Meta’s risk review team, responsible for auditing privacy and integrity, faces significant cuts in favor of automation.
Chief Privacy Officer Michel Protti stated that automated processes aim to deliver more consistent and accurate compliance outcomes.
Critics inside the company question whether automation can fully replace human oversight on sensitive user data.
Meta’s latest round of layoffs has affected around 700 employees across its artificial intelligence and risk review divisions. With this, the company aims to accelerate product development and streamline internal operations, as per the internal memo shared with employees, as reviewed by The New York Times.
SurveyPreviously, we reported that Alexandr Wang, Meta’s Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, informed staff that roughly 600 positions within the AI division are being fired. He further stated that this move is taken to speed up decision-making and allow teams to move faster on building new AI products.
However, sources told The Times that the layoffs extend beyond AI. More than 100 employees from Meta’s risk review organization, a group tasked with ensuring compliance with global privacy regulations and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), were also laid off. For those unversed, the risk team plays a central role in maintaining Meta’s adherence to the FTC’s 2019 consent decree, which followed a $5 billion fine over Facebook’s mishandling of user data.
In a memo shared by Michel Protti, Meta’s Chief Privacy Officer, it was confirmed that the company is reducing headcount in the risk subsidiary and shifting from manual privacy reviews to automated systems. “We’ve moved toward a more consistent and automated process that improves compliance and accuracy,” Protti said in a memo, as accessed by the report.
Insiders, however, described the move as a “gutting” of the department responsible for privacy and integrity reviews. As per the reports, the laid-off employees worked in Meta’s London office. Critics within the company expressed doubts that automation could replace human oversight, especially in matters involving sensitive user data.
This is not the first time Meta has fired employees in favour of automation. The company has gradually incorporated systems into the risk assessments over the past year, classifying updates as low risk handled by automated tools or high risk, which still requires manual review.
These layoffs come at a time when CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues a multi-year restructuring campaign to make Meta leaner and more efficient amid growing competition from OpenAI and other AI companies. Back in August, Meta reorganised its AI operations into four divisions- FAIR (fundamental research), TBD Labs (advanced superintelligence research), product development, and infrastructure.
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Ashish Singh
Ashish Singh is the Chief Copy Editor at Digit. He's been wrangling tech jargon since 2020 (Times Internet, Jagran English '22). When not policing commas, he's likely fueling his gadget habit with coffee, strategising his next virtual race, or plotting a road trip to test the latest in-car tech. He speaks fluent Geek. View Full Profile
