Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

An engineer at Meta publicly blasted his company after it reminded its employees that they are not to openly talk about Friday’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which paves the way for some states to ban abortion.

The parent company of Facebook and Instagram sent a message to employees which emphasized the “strong guardrails around social, political and sensitive conversations” in the office, according to the New York Times.

Ambroos Vaes, an engineer at the company, wrote a blog post on LinkedIn criticizing management’s edict.

“Today is a massive regression in women’s rights (and human rights) for the United States,” Vaes wrote in the LinkedIn post. “It’s been a long time coming, but this really feels like the beginning of something extremely dangerous and ridiculous.”

He added: “What saddens me as well is that internally at Meta we are not allowed to discuss it.”

Vaes wrote that the company has moderators who “swiftly remove posts or comment mentioning abortion” from Workplace, the internal communications platform.

According to Vaes, employees aren’t even allowed to post links to a Facebook message by Sheryl Sandberg, the outgoing chief operating officer of Meta, who condemned the high court’s ruling.

“On top of that, Meta’s continued investment into utter ridiculous dangerous fads like NFTs…mean that I have never been as disappointed with the company I work for as I am now,” he wrote.

“The reason I stay at Meta is no longer because I believe our products have some good in them,” according to Vaes. “It’s so I can speak up loudly, internally and externally, to hopefully cause at least some change for the better.”

“I hope others will join me in doing so.”

Managers at the company pointed to a May 12 memo that was circulated after the online news site Politico obtained a leaked draft copy of Friday’s ruling.

Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.

Please provide a valid email address.

By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Thanks for signing up! Never miss a story.

An executive at Meta Platforms told employees in May that they are not allowed to discuss the contentious issue during office hours due to “an increased risk” that the company would be perceived as a “hostile work environment.”

The policy, which was initially put in place three years ago but was only reported recently, bans employees from offering “opinions or debates about abortion being right or wrong, availability or rights of abortion, and political, religious, and humanitarian views on the topic.”

The tech news site cited language from an internal note titled “Respectful Communication Policy,” which was first rolled out by the company in 2019.

The policy has irked employees, according to the Times, which reported that some workers expressed their frustration with the policy directly to managers.

Messages about the subject were removed from team chats, according to the Times, while managers were told to listen empathetically to employee concerns while remaining neutral on the topic.