Meta’s HR team is deleting internal employee criticism of new board member, UFC president and CEO Dana White, at the same time that CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced to the world that Meta will “get back to our roots around free expression,” 404 Media has learned. Some employee posts questioning why criticism of White is being deleted are also being deleted.

Monday, Zuckerberg made a post on a platform for Meta employees called Workplace announcing that Meta is adding Dana White, John Elkann, and Charlie Songhurst to the company’s board of directors (Zuckerberg’s post on Workplace was identical to his public announcement). Employee response to this was mixed, according to screenshots of the thread obtained by 404 Media. Some posted positive or joking comments: “Major W,” one employee posted. “We hire Connor [McGregor] next for after work sparring?,” another said. “Joe Rogan may be next,” a third said. A fourth simply said “LOL.”

But other employees criticized the decision and raised the point that there is video of White slapping his wife in a nightclub; White was not arrested and was not suspended from UFC for the domestic violence incident. McGregor, one of the most famous UFC fighters of all time, was held liable for sexual assault and was ordered by a civil court to pay $260,000 to a woman who accused him of raping her in 2018. McGregor is appealing the decision.

“Kind of disheartening to see people in the comments celebrating a man who is on video assaulting his wife and another who was recently convicted of rape,” one employee commented, referring to White and McGregor. “I can kind of excuse individuals for being unaware, but Meta surely did their due diligence on White and concluded that what he did is fine. I feel like I’m on another planet,” another employee commented. “We have completely lost the plot,” a third said.

Several posts critical of White were deleted by Meta’s “Internal Community Relations team” as violating a set of rules called the “Community Engagement Expectations,” which govern internal employee communications.

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One employee posted “Why do critical comments of this announcement keep getting deleted?” “LOL my comment got CEE’d too. Good stuff,” a second posted. A third said “I think it’s particularly fascinating that none of the comments I have seen disappear contained any specifically prohibited content under the CEE and must have fallen under ‘disruptive content’ - and if any criticism of company decisions falls under the ‘disruptive content’ bucket, the future of the company is looking bleak.”

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One employee brought up this apparent disparity: “Given Zuck’s message this morning on decreasing content moderation on our platforms, is that also going to apply internally?”

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“Curious to know if we can expect a similar shift to ‘more speech’ in internal Workplace posts/groups,” another employee asked. “CEE is quite chilling,” another said. “Basically any large scope critical post I make gets at least one message from ICR [Internal Community Relations].”

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