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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29203 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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Meta ends its DEI program (internal memo, Ars Technica verification). The company is disbanding its DEI team. It will no longer use "diverse slate hiring" (intentional seeking-out of candidates of particular underrepresented minorities). It is "sunsetting our supplier diversity efforts", which probably means that they will no longer privilege minority/women-owned suppliers.

It is ending the perception that it has representation goals. Yes that's convoluted, but how else does one interpret this statement:

"We previously ended representation goals for women and ethnic minorities. Having goals can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender. While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it."

The stated reason for the shift in policy:

The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics.

That is, they expect to no longer be sued based on "disparate impacts", but possibly sued based on preferential treatments. This... makes sense for a company to do. McDonalds is doing it; Walmart did it more than a month ago.

I expect more companies to follow suit (quietly or loudly). My question is: are there any corporate for-profit true-believers who will stick with the DEI initiatives? Ben and Jerry's, maybe?

Trump will decide whether or not to enforce the TikTok ban (yes, it may happen the day before he takes office, but presumably if his justice department says ‘we won’t take any enforcement action’ then in effect the ban won’t happen, the same way that they aren’t sending the FBI to arrest every legal weed dealer in Colorado).

TikTok being banned and that ban being enforced (meaning no US advertisers can buy TikTok ads directed at Americans) likely leads to billions of dollars in bonus ad spend for Meta given they control all competing platforms except Snapchat. Ad budgets are mostly fixed, cut out one platform with hundreds of millions of American users and existing platforms with the same reach all profit.

You don't consider X a competing platform to Instagram, Tiktok etc.?

People boycotting meta over lack of DEI are not going to suddenly go over to X.

I was asking in the context of advertisers redirecting their TikTok ad spend to competing social networks if TikTok is no longer a viable platform.

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