Meta has launched a new round of layoffs affecting 10% of its global workforce, approximately 8,000 people, according to Reuters. The cuts began on Wednesday and are expected to occur in three phases, starting at 4 a.m. local time for those affected.
According to a report by Business Insider, employees affected in the first wave include members of the integrity team—responsible for removing harmful content and hate speech—as well as members of the cybersecurity team and the content design department.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed to Al Jazeera that U.S. employees will receive 16 weeks of severance pay, plus two additional weeks for each year they worked at the company.
In addition to the layoffs, the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram said it will cancel plans to hire 6,000 people and reassign 7,000 other employees to roles related to artificial intelligence workflows.
The move comes amid reports of declining morale at the company led by Mark Zuckerberg, following the implementation of an AI-powered employee monitoring program aimed at training Meta's own AI models—a point of contention with workers, according to The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reported that more than 1,500 people had signed a petition asking the company not to collect their data.
This is part of a series of issues affecting morale, with a policy employee speaking anonymously to Wired saying that low morale is partly because the U.S. workforce is “being used to train AI models that will replace them.” Another concern is the reduction in spending on employees, including cuts to annual salary increases and a drop in average total compensation of nearly $30,000.
Zuckerberg, the world's sixth-richest person according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is not shy about investing in business. However, that spending is focused on AI development, including the Meta Superintelligence initiative. Capital expenditures are forecast to reach $125 billion to $145 billion this year, more than double the 2025 level.
“The way to think about the investment is that we are betting on individual things that people care about, and people will become more important in the future,” Zuckerberg said during an earnings call in April.
A recent Goldman Sachs survey found that AI-related layoffs account for more than 16,000 salary cuts per month this year, as tech giant Cisco also announced it would cut about 4,000 employees. Meta shares rose 0.1% in midday trading.
