The tech giant Meta has announced a plan to slash its workforce by five per cent in its latest round of performance-based layoffs.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this in an internal memo sighted by Bloomberg on Wednesday.

Mr Zuckerberg confirmed that the layoff may affect no fewer than 3600 positions, stating vacant roles would be backfilled afterwards.

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Mr Zuckerberg said in his note. “We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”

Mr Zuckerberg said only those with Meta long enough to be eligible for performance reviews would be affected. The performance-based cuts are meant to attract the “strongest talents” who can meet the expanding expectations of the company.

The cuts followed significant changes in Meta’s administration and operations ahead of the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th U.S. president on Monday.

Mr Zuckerberg recently announced that Mr Trump’s ally Dana White and two others were on the Meta board, which was described as part of his strategic moves to improve relations with the president-elect.

The social networking giant also ended third-party fact-checkers on Facebook, Threads and Instagram, relying on users to add notes to posts.