Does Meta merge departments to shred staff?
Meta has already stated in recent months that it wants to reduce staff and cut costs as revenue growth begins to slow. Now one of the next moves is to create a single division that moderates both ad content and user posts. All the details
Mark Zuckerberg fears the economic crisis but also the downward trend of revenues from his empire. According to an Axios indiscretion, Meta, which already in recent months had declared its intention to reduce hiring and cut costs, is now merging the business integrity division with the central integrity division.
PREVIOUS GOAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
The specter of the recession and the trend in earnings, as well as the blows inflicted on advertising activity in the field of privacy , had prompted Meta last May to announce unspecified cuts to staff.
In July, meanwhile, the decision was made to reduce the target of hiring engineers by 30% and the chief product officer, Chris Cox, explained that the group was facing "severe times" with "strong" headwinds. .
“If I had to bet, I'd say this could be one of the worst economic downturns we've seen in recent history,” Zuckerberg said in late June.
LICENSE WITH SELF-SELECTION
In addition to hiring less, the CEO of Meta had decided to entrust the streamlining of personnel to self-selection: “Realistically, there are probably a lot of people in the company who shouldn't be here. In part I hope that, by increasing expectations and having more aggressive goals, some of you decide for yourself that this place is not for them and that self-selection will work ”.
THE MERGER HAD ALREADY STARTED
Already in early 2022, streamlining operations had begun by creating a separate product team for data transparency, which included the data transparency center, the open research unit called FORT and CrowdTangle, the internal analytics platform acquired in 2016.
Just a few days ago , the tech giant had eliminated the responsible innovation team, created to address the potential downsides of the company's products.
THE AXIOS SCOOP
Meta has also undergone several restructurings in its content moderation and integrity teams to try to streamline operations and now, according to an internal note obtained by Axios , Zuckerberg's new move to address the difficulties of his Big Tech, is to merge. of two units: that of business integrity, that is the team that moderates the contents of the ads, with the central integrity team, which moderates, instead, the posts of the users.
WHAT IT MEANS (THE OFFICIAL VERSION)
A Meta spokesperson, heard by Axios , confirmed the integration and stated that the company is uniting the two teams "to leverage their shared knowledge and to more effectively and efficiently maintain our commitment to protect and support people and companies through Meta platforms ".
Two other sources also told the news site that the merger of the two departments "will foster efficiency at a time when Meta is trying to cut costs." In addition, "it will combine Meta's customer support activities so that common users and businesses receive the same treatment."
Last month, the company said it was working to improve customer service operations following feedback from its independent oversight committee.
WHAT IT MEANS (THE OFFICIAL VERSION)
The two teams were created separately years ago, at a time when there wasn't much overlap between users and advertisers. Now that, on the other hand, many common users have become creators or manage small businesses through Meta's platforms – observes Axios – there is less division between the two groups.
Zuckerberg's choice, therefore, explains the article, means that "in the end Meta will use the same tools, the same practices and the same systems to moderate all the contents of its platform, be it ads or organic posts by users. common".
And, therefore, Meta will have to adhere to the same content moderation standards for both types of content.
HOW THE NEW SINGLE TEAM WILL BE
Axios then reports that the new team, about 3,000 people, will be under the leadership of Guy Rosen, Meta's chief information security officer, who already oversaw the division responsible for the content posted by users.
For the moment, no positions have been eliminated in either team but, according to an Axios source, the positions of employees who decide to leave their jobs after the reorganization "most likely will not be filled".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/meta-fonde-reparti-per-tagliuzzare-il-personale/ on Thu, 15 Sep 2022 08:34:58 +0000.