‘A Culture of Fear and Censorship’: Letter to Meta

The following letter was shared with The Crimeson by a former Meta employee, who was fired in June 2024 for organizing against Meta’s censorship of Palestine on Facebook, Instagram, and in the workplace. This letter was sent to the head of DEI at Meta in January.

Dear Maxine,

Happy New Year. I hope you were able to spend it with family and friends and that it was filled with love and joy.

I am writing to you to further convey what my Metamates have been expressing directly to you - the intense turmoil that our community at Meta has been going through.

I am using my personal email, because as you are probably aware my Workplace access was revoked and I was put “under investigation” after we tried to exercise our rights to organize against discriminatory working conditions and I helped circulate a letter that collected over 450 signatures in a few hours. We demanded acknowledgement, support, and transparent action on biases and censorship experienced both internally and externally on our platforms.

Instead there is silence and we continue to receive no support from leadership. It's been 3 weeks since our letter was taken down by leadership and no one has bothered to even acknowledge it. I, and many of my colleagues, have been fairly vocal in speaking up and voicing our concerns to various leaders at Meta over the past 3 months but there has been no actions or measurable results from leadership.

We've instead had to figure out how to secretly build community ourselves to support each other at this most difficult time in our lives. Some, including Amal Lozi and Islam Hassan, have quit as we feel the pain of disconnect between DEI claims and reality. Some have lost tens of family members in Gaza and are mourning silently at work, fearful of mentioning Palestine at this company and losing their jobs. Many of us are left in despair at the mounting biases and censorship of Palestine content on our platforms.

And some of us are only strengthening our resolve to protect and support each other. We are further committing to collectively working together to make Meta better so that we can do better for the world.

Just saying you hear us is not enough anymore. It's been 3 months and we deserve more. How are you assessing how affected employees at Meta are doing? What are the actions and results you are driving in response to our concerns? How will you measure your success?

Have you created any surveys to see how this is impacting our ability to work? I created a quick survey in the Palestinians@ and Muslims@ group simply asking "Are you considering leaving Meta?" Many people responded with "yes", citing distress at biases, discrimination, and censorship. You can go to my post and take a look at the results (if CEE hasn't already taken it down). The letter that I circulated also collected nearly 100 personal testimonials from employees expressing various degrees of discrimination they've experienced.

Have you issued any public statements expressing your acknowledgement of the 30,000 Palestinians killed and the 1.9 million displaced since Oct 7? Have you expressed your condolences to the Palestinian community by directly addressing them in their Workplace group? We are not allowed to speak on Workplace openly the way you leaders are able to. We can hardly post anything in our Muslims@ or Palestinians@ Workplace groups, and some of my colleagues have asked what the point of even having those groups is if we can't use it to support each other during this most difficult time.

Have you thought about hosting a community vigil to actually show your support for Palestinian colleagues that have collectively lost hundreds of family members? We've been trying to organize one since our Nov 10th one was canceled last minute and we are shut down from being able to organize any check-ins or vigils. We can't even ask for prayers for lost family members killed in Gaza on Workplace. Just yesterday, posts from 2 colleagues asking for prayers for their killed family members were taken down from our Muslims@ group by CEE.

Shouldn't this be your job to organize support for us?

Maxine, I believe this is a turning point in history. The Palestinian cause is uncovering many deep-seated issues in this country that tie back to the same concepts of colonialism, racism, and capitalism prioritized over the collective good of humanity. We need to be louder and demand change at a faster rate than we've yet been able to accomplish in this country. Out of 23 execs, why is there no other black person besides you as the head of DEI (who likely had to be black for appearances)? Why are there only 8 women? How many minorities are on the team? I think we need to reassess the metrics we use to truly measure diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Palestinian injustice is one that mirrors the one experienced in the history of many other communities.

We are not working at just some company. We are working at Meta, a company with arguably the most power to sway public opinion. What we allow to proliferate on our platforms shapes the narrative of this world we occupy. And unfortunately it is a world full of rampant racism and discrimination - what are we going to do to play our part in amplifying the voices of minorities and the oppressed and bringing ALL communities in the world closer together?

I came to Meta because I had been searching for a company that was aligned with my personal mission statement of building community and bridging gaps between people from different walks of life - i.e bringing the world closer together. I have met the most amazing humans here that also came to do work for the betterment of this world. I hope you too can be one of those people Maxine.

Sincerely,
[REDACTED]