How Mark Zuckerberg pivoted meta to the right

How Mark Zuckerberg pivoted meta to the right

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement on Tuesday that he would end professional fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram was the culmination of months of efforts to position the social media giant for conservative pressure from a second Trump administration.

Zuckerberg, once a supporter of a handful of progressive causes including the fight against mass deportations, who repeatedly met with – and sometimes criticized – Barack Obama during his presidency, began dropping hints last summer that he was preparing to do so to rely politically on the support of Donald Trump. a maneuver he is currently performing.

The first hints came in July, when Zuckerberg praised Trump’s reaction to almost being assassinated, saying Trump’s fist raise after the shooting was “one of the sickest things I’ve ever seen in my life.” However, Zuckerberg tempered the praise at the time and said he would not support any presidential candidate.

Also this month, Meta lifted the special restrictions it had placed on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts following the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 – essentially giving Trump a fresh start on the platforms after it suspended and then reinstated.

Further legal action soon followed.

In August, Zuckerberg attacked the Biden administration’s response to Covid-19 misinformation, claiming the government had pressured the company to “censor” content. His criticism was far harsher than his previous characterization of interactions with the government in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, and it was a departure from Meta’s previous rhetoric, which took a hard line against hoaxes and other unscientific health advice early in the pandemic.

At the end of August, Zuckerberg let a personal threat from Trump go unanswered. After Trump released a photo book in which he said Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did “anything illegal” to influence the presidential election, Meta declined to comment.

During the presidential campaign, Meta’s political action committee did not donate to any of the major candidates, although individual Meta staffers donated generously to Vice President Kamala Harris – nearly $2 million, according to the transparency website OpenSecrets. The corporate PAC donated $30,000 each to the Republican and Democratic Senate campaign committees, distributed money to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate, and emphasized support for incumbents in Senate races.

After the November 5 election, Zuckerberg sent congratulations to Trump. Last month, Meta said it donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. And last week, Zuckerberg named a longtime Republican insider, Joel Kaplan, as Meta’s head of global policy, replacing Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister whose record was less conservative than Kaplan’s.

On Monday, Meta announced new members of its board, including Dana White, the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a longtime friend of Trump.

The speed with which Zuckerberg changed his political course was breathtaking to long-time observers of the company.

“Zuck’s announcement is a complete kowtow to Trump and an attempt to catch up with Musk in his race to the bottom,” Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation expert, said on Bluesky, referring to tech billionaire Elon Musk. She is CEO of the American Sunlight Project, which combats disinformation.

A Meta insider said: “Mark is a very centrist leader. He is certainly not a partisan.” The person added, “But he has a cadre of professional political advisers and executives with Republican profiles who are highly valued within the company.”

David Sacks, a venture capitalist and new Trump adviser on cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence, said Zuckerberg’s announcement was a “watershed moment” and he praised Trump.

“Thank you, President Trump, for bringing about this political and cultural realignment,” Sacks said on X.

Zuckerberg, who co-founded his company nearly 21 years ago, is not alone in American business in adapting his policies to the political winds, but his pivot is unique because it is meta to the way Americans live online communicate, occupies a dominant position. Four meta apps – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger – are among the most frequently used internet platforms.

Zuckerberg, 40, has also become friends with some prominent Democrats over the years, including Obama, who visited the headquarters of Meta, then known as Facebook, in 2011.

Zuckerberg and Facebook were in the midst of a crisis when Trump was elected in 2016, battling allegations that fake news on Facebook influenced the election results. In 2020, when Joe Biden won, Zuckerberg told employees that he won fair and square and made a point of loudly affirming the election results and rejecting Trump’s claim that the results were rigged, while also pointing out that Trump received many legitimate votes.

In a five-minute video announcing the latest changes, Zuckerberg cited several reasons for the policy change. He cited a speech he gave at Georgetown University in 2019 when he criticized “traditional gatekeepers in politics or media.” He also pointed to the November election, calling it a “cultural tipping point” for less content moderation.

When asked about Meta’s legal moves over the past six months, a company spokesperson declined to comment but pointed to the Georgetown speech in 2019 as evidence of continuity.

Meta also has specific interests in what policies the new Trump administration adopts, including whether the Federal Trade Commission faces trial in April in an antitrust case involving the company’s purchase of Instagram in 2012 to undo.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zuckerberg is the third richest person in the world with a net worth of $223 billion, behind Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

He has often demonstrated a sensitivity to the direction of political and regulatory pressures. After Facebook announced in 2017 that Russian agents had used the site to influence the 2016 presidential election, the company and its competitors launched a massive effort to block new federal legislation, including announcing voluntary transparency measures such as a public database of ads.

But at times, Zuckerberg seemed surprised by the criticism from the right. In 2020, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, poured $350 million into technology funds and other bipartisan grants to election offices across the country to improve election administration — only to later face sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers despite the nonpartisan nature of the effort. Zuckerberg abandoned the effort for the 2022 election cycle.

According to OpenSecrets, Zuckerberg has donated money to Democratic and Republican campaigns over the years, including in support of former House Speakers Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, and Paul Ryan, a Republican.

Four years ago, as Biden prepared to take office, Meta announced it was hiring a lawyer who worked in the Obama Justice Department, Roy Austin, as vice president for civil rights.

Now Zuckerberg has a growing staff of Republican staffers steering policy at Meta. Kaplan is a former deputy chief of staff in George W. Bush’s White House and before his promotion last week, he accompanied Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance at a photo op at the New York Stock Exchange last month.

Meta’s chief legal officer is Jennifer Newstead, another veteran of the George W. Bush administration who helped push the Patriot Act through Congress, which authorized increased government surveillance after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. She joined Meta in 2019, during Trump’s first term.

Kevin Martin, Meta’s newly promoted vice president for public policy, served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during Bush’s second term.

And last year, Meta expanded its policy team to include Dustin Carmack, a former adviser to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and co-author of Project 2025, a plan that serves as a guide for Trump’s transition team.

Sheryl Sandberg, who was Meta’s most prominent Democrat for years as chief operating officer, left her day-to-day role in 2022. She left the board last year.

There are no longer any prominent Democrats in Meta’s C-suite, although there are a few further down the org chart, including David Ginsberg, a vice president of communications. He previously worked for the Obama and John Kerry presidential campaigns.

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