Big tech companies are sweeping some job positions within their organizations in order to adapt to the challenging economic climate globally. Meta recently performed another round of layoffs that reportedly affected 6,000 employees. Now, a report claims some individuals included in these job cuts were people responsible for Meta’s new Facebook tool for third-party fact-checkers.
According to CNBC, the tool would allow fact-checkers to include comments on certain articles flagged as questionable. The report added that Meta had been developing the tool for six months before stopping it this year during its testing. Meta didn’t share any comment about revelation. However, as noted by Neowin, CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned the same concepts and functions in some of the tools the company had already been developing, resulting in redundant projects. It is unknown if this is the case for this layoff of the team handling the said tool, but some might still find it concerning since misinformation remains a trouble on Facebook.
To recall, Meta has been combatting fake news on its platform for years now. However, propaganda and fake news remain visible in different corners of the platform, and it seems the battle won’t stop anytime soon. As such, knowing that the company is making cuts on one of its most crucial Facebook teams is a bit disappointing.
Meta, nonetheless, is not the only company making significant decisions like this in these times. Companies like Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon, and more also announced a round of layoffs to their employees, and they also included some teams that could be considered crucial for their businesses. For instance, Twitter laid off its communication team for the press, which is why the company continues to respond with a poo emoji when asked for comments about different reports. Microsoft also let go of its “ethics and society” team dedicated to guiding the company to ensure responsible and ethical AI product designs. The software giant’s reason behind this, however, was reportedly aimed at pushing faster AI-based product releases to the public.
