Get the latest tech news

How Watermelon Cupcakes Kicked Off an Internal Storm at Meta

Arab and Muslim workers at Meta allege that its response to the crisis in Gaza is one-sided and out of hand. “It makes me sick that I work for this company,” says one employee.

But in a previously unreported company-wide message from June 4 seen by WIRED, Meta’s chief diversity officer, Maxine Williams, wrote that the tech giant “decided to limit discussions around topics that have historically led to disruptions in the workplace, regardless of the importance of those topics—this includes content related to war and statehood. Taking it as a sign of the uphill battle they face, the employees recently seized on a photograph on Instagram showing Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta’s Global Business Group, posing beside Liora Rez, founder and executive director of StopAntisemitism. An employee asked for explanation in an internal forum with over 11,000 members, drawing a reply from Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, who wrote that polarizing discussions about “regions or territories that are unrecognized” had in part required revisiting planning and oversight of all sorts of activities.

Get the Android app