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Mark Zuckerberg announce this week that Meta will change its moderation policy to allow more “free speech,” was widely seen as the company's latest attempt to appease President-elect Donald Trump.
Meta, more than any of its Silicon Valley counterparts, has taken numerous public steps to make amends with Trump since his election victory in November.
This comes after four highly controversial years between the two during Trump's first term, which ended with Facebook – like other social media companies – banning Trump from its platform.
Back in March, Trump was like this using his favorite nickname is “Zuckerschmuck” when talking about Meta's CEO declaring that Facebook is the “enemy of the people.”
The finish line is now where it is a key player in the field of artificial intelligenceZuckerberg sees a need for White House support as his company builds data centers and pursues policies that will allow it to meet its lofty ambitions, according to people familiar with the company's plans who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
“Even though Facebook is as powerful as it is, it still had to bend the knee to Trump,” said Brian Boland, a former Facebook vice president who left the company in 2020.
Meta declined to comment for this article.
In Tuesday's announcement titled – said Zuckerberg Meta will end third-party fact-checking, remove restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender identity, and return political content to users' feeds. Zuckerberg hailed sweeping policy changes as key to stabilizing what he said was Meta's content moderation apparatus he said “it's reached the point where there are just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
The policy shift was the latest strategic shift Meta has made to cozy up to Trump and Republicans since Election Day.
The day before, Meta announced that UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime friend of Trump, will join the company's board.
Last week Meta announced that yes exchange Nick Clegg, president of global affairs, with Joel Kaplan, who was vice president of corporate policy. Clegg previously had a career in British politics with the Liberal Democrat Party, including as deputy prime minister, and Kaplan was deputy chief of staff at the White House under former President George W. Bush.
Kaplan, who joined Meta in 2011 when it was still known as Facebook, has long been associated with the Republican Party and once worked as a law clerk for the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In December, Kaplan sent on Facebook with photos of himself with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and Trump during their meeting visit on the New York Stock Exchange.
Joel Kaplan, Facebook vice president of global policy, April 17, 2018
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Many Meta employees criticized the policy change internally, and some say the company is absolving itself of responsibility for creating a secure platform. Current and former employees also expressed concerns that marginalized communities could face more online abuse under the new policy, which is expected to go into effect in the coming weeks.
Despite the backlash from employees, people familiar with the company's thinking said Meta is more willing to make such moves after lay off 21,000 workersor almost a quarter of the workforce in 2022 and 2023.
These cuts affected most of Meta Civic Integrity and Trust and Safety teams. Former employees say the company's civic integrity group was the closest thing to a white-collar union, and its members were willing to oppose certain policy decisions. Since the job cuts, Zuckerberg has faced less friction in making sweeping policy changes, the people said.
Zuckerberg's invitations to Trump began several months before the election.
After the first assassination attempt on Trump in July, Zuckerberg named Trump's photo raising a fist with blood streaming down his face “one of the most evil things I have ever seen in my life.”
A month later Zuckerberg wrote a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, alleging that the Biden administration pressured Meta teams to censor some Covid-19 content.
“I believe that the government's pressure was misguided and I regret that we did not express this more openly,” he wrote.
After Trump's presidential victory, Zuckerberg joined several other technology executives who visited Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, owned by the president-elect. Meta too donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund.
The finish line is on Friday disclosed to its employees in a memo obtained by CNBC that it intends to shut down several internal diversity and inclusion programs in its hiring process, another Trump-friendly move.
The previous day, some details of the company's new, relaxed content moderation guidelines were revealed published by news site The Intercept, showing the kind of offensive rhetoric the Meta's new policy now allows, including statements like “Migrants are no better than vomit” and “I bet Jorge was the one who stole my backpack today after today's track practice.” they are all thieves.”
Recalibration for Trump
People familiar with the matter say Zuckerberg, who has been dragged to Washington eight times to testify before congressional committees, wants to be seen as someone who can work with Trump and the Republican Party.
While Meta's content policy updates caught many of its employees and fact-checking partners by surprise, a small group of executives were formulating plans in the wake of the U.S. election results. According to public opinion, before the New Year, leaders began planning public announcements of changes to their policies.
The meta typically undergoes a major “recalibration” after a major U.S. election, said Katie Harbath, former Facebook policy director and CEO of consulting firm Anchor Change. Harbath said that when a country experiences a change of power, Meta adjusts its policies to best suit its business and reputational needs, based on the political landscape.
“They will recalibrate in 2028,” she said.
For example, after the 2016 election and Trump's first victory, Zuckerberg toured the United States to meet with people in states he had not visited before. He published a book of 6,000 words manifesto emphasizing the need for Facebook to build a larger community.
After the 2016 election, the social media company faced heavy criticism over fake news and Russian election interference on its platforms.
Following the 2020 election, in the heart of the pandemic, Meta took a tougher stance on Covid-19 content, along with its chief policy officer saying in 2021 that “the amount of misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine that violates our policies is too much by our standards.” These efforts may have appeased the Biden administration, but they have drawn the ire of Republicans.
The meta is once again reacting to this moment, Harbath said.
“Here in Silicon Valley, there was no business risk to be more right-wing,” Harbath said.
While Trump has offered some specific policy proposals for his second administration, Meta has a lot to lose.
The White House could create looser regulations on artificial intelligence compared to those in the European Union, where Meta says strict restrictions resulted in the company not releasing some of its products more advanced AI technologies. Meta, like other tech giants, too requirements more massive data centers and cutting-edge computer chips that will help train and operate advanced artificial intelligence models.
“There are business benefits to Republicans winning because they traditionally have less regulation,” Harbath said.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reacts while testifying during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 31, 2024.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Meta is not alone in trying to please Trump. But the company's extreme measures reflect the particular level of resentment Trump has expressed over the years.
Trump accused Meta of censorship and expressed outrage over the company's two-year suspension of his Facebook and Instagram accounts following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In July 2024, Trump posted on Social Truth that it intends to “pursue voter fraud on an unprecedented scale, with long prison terms,” adding: “ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!” Trump he repeated this statement in his book “Save America,” in which he writes that Zuckerberg conspired against him during the 2020 election and that if it happened again, the Meta CEO would “spend the rest of his life in prison.”
The company's 2024 proxy statement shows that Meta is spending $14 million a year to ensure the personal security of Zuckerberg and his family. As part of this safeguard, the company analyzes any threats or perceived threats against its CEO, according to a person familiar with the matter. These threats are catalogued, analyzed and analyzed by Meta's numerous security teams.
After Trump's comments, Meta's security teams analyzed how Trump might weaponize the Justice Department and national intelligence agencies against Zuckerberg and how much it would cost the company to defend its CEO against the sitting president, said the person, who asked not to be identified for confidentiality reasons.
Meta's efforts to appease the new president carry risks.
After Zuckerberg announced a new speech policy on Tuesday, Boland, a former executive, was among many users who used Meta Threads to let their followers know they were quitting Facebook.
“Last post before deletion,” Boland wrote in his post.
Before the post could be seen by any of his Threads followers, Meta's content moderation system removed it, citing cybersecurity concerns.
Boland told CNBC in an interview that he couldn't help but laugh at the situation.
“It's a profound irony,” Boland said.
—CNBC's Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report.
