Meta Cuts Employees Due to Automation Technology

Meta employed 75,945 workers as of June. Now the tech giant is cutting down its ranks as improvements in technology put some employees out of work.

According to a Business Insider report published Thursday, Meta informed employees in its risk division that it was eliminating roles due to advancements in the company’s internal automation and compliance technologies.

Michel Protti, Meta’s chief compliance and privacy officer of product, delivered the news, writing in an internal memo viewed by BI that Meta has been moving away from manual reviews toward automated processes. Now, technology can automatically handle many routine risk-related decisions.

“By moving from bespoke, manual reviews to a more consistent and automated process, we’ve been able to deliver more accurate and reliable compliance outcomes across Meta,” Protti wrote in the memo.

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Standardizing processes means that technology can now handle many everyday risk decisions, allowing human teams to focus on “complex” and “high-impact” tasks, Protti explained.

“As a result, we don’t need as many roles in some areas as we once did,” Protti wrote, without sharing how many positions would be eliminated.

This restructuring affects teams under the Product Risk Program Manager, Shared Services and Global Security & Privacy (GSP) groups.

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Meta spokesperson Thomas Richards confirmed the cuts, telling BI that the changes are part of Meta’s broader effort to “reflect the maturity of our program and innovate faster while maintaining high compliance standards.”

Earlier this week, Meta also laid off 600 employees from the Superintelligence Labs division, its AI arm, as part of a separate streamlining effort led by chief AI officer Alexandr Wang. In an internal memo viewed by BI, Wang wrote that the cuts would help the company make decisions more quickly and that affected employees in North America had been notified as of Wednesday.

“By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang wrote. “It’s never an easy decision to say goodbye to colleagues. These are talented people who have worked extremely hard and contributed to our Al effort.”

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Meta established its Superintelligence Labs in June to work towards “personal superintelligence,” or AI systems personalized for individuals that surpass human capabilities. The team includes new hires poached from Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple and other companies.

After the cuts, Meta’s Superintelligence Labs team has around 3,000 employees, per CNBC.

Meta last cut 3,600 low-performing workers, or 5% of its workforce, in February. The company is the sixth most valuable in the world, with a market capitalization of $1.848 trillion at the time of writing.

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Meta employed 75,945 workers as of June. Now the tech giant is cutting down its ranks as improvements in technology put some employees out of work.

According to a Business Insider report published Thursday, Meta informed employees in its risk division that it was eliminating roles due to advancements in the company’s internal automation and compliance technologies.