Meta told investors on Thursday that it remains committed to building “an inclusive workplace” full of “cognitive diversity,” even as the social media company moves to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The statement was part of an annual earnings filing Meta made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in which it removed mentions of DEI-related “learning and development courses” for employees, as well as statistics on the percentage of staff who identify as disabled, LGBTQ+, or from other underrepresented backgrounds.

“In early 2025, we announced changes to our diversity programs in light of the shifting legal and policy landscape,” Meta wrote in the filing. “We will continue to work to build an inclusive workplace where we can leverage our collective cognitive diversity to build the best products and make the best decisions for the global community we serve.”

The filing, known as a 10-K, maintains language from Meta’s 2023 version about how “a broad range of knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, and perspectives” leads to cognitive diversity and “fuels innovation.” The world’s biggest social media company disclosed it has about 74,000 employees globally, up 10 percent from a year ago. Overall, Meta said it grew its daily active users by 5 percent to 3.35 billion in 2024, while sales increased by 22 percent to over $164 billion.

Two current Meta employees told WIRED they are still upset about the DEI rollbacks announced earlier this month and believe many of their colleagues share the same sentiments. Janelle Gale, the company’s vice president for human resources, said at the time that Meta was eliminating a program that aimed to ensure candidates from underrepresented groups in the tech industry weren’t overlooked in its hiring practices. Cuts were also announced to efforts that promoted Meta working with a diverse slate of outside vendors, such as businesses owned by military veterans or women, as well as to training programs designed to engender respect in the workplace among people with different backgrounds and abilities.

Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton declined to comment on the revisions to its SEC filing. The company did not immediately respond to a separate request for comment on the concerns raised by some employees.

In a note to staff earlier this month, Gale cited the changing US legal landscape that is “signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI.” She added that the term had “become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others."

Some Meta employees say they have yet to notice any impacts internally. “I’m not convinced they are going to do anything at all. Could just remove mention of it and move on,” one staffer says. But the changes, which followed the relaxation of Meta’s hate speech policies for content shared on Instagram and Facebook, remain a constant source of discussion among workers, according to one of the employees.

Meta employees typically vote on which questions executives should address at companywide meetings. Ahead of such a gathering scheduled for Thursday, several of the most-endorsed questions were related to DEI. But Meta leadership have told employees that the popularity of a certain question no longer guarantees that it will be answered by company leadership, according to one of the employees. The New York Times earlier reported the change.

A number of US companies, including in the tech industry, removed mentions of diversity goals and programs in their annual filings about a year ago amid growing public criticism of the initiatives in the form of civil lawsuits and pressure from activist investors. A new round of cutbacks have been announced by retailers, restaurants, manufacturers, and tech developers as President Donald Trump returned to the White House this month.

Trump has repeatedly criticized DEI policies and programs, calling them “nonsense” and “discriminatory.” After he was inaugurated on January 20, Trump quickly moved to end DEI programs at agencies across the federal government.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has sought to warm his once-frosty relationship with the president over the past few months. On Wednesday, Meta and Trump reached an agreement to settle a lawsuit Trump filed over the temporary suspension of his user account after the January 6 Capitol insurrection, according to a federal court filing. Meta agreed to pay about $25 million, with most of the funds going toward Trump’s future presidential library, The Wall Street Journal reported. Dani Lever, a Meta spokesperson, confirmed the reporting to WIRED. Trump’s attorneys in the case did not respond to requests for comment.

Zuckerberg didn’t acknowledge the settlement on the company’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, but did applaud the president. “We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad,” he said. “And I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unwind.”

At Meta, the effect of the DEI cuts may be muted, in part, because the company has been working on trimming them for some time behind the scenes, according to a former Meta employee directly familiar with the changes. “It’s been a slow, painful death,” they say. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, then chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg spearheaded the company’s increased commitments to diversity, including commissioning an internal civil rights audit. In its 2022 diversity report, Meta noted that it had doubled the number of women and Black staff members since 2019 as part of its diversity goals.

With Sandberg’s support, the former Meta employee says, “there was like this huge rush of energy to make a difference.” But in July 2022, Sandberg announced her departure from day-to-day operations at the company. Around that same time, the tech giant announced that it would start identifying teams to let go during upcoming widespread layoffs, which took place several months later. The eventual cuts affected some 11,000 people and were the first blow to Meta’s progress on diversity, the former employee alleges.

“Managers who were on these DEI teams were forced to either convert to non-manager roles or move to other teams that weren’t DEI. Teams with DEI in their names were disbanded,” the former employee says. They further allege that after the layoffs, Meta stopped hosting quarterly leadership meetings to discuss progress on DEI goals.

Asked about these allegations, Meta’s Clayton says the layoffs affected employees across the company.

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Diversity advocates maintain that investing in DEI programs helps businesses perform better financially. Some companies, including Microsoft, have not announced recent changes to DEI programs or amended related sections in their SEC filings. This week, Netflix, one of the first major tech companies to publish its fourth quarter earnings report, bolstered its section on diversity. The company now says that it trains not only its recruiters, but also “our people leaders” on hiring “more inclusively.”

The streaming giant continues to state that diversity in the workplace is important to attracting subscribers. “We want more people and cultures to see themselves reflected on screen—so it’s important that our employee base is diverse and represents the communities we serve,” Netflix explains in its SEC filing. The company, which employs about 14,000 people, declined to further comment.