible suppliers, including those who are part of the Supplier Diversity Program.

• Instead of equality and inclusion training programs, we will create programs that focus on how to implement fair and consistent practices that reduce bias for everyone, regardless of your background.

• We will no longer have a team focused on DEI. Maxine Williams is taking on a new role at Meta focused on accessibility and engagement.

The same principles remain that we have used to guide the behavior of our people:

1. We serve everyone. We are committed to making our products accessible, beneficial and globally effective for everyone.
2. We build great teams with the most talented people. This means getting people from a range of candidate pools but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics (eg, race, gender, etc.). We will always evaluate people individually.
3. We promote consistency in employment practices to ensure fairness and objectivity for all. We do not provide preferential treatment, additional opportunities or undue credit to anyone based on protected characteristics. Nor would we discount the impact based on these characteristics.
4. We build connections and communities. We support our employee communities, the people who use our products and the people who live in those communities. We run our Employee Community Groups (MRGs) which are open to all.

Meta has the privilege of serving billions of people every day. It is important that our products are accessible to all and useful in promoting economic growth and opportunity around the world. We are focused on serving everyone and building a multi-talented, industry-leading workforce from all walks of life.

Look: Chris Kelly, Facebook’s former chief privacy officer, says Meta is returning to the tradition of free speech.