Legal Defense Fund exits Meta civil rights advisory group over DEI changes
On Friday, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) announced its decision to exit Meta’s external civil rights advisory group due to its concerns over Meta’s content moderation and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) policy changes.In January, Meta made a series of sweeping changes, including ending its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, getting rid of its factcheckers and changing its content moderation policies.These changes, which some saw as aligning Meta with the then incoming Trump administration, informed the LDF’s decision to leave the civil rights advisory group.That month, following Meta’s decision to its changes, the LDF joined a coalition of other civil rights organisations that were part of Meta’s external civil rights advisory group to express discontent with the company’s decision.“These changes are devastating for free expression because they will subject members of protected groups to more attacks, harassment, and harm, driving them off Meta’s services, impoverishing conversations, eliminating points of view, and silencing dissenting and oft-censored voices,” the companies wrote in a 14 January letter to Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
“Meta has apparently entirely failed to consider the chilling effect of its policy changes – and the result will be more self-censorship, not less,”Those concerns are still crucial for the LDF,“I am deeply disturbed and disappointed by Meta’s announcement on January 7, 2025, of irresponsible changes to the content moderation policies on its platforms that pose grave risks to the health and safety of Black communities and risk further destabilizing our republic,” the LDF associate director counsel Todd A Cox wrote in a letter dated 11 April,“For nearly a decade, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc,(LDF) has invested a great deal of time and resources working with Meta as part of an informal committee advising the company on civil rights issues.
Yet Meta made these content moderation policy changes without consulting or warning this group, and many of the changes directly conflict with guidance from LDF and partners.As a result, LDF can no longer in good conscience participate as part of Meta’s civil rights advisory committee.”The LDF also took issue with Meta’s decision to roll back its DEI policies.Before Meta’s January decision, the company reported success with its DEI initiatives: the company doubled the number of Black and Hispanic employees in the US two years ahead of its goal.Per a statement, the LDF is concerned that reversing DEI policies “could reinforce discriminatory barriers to employment at Meta and further exacerbate the potential for harm to Black communities using Meta’s platforms”.
In in a separate letter to Meta, also dated 11 April, Cox wrote: “While Meta has altered its policies, its obligations under federal civil rights laws are unchanged,Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other civil rights laws prohibit discrimination in the workplace, including disparate treatment, workplace policies that have an unfair disproportionate effect, and hostile work environment,Nor have the Trump administration’s false attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs changed the legality of these efforts,If Meta fails its antidiscrimination obligations due to the absence of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs, it exposes itself to further legal liability,”In a statement, Cox said that “the grave impacts of Meta’s policy changes cannot be understated”.
“Our country is in a perilous moment,” he said,“Meta’s changes exacerbate the risks to the health and safety of our communities,We hope that Meta reconsiders these policy changes,At minimum, we hope that Meta will evaluate whether the Community Notes system effectively reduces user engagement with false content,We also hope that Meta publicly reports the hateful posts on its platform and publicly discloses how the policy changes impact the number of posts that are reported and removed.
To this end, we hope Meta will cooperate with the various scholars collecting this data and evaluating its impact on users.”Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
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