Photograph Source: Maurizio Pesce – CC BY 2.0

When Mark Zuckerberg terminated Meta’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs for hiring and training employees and procuring suppliers in January 2025, he forged “inroads with the incoming Trump administration,” abandoned Meta’s founding ethos of open innovation, and dramatically realigned how the tech giant will now do business, as critics like Bärí A. Williams, former lead counsel for Meta (then Facebook) and creator of its now-dissolved Supplier Diversity program, noted. Zuckerberg’s changes play right into the ultra-conservative presidential handbook, Project 2025, with potentially devastating consequences for the safety of numerous marginalized communities.

The supplier diversity program was meant to accomplish multiple goals, including creating economic opportunities for marginalized communities and mitigating gentrification caused by Facebook’s expanding headquarters into East Palo Alto’s Black and brown communities. However, by incentivizing its employees with $10,000 bonuses to move into East Palo Alto, Facebook increased traffic congestion and disproportionately drove up rents in the area. As a result, many of the city’s historic, working-class population faced evictions and other forced move-outs.

Then, in only a matter of weeks, Meta dismantled Facebook DEI programs that had taken years to build. Zuckerberg, of course, has the prerogative to change his company’s course. However, politically motivated decisions are often made during national swings of the partisan pendulum. In the inevitable event that the pendulum swings back in the opposite direction, Meta will find that its scrapped programs will be hard to recover. “The trust of users,........

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