San Francisco, Dec 7 (IANS): Meta (formerly Facebook) has reportedly told its employees not to discuss sensitive issues like abortion, gun control, pending legislation and vaccine efficacy at workplace.

According to a report in Fortune, citing a leaked internal memo, Meta has banned employees from discussing "very disruptive" topics, including abortion, gun rights, and vaccines as part of new "community engagement expectations".

"As Mark mentioned recently, we need to make a number of cultural shifts to help us deliver against our priorities," read the company memo.

"We're doing this to ensure that internal discussions remain respectful, productive, and allow us to focus. This comes with the trade-off that we'll no longer allow for every type of expression at work, but we think this is the right thing to do for the long-term health of our internal community," it added.

According to an earlier document that was leaked earlier this year, Meta had said that "discussing abortion openly at work has a heightened risk of creating a hostile work environment."

Meta had banned using the word 'abortion' at its internal employee messaging platform called Workplace.

According to a report in The Verge in May this year, a Meta executive told employees they are prohibited from talking about abortion on Workplace as per their policy.

Janelle Gale, Meta's VP of HR, reportedly told employees at a meeting that that abortion was "the most divisive and reported topic" by employees on Workplace.

Employees slammed the move, saying the policy is at odds with other policies at the company that allow discussion on 'Black Lives Matter', immigration and trans rights.

The policy banning discussion of abortion had caused division among the Meta employees, the report noted.