In late May, Meta invited New York staff to what it called a “summery showcase” to learn about clubs across the company. Its promotional poster featured colorful slushies and watermelon desserts.
But when a club for Muslim workers revealed plans to spend $200 in company funds to serve nine dozen cupcakes in watermelon colors at the event, Meta management called the offering disruptive and demanded the group go another route—such as “traditional Muslim sweets,” a staffer overseeing internal community relations wrote in a chat to an organizer. “Watermelon references or imagery should not be included as part of materials or giveaways (e.g. cupcakes).”
The dispute over workplace treats, which two employees described to WIRED and a third posted about publicly on Instagram, is emblematic of the deep ruptures carved across the tech industry by the ongoing war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
Watermelon for decades has been a stand-in for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation because its colors match the Palestinian flag. The fruit’s symbolic usage has grown since the latest fighting broke out last October. Jewish and Israeli tech workers have felt targeted as pro-Palestinian rhetoric and symbols sometimes get interspersed with what they view as antisemitic or anti-Zionist hate.
Meta deemed the planned watermelon cupcakes a violation of its ban on workplace discussions about war or statehood, though its New York cafeteria served fresh watermelon slices the day of the club fair and many times since. In the end, green cupcakes with pink frosting and black pearl topping (which didn’t look much like watermelon) were served.
“I am deeply concerned and tired of the exorbitant internal censorship at Meta, that is now hinging on absurdity,” Saima Akhter, a data scientist at Meta involved in the proposed cupcake offering, wrote on Instagram on May 29 after the company squashed the plan.
She is among 15 Muslim and Arab workers across multiple tech companies who tell WIRED or expressed on social media that incidents like the cupcake dispute have left them feeling unsupported by their employers. They worry this has translated into poor product decisions that harm some users. “How can I trust that we as a company can moderate content on our platforms equitably for our users, when I see how we moderate content internally—in a discriminatory and absurd manner,” Akhter wrote in her post.
Meta fired Akhter two weeks later, which two sources say makes her one of at least four pro-Palestinian employees it let go since October 7 for various internal policy violations. Akhter declined to comment for this story, but in a public post on Instagram she said that Meta fired her for making a personal copy of a 47-page internal document compiled by employees about allegedly biased treatment of Palestine-related content on the company’s services. It described translation errors that went unaddressed, AI-generated WhatsApp stickers that portrayed Palestinians as terrorists, the disabling of users’ pro-Palestinian fundraisers, and discrepancies between how the company responded to the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza, a former employee says.
Meta also declined to comment for this story. But in a previously unreported company-wide message from June 4 seen by WIRED, Meta’s chief diversity officer, Maxine Williams, wrote that the tech giant “decided to limit discussions around topics that have historically led to disruptions in the workplace, regardless of the importance of those topics—this includes content related to war and statehood. Some topics are, simply put, off-limits.” She wrote that Meta had considered the importance of personal expression and supporting or educating colleagues, but “landed on policies that prioritize conversation … that can be discussed without disturbance or distress.”
Content retrieved from: https://www.wired.com/story/meta-palestine-employees-watermelon-cupcakes-censorship/.
