Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Meta Announces More Staff Layoffs, This Time In Oversight Board To Better Streamline Work

Meta’s own Oversight Board, which the company created to moderate content across its many apps is said to carry out a number of layoffs as mentioned in a new report by The Washington Post today.

This decision of more layoffs that are envisioned is designed to help the board better streamline its work. And those impacted would be the division’s support staff working in the research domain.

The board entails close to 22 members and a team of support staff who work toward assisting them. The goal here seems to be more related to Meta making the right decisions in terms of content moderation through Facebook, Threads, WhatsApp, Instagram, and beyond.

For now, the board is yet to delineate how many members it would like to lose on this front how many cuts it anticipates, and from where. But it did reveal how many staff would be sent packing for home. However, it was revealed that the layoff process was not something unusual as it was designed to allow for the evolution of the board.

The Board today is said to be one of the top means of moderating content on Meta in a world where competition is at its peak and viewers want to make sure the posts they generate are read and not blocked for no defined reason. But Meta says its goal is to ensure all content that is in line with its policy gets the right viewership.

Meta hopes to commit to its success and also hopes that the Oversight Board can limit costs so that it functions in a manner that’s quite similar to other tech giants in the industry today.

Remember, the company is not exactly doing its best in terms of revenue, although it did reveal decent figures in its earnings report recently.

From what we can decipher here, a net income of $12.3 billion was rolled out in Q1 of 2024. Now we’re not sure how much access the Oversight Board has to do this mega fund to moderate content online or how the funding would be carried out in the future. But change is inevitable.

The Board mentioned how it strongly feels about helping Meta attain a strong earnings report in the next quarter and that’s why it’s making the necessary changes to give rise to this. And while no details on the financial front were revealed, we can see how things are being done to allow for more growth.

Speaking to The Post recently, Meta’s head for communications added that the company is more inclined toward showing support to the Board despite the huge number of layoffs.

Meta has always held the Board in high respect, no matter what decision it makes, calling it an integral member of its organization. A whopping 53 cases were highlighted in the previous year where decisions were reversed and Meta respected that.

Many of those had to do with deepfake videos generated through AI means including those linked to real women portrayed without clothing that really gave rise to a worrisome notion. While the firm did end up removing one of those dubbed to be deepfakes, it did not remove the other and many flagged that, and therefore it was removed.

Some decisions are certainly controversial but Meta continues to trust its Board and vows to follow suit in the future too. What do you think about Meta’s Oversight Board? Let us know your thoughts on the decisions it makes.


Read next: The Smartwatch Market Braces for Disruption in 2024
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

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