A giant goal, company that owns Facebook, is experiencing a new round of layoffs. Focusing on your security policies, the company held this Wednesday, 24, another batch of shutdowns. Apparently, those affected are members of marketing teams, ad sales and content moderation, policies and regulatory issues.
For a few months now, the company has been making efforts to reduce its workforce and announced that the decision is part of a plan that has several stages. In this way, until now, the goal has already been achieved 21 thousand layoffs in different sectors of the organization.
Nonetheless, a CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, stated in March that most of the layoffs in this second round would occur in three “moments” over several months, ending now in May. Although, nothing prevents a new round of small layoffs from happening. In general, cuts hit non-engineering roles hardest.
Fighting misinformation
This last round, nonetheless, aimed to ensure greater security and combat misinformation on platforms managed by Meta – Facebook, WhatsApp e Instagram. Three months ago Meta went through a controversy involving possible influential posts about the war in Ukraine.
Another scandal involving security policy was the Cambridge Analytics case, em 2018. In this case, a political consultancy had access to millions of user data associated with Meta platforms.
In this way, according to the president of global affairs at Meta, Nick Clegg, layoffs do not just represent a cost cut. The plan focuses on combating misinformation through the realignment of influence campaigns and other controversial content.
Possible problems that could happen
Many professionals linked to Meta, nonetheless, believe that this large number of cuts could harm the company's ability to respond to issues that could cause misinformation or any type of disruption.
In this way, Meta platforms can become increasingly insecure for their users. That's a close risk, Since next year the United States and other countries will go through presidential elections and governments work hard on social media moderation.
Cuts in other giants
Meta's employee cuts, although, is part of a much larger context that has been dictated since the Coronavirus pandemic. Other big companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft also carried out mass layoffs.
The team reduction is a consequence of the demands brought by the pandemic. But, furthermore, Meta is also going through a phase of fierce competition with Tik Tok and Apple.
