Facebook has decided to cancel all physical events involving more than 50 people through June 2021. The announcement was made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on a Facebook post. Facebook has already canceled its F8 developer conference due to the pandemic.
“Guidance from health experts is that it won’t be advisable to have large groups of people get together for a while. Given this, we’re canceling any large physical events we had planned with 50 or more people through June 2021.”, wrote Zuckerberg.
In the same post, Zuckerberg says some of these events will be made virtual but didn’t detail the plans just yet. Oculus Connect, however, is confirmed to be moved online. “In light of the evolving public health risks related to COVID-19, we’ve decided to shift Oculus Connect 7 to a digital format later this year.”, said Oculus in a blog post.
Facebook is not the only company that has taken efforts to cancel physical events for the next year beforehand. Microsoft has already confirmed its plans to move all internal and external events online until July 2021.
Like a majority of tech companies across the world, Facebook encourages its employees to work from home during this time of crisis. Zuckerberg says the company urges a vast majority of Facebook employees to continue working from home at least until May.
Even when the workforce gets back in track, Zuckerberg says employees in a “vulnerable population” may be permitted to work from home at least through the summer. However, employees working on content moderation and review in areas like counter-terrorism or suicide and self-harm prevention, engineers working on complex and internal projects are expected to be back in the office sooner, considering the nature of their job.
