Ahead of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, major tech companies based in the US are reconsidering their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes and policies to appease the incoming official.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announced in an internal memo that it will roll back its DEI efforts, citing a shift in the US legal landscape.

Jannelle Gale, the company’s human resources VP, reportedly wrote in the memo that the US Supreme Court’s recent policies have thrown DEI initiatives into doubt, allegedly saying that even the very term DEI is now “charged”.

Gale refers to a 2023 decision made by the US Supreme Court to reverse affirmative action efforts across academic institutions, which traditionally aim to mitigate the effects of systematic discrimination by giving better opportunities to socioeconomically disadvantaged people.

The initiative came into the foray following the Civil Rights movement in the US – there was a major drop in college admissions to minority applicants in top US universities following its dissolvement.

Another DEI Supreme Court case, which alleges ‘reverse discrimination’ – discrimination of the privileged majority – is set to be decided early in 2025, making many businesses fearful of backlash for their DEI initiatives.

Meta’s decision, which has been echoed by Amazon, is just one facet of its new conservative regime as it makes more efforts to appease the incoming anti-‘woke’ president.

The social media giant announced two major changes to its platforms last week, saying it was set to ax its fact-checking programmes across Instagram and Facebook.

While this raised enough alarm bells, its new hate speech guidance also sparked outrage as Meta will now allow users to claim that members of the LGBTQ+ community are mentally ill or unwell.

“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words such as “weird”,” the company’s new guidance reads.

Meta also seems to be bending over backwards to appease Trump specifically, adding one of his ally’s, Dana White, to its board, who is the President and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

This appointment followed two other key conservative Meta hires, as well as a $1 million donation to Trumps inaugural fund.

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Big Tech has long had its teeth in politics, and Meta has managed to balance along the US’s evermore right-swinging pendulum. The supposed allyship between Tesla and X owner and CEO, Elon Musk, and the president elect may have other tech giants scrambling to gain favour with the incoming president.

This is especially important as the US government has only recently made larger forays into tech regulation, following the major US trade decision urging Google to break up its allegedly ‘illegal’ monopoly, and their recent attempts to ban on TikTok.

Apple, on the other hand, has taken a different approach.

The company’s board has urged investors to vote against a new proposal to end its DEI programmes, which was put forth by the National Centre for Public Policy Research (NCPPR).

The NCPPR, a conservative group, said that the policies put Apple at risk of litigation, though Apple says that its “well-established compliance programme” will protect it from any such fallout.