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Meta’s Abolition of DEI May Be a Turning Point
City Journal ^ | 13 Jan, 2025 | Christopher F. Rufo

Posted on 01/15/2025 4:45:54 AM PST by MtnClimber

Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement could encourage others to stop pretending they believe in the cultish ideology of “systemic racism” and race-based guilt.

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, formerly Facebook, made a stunning announcement. He was abolishing the company’s DEI programs and discontinuing its relationship with fact-checking organizations, which he admitted had become a form of “censorship.” The left-wing media immediately attacked the decision, accused him of embracing the MAGA agenda, and predicted a dangerous rise in so-called disinformation.

Zuckerberg’s move was carefully calculated and impeccably timed. The November elections, he said, felt like “a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.” DEI initiatives, especially those related to immigration and gender, had become “disconnected from mainstream conversation”—and untenable.

This is no small about-face. Just four years ago, Zuckerberg spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding left-wing election programs; his role was widely resented by conservatives. And Meta had been at the forefront of any identity-based or left-wing ideological cause.

Not anymore. As part of the rollout for the announcement, Zuckerberg released a video and appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast, which now functions as a confessional for American elites who no longer believe in left-wing orthodoxies. On the podcast, Zuckerberg sounded less like a California progressive than a right-winger, arguing that the culture needed a better balance of “masculine” and “feminine” energies.

Executives at Meta quickly implemented the new policy, issuing pink slips to DEI employees and moving the company’s content-moderation team from California to Texas, in order, in Zuckerberg’s words, to “help alleviate concerns that biased employees are excessively censoring content.”

Zuckerberg was not the first technology executive to make such an announcement, but he is perhaps the most significant. Facebook is one of the largest firms in Silicon Valley and, with Zuckerberg setting the precedent, many smaller companies will likely follow suit.

The most important signal emanating from this decision is not about a particular shift in policy, however, but a general shift in culture. Zuckerberg has never really been an ideologue. He appears more interested in building his company and staying in the good graces of elite society. But like many successful, self-respecting men, he is also independent-minded and has clearly chafed at the cultural constraints DEI placed on his company. So he seized the moment, correctly sensing that the impending inauguration of Donald Trump reduced the risk and increased the payoff of such a change.

Zuckerberg is certainly not a courageous truth-teller. He assented to DEI over the last decade because that was where the elite status signals were pointing. Now, those signals have reversed, like a barometer suddenly dropping, and he is changing course with them and attempting to shift the blame to the outgoing Biden administration, which, he told Rogan, pressured him to implement censorship—a convenient excuse at an even more convenient moment....SNIP


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: alivelshi; amnanawaz; aymanmohyeldin; dei; facebook; ilhanomar; internet; magnificent7; markzuckerberg; meta; msnbc; rashidatlaib; socialmedia; wokeism
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1 posted on 01/15/2025 4:45:54 AM PST by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

I certainly hope DEI will DIE. It has gotten absurd.


2 posted on 01/15/2025 4:47:35 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

Nothing will change until this rich snot is jailed for poisoning society......


3 posted on 01/15/2025 4:55:51 AM PST by eeriegeno (Checks and balances??? What checks and balances?)
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To: MtnClimber

How many diverse programmers work for you, Zuck?


4 posted on 01/15/2025 5:06:01 AM PST by ComputerGuy
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To: MtnClimber

The philosophy remains. They’re just removing the offices and officials who operated under the guidelines. As I’ve stated before, they’re removing the headstones but leaving the bodies in place.


5 posted on 01/15/2025 5:15:40 AM PST by CatOwner (Don't expect anyone, even conservatives, to have your back when the SHTF in 2021 and beyond.)
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To: MtnClimber

More a retrenching, I think.

But I’d love to be wrong.


6 posted on 01/15/2025 5:16:34 AM PST by mewzilla (Swing away, Mr. President, swing away!)
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To: MtnClimber

The devil is in the details.

Follow Reagan: trust but verify.

Texas Legislature did same to Uni’s in the state; outlawed DEI. So, my own mal ma mater (sp?) issued memos telling the various programs to rebrand and move within the depts. Legislature issued letters saying: “we see what you did there. We will be auditing in the spring to ensure you comply with both the letter and spirit of OUR LAW!!”


7 posted on 01/15/2025 5:19:18 AM PST by bobbo666
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To: eeriegeno

Exactly. This is just lip service.


8 posted on 01/15/2025 5:23:10 AM PST by AbolishCSEU (Amount of "child" support paid is inversely proportionate to mother's actual parenting of children)
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To: MtnClimber

I don’t trust Zuckerberg for a minute.
Could he have been redpilled?


9 posted on 01/15/2025 5:24:49 AM PST by bk1000 (Banned from Breitbart)
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To: MtnClimber

Why this little creep has so much power is mind blowing. The problem is not censorship, which is also free speech. The problem is the monopoly. We need 10 or 20 facebooks.


10 posted on 01/15/2025 5:35:19 AM PST by jroehl (And how we burned in the camps later - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - The Gulag Archipelago)
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To: MtnClimber
Companies with 'guilty whites and incompetent 'others' that have to compete with companies hiring the 'best and brightest, WILL FAIL.

So the problem will take care of itself if idiot board members don't cut the crap while they're still in business.

11 posted on 01/15/2025 5:36:15 AM PST by GOPJ (AMERICA FOR AMERICANS if anyone wants to live in an overpopulated hellhole they can MOVE there..)
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To: ComputerGuy

Meta has 1000s of programmers named Punjab. To tell them apart they are numbered. Punjab-1, Punjab-2, etc.


12 posted on 01/15/2025 5:52:19 AM PST by DeplorablePaul
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To: MtnClimber

Count me skeptical. I think he’s a political wind surfer until proven otherwise.


13 posted on 01/15/2025 6:02:46 AM PST by BuchananBrigadeTrumpFan (If in doubt, it's probably sarcasm)
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To: BuchananBrigadeTrumpFan

I am skeptical too. I think he just has his finger to the wind.


14 posted on 01/15/2025 6:07:05 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

If they actually fired their DIE ‘political officers’ it means they they’re serious.


15 posted on 01/15/2025 6:40:41 AM PST by wildcard_redneck
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To: ComputerGuy

Any bets that Zuckerberg only fired DEI Americans and then hired DEI Indians on H-1b visas to replace them?


16 posted on 01/15/2025 6:42:46 AM PST by wildcard_redneck
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To: jroehl

Censorship in concert with government authorities is very serious stuff.

It is classic fascism.


17 posted on 01/15/2025 6:48:56 AM PST by cgbg (It is time to pull the Deep State out of the mass media--like ticks from a dog.)
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To: wildcard_redneck
Any bets that Zuckerberg only fired DEI Americans and then hired DEI Indians on H-1b visas to replace them?

Zuck has probably hired as many as anyone.
18 posted on 01/15/2025 6:55:33 AM PST by ComputerGuy
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To: MtnClimber

zuck said facebook does not censor

zuck now says facebook will no longer censor


19 posted on 01/15/2025 7:20:13 AM PST by joshua c
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To: MtnClimber

IF he’s actually doing what he says. Chicks on the right and several other sites have reported that meta is censoring and removing conservative posts as they always have.


20 posted on 01/15/2025 8:49:47 AM PST by montag813
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