Meta Finally Cares About Privacy. Just Not Yours.
Photo by Mariia Shalabaieva @maria_shalabaieva on Unsplash
Meta has finally done it! They’ve come out and not only publicly declared that privacy is important but taken action to ensure that privacy is preserved. The twist (if you hadn’t guessed) is that they’ve only care because it is about their corporate privacy.
You couldn’t make it up (don’t worry, I didn’t, this really happened).
The Leaks Are Leaking
Meta has decided that privacy is important, but unfortunately not for their users. That means they are entirely comfortable collecting, sharing and monetizing your clicks, messages and drunken college photos but have very strong opinions about their own information.
Because this week Meta announced that it had fired roughly 20 employees for leaking company confidential information. Rather brilliantly, the information about the hirings is only available because it has also been leaked.
Someone was so dissatisfied with the goings-on at Meta that they leaked comments from a company-wide all-hands.
Chaos Ensues
Meta’s recent obsession with hunting down leakers comes after a series of embarrassing internal revelations hit the press. Reports have detailed unannounced product plans, chaotic internal meetings, and Zuckerberg’s latest tech bro ideas (spoiler: more AI, fewer humans).
After the leak from the all-hands meeting, CTO Andrew Bosworth warned employees about leaking company information. Bosworth complained that employees think leaking will pressure leadership into changing things, while that “the opposite is more likely.”
So, to summarize this situation:
Employees leaked that Meta is mismanaged
Meta gave a mismanaged response
A mismanaged employee leaked the response
Employees were fired, which was also leaked
This Meta drama explains what is going on at the company. I wonder if when it rains the roof leaks too?
Protecting Secrets, Not Your Data
Take a moment to appreciate the hypocrisy of the situation. Meta has been responsible for some of the most catastrophic data leaks in tech history. Cambridge Analytica, political ad scandals, massive breaches exposing millions of user records.
When an employee dares to leak a meeting transcript, it’s DEFCON 1 in Menlo Park. Compare this to your data leaking, as Meta will simply remind you that you read their privacy policy before clicking “Accept”, making this a you problem.
The Impact
Things aren’t exactly thriving inside Meta right now. The company has already gone through multiple rounds of layoffs, gutting entire teams and ridding the company of thousands of employees because they were “low-performers”. They’ve also cut diversity programs and gutted content moderation, all while sinking billions into an AI strategy that seems to involve replacing employees with chatbots.
And now? They’re firing people for speaking out about the situation at the company.
This is what corporate self-destruction in real time looks like. Because if history tells us anything, nothing makes employees more loyal, motivated, and tight-lipped than firing their colleagues for speaking up.
What’s Next?
Imagine working on a simple JIRA ticket at Meta. You don’t want to complain about the ill-defined nonsensical requirements in case you’re exposed as a “low performer”.
If someone’s behavior upsets you in a meeting you think better of saying something, in case that’s not “male energy”.
They’re probably measuring your productivity in commits per day while simultaneously talking up their special culture if this plays out anything like how this has worked in my previous experience.
Because for now, the company seems content with scaring employees into silence, but there’s the problem. Nothing breeds more leaks than corporate paranoia. You think employees were leaking before? Just wait until they start leaking out of spite.
Conclusion
Meta has built a business empire on data exploitation, treating user privacy as a quaint relic of the past. That thinking has come to bite them, as they think their own secrets are more important than the privacy of their customers.
But when it comes to their own internal secrets? Now it’s serious. The company moves into protection mode and starts to value secrecy over trust, paranoia over morale, and corporate control over common sense.
The reality is, that employees leak because they don’t trust leadership. And given that leadership is actively making Meta a worse place to work, that’s not going to change anytime soon.
That’s not good for you if you work at Meta. It’s not good for your morale or productivity. We all know Meta built its empire on privacy (or lack thereof) so perhaps it’s not surprising what has happened, and it really is time for software engineers to look elsewhere.