Meta, formerly Facebook, is restricting the flow of internal information after high-profile leaks, report says

• Meta has changed its company culture to restrict the flow of internal information, per The Verge.
• This follows the leaking of company documents by whistleblower Frances Haugen.

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has shifted its culture to make information less easily accessible to its own staff, according to a new report from The Verge.

The Verge's Alex Heath reported that he had spoken to an undisclosed number of current and former Meta employees over the past month and reviewed posts on Meta's internal message board, Workplace.

Per the report, the shift came after former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen began leaking a trove of company documents in September, which led to the wave of bad PR the company is currently facing. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the leaks painted a "false picture" of the company, and that the documents had been taken out of context.

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Examples of the culture shift in The Verge's report included Meta canceling an internal talk from a researcher about coping with working at a company that is bombarded by bad press. The company's legal and communications department decided there was too great a risk of it leaking, per The Verge.

A second talk about the company's efforts to combat hate speech and bullying was also pulled from the schedule, according to The Verge.

The Verge reported that executives as senior as Nick Clegg, Meta's communications chief, have both slowed and more closely scrutinized the release of work from internal researchers to the wider company. Researchers have reportedly been asked to make sure reports are re-reviewed before they're shared in private groups.

The Verge also reviewed a memo from long-time Meta executive Andrew Bosworth, who is due to take over as the company's chief technology officer next year.

In the memo, per The Verge, Bosworth said the company had previously embraced a corporate value called "Be Open" — but that its growing size meant that was throwing up problems.

"Each of us brings our own context (or lack thereof) to everything we stumble across and as the company grows we naturally have less of a shared understanding. We often may not even have sufficient context to ask the right question. And our misunderstanding can easily compound," Bosworth wrote, according to The Verge's report.

The Verge's report corroborated an earlier report from The New York Times that said Meta had restricted access to messages relating to its Integrity unit — the same unit where Haugen used to work — to reduce the risk of leaks.

A Meta spokesman told Insider: "Since earlier this year, we have been talking about the right model of information sharing for the company, balancing openness with sharing relevant information and maintaining focus.

"This is a work in progress and we are committed to an open culture for the company," they added.