May 22, 2025 • 27 mins
Meta’s CEO has done everything he can to win over Trump, and it’s not clear how much he has to show for it. By Riley Griffin and Kurt Wagner
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mark Zuckerberg loves Maga now will Maga ever love him back?
Meta CEO has done everything he can to win over Trump,
and it's not clear how much he has to show
for it. By Riley Griffin and Kurt Wagner, read aloud
by Mark Leedorf. In early February, Mark Zuckerberg boarded his
(00:20):
Gulfstream G six fifty for a trip to Washington, d C,
a cross country route he was flying with newfound frequency
after years on the outs. The chief executive officer of
Meta Platforms had regained something valuable. He'd lost direct access
to the president. Since November, Zuckerberg had already had a
string of post election get togethers with Donald Trump. He'd
(00:43):
made multiple trips to mar A Lago in Florida, and
he'd sat in the Capitol rotunda with other tech executives
when the President elect took the oath of office in January.
Metta had also donated one million dollars to the inauguration,
and Zuckerberg co hosted a black tie reception that evening
in Trump's honor. In a sign that he plans to
spend more time in Washington, Zuckerberg in March purchased a
(01:05):
twenty three million dollar mansion just paces from Vice President J. D.
Vance's residence at the Naval Observatory. On this particular February visit,
Zuckerberg had a short chat with Trump, according to people
familiar with the meeting, but his agenda centered on a
discussion with Vance. The Vice President was headed to Paris
for a summit on artificial intelligence, and Zuckerberg wanted him
(01:27):
to hammer home to European leaders that their regulators were
treating META unfairly, making it difficult to roll out AI products.
When Vance spoke in Paris five days later, his speech
delivered exactly the sort of message Zuckerberg had had in mind,
warning against overregulation in AI and abandoning the Biden administration's
more careful approach to the technology. Vance said he was
(01:50):
troubled by reports about governments considering tightening the screws on
US tech companies, telling his audience that America cannot and
will not accept that, and we think it's a terrible mistake.
Vance's speech seemed like tangible evidence that Zuckerberg's clout in
d C was on the upswing. Biden's disdain for Meta
was evident well before he assumed office, and once in
(02:13):
he pointed to the company as the source of some
of the US's greatest problems, among them the spread of
conspiracy theories, the surge in political polarization, and the exploitation
of children. He repeatedly called for the repeal of Section
two thirty of the Communications Decency Act of nineteen ninety six,
a rule shielding Internet platforms from legal liability for content
(02:34):
posted by their users, which Silicon Valley considers a critical protection.
Biden's appointees to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department
of Justice had pursued an aggressive antitrust agenda that included
Meta among its targets, and his administration had pushed Meta
to control misinformation in ways the company deemed inappropriate. Unlike
(02:55):
Trump and President Barack Obama before him, Biden never met
with Zuckerberg personally, and Meta insiders have heard he was
known to throw around demeaning nicknames for Zuckerberg in private,
Little Twerp and Eferberg were among the favorites, according to
Biden Aids. A spokesperson for Biden's office, declined to comment
for this article. Zuckerberg had been hinting at a move
(03:17):
toward Trump even before the election. He'd described the candidate's
reaction to an assassination attempt in July as badass, called
him personally on several occasions last summer, and bashed the
Biden administration in a letter to Congress. Once the election
results were in, Zuckerberg sprinted Trump word. He appointed Ultimate
Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a Trump ally, to Meta's
(03:41):
board of directors, elevated Republican strategist Joel Kaplan to chief
global affairs officer, and rolled back diversity efforts both at
his company and his family's philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Meta weakened hate speech policies, broke up its civil rights team,
and eliminated the outs outside fact checking system that had
(04:01):
so infuriated Trump during his first term. The company even
paid Trump twenty five million dollars to settle a lawsuit
he'd filed after it suspended him from Facebook and Instagram.
Even though insiders viewed the case as an easy win
for the company, the speed and scope of these moves
by Zuckerberg have left many onlookers with a sense of whiplash.
(04:22):
He declined to be interviewed for this article, but Bloomberg.
BusinessWeek spoke with more than fifty people about his approach
to politics, including more than thirty current and former Meta
employees and a dozen government officials who've engaged with Meta
during the Obama, Biden, and Trump administrations. Many of them
asked for anonymity out of fear of retribution. What emerges
(04:43):
is a portrait of someone who isn't motivated by a
political ideology as much as a finely tuned sense of
self preservation. Mark is always going to do what's best
for the business, says Katie Harbath, a former Republican digital
strategist who worked on Facebook's public policy team from twenty
eleven to twenty twenty one. He is always worried about
(05:04):
being out innovated, and he is always thinking about his
own legacy, she says. For years, Zuckerberg's vocal and financial
support of liberal approaches to immigration reform and diversity initiatives
had been driven by the same calculation. Harbath says. When
those values were no longer politically expedient, she adds, he
shed them easily. It's become clear since Trump took office
(05:27):
that business leaders will need to overhaul their formula for
playing politics. The President's vindictiveness creates risks for holdouts, and
his transactional style leaves open the chance of substantial rewards
for those who win him over. Zuckerberg's bending of the
knee stands out as a particularly revealing test case. There
are reasons to question how well it's working out Vance's
(05:50):
chiding of the Europeans. Notwithstanding, Trump is still looking for
a way to keep key Meta rival TikTok operational in
the US, despite widespread suspicion in com Congress that its
ties to China represent a national security risk, He's done
little to signal support for Section two thirty, which remains
in Congress's crosshairs. The president's tariff policies have sparked concerns
(06:12):
of a looming recession. When reporting first quarter earnings, Meta
warned that it expects its hardware costs to go up
because of Trump trade policies. It also made more than
eighteen billion dollars in sales from China based advertisers last year,
a revenue stream that remains at risk as negotiations between
the countries continue. The limits of Zuckerberg's influence were also
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on display in the weeks before the FTC's antitrust suit
against Meta went to trial in April, when his last
ditch effort to persuade Trump and FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson
to settle the case was unsuccessful. Zuckerberg and other executives
spent days on the witness stand going over the company's
inner workings in uncomfortable detail, and Meta rested its case
(06:55):
on May twenty first. If the FTC prevails, Meta could
be forced to spin off off Instagram and WhatsApp, a
prospect that would destroy the one point six trillion dollar
business Zuckerberg is built. The FTC didn't respond to requests
for comment. At least so far, the action Zuckerberg has
taken to make Meta more Trump friendly haven't resulted in
(07:16):
much tangible gain. We haven't seen evidence, one way or
another that these changes have benefited Meta, says Stefan Slowinski,
an analyst at BNP Peribah Exana. None of this should
be particularly surprising. Trump has been regularly attacking Zuckerberg and
his company for alleged anti conservative bias for almost a decade.
(07:36):
During the twenty twenty four campaign, Trump referred to him
as Zuckerbuck's in a post on truth Social claiming without
evidence that he might be engaging in election fraud and
suggested he could end up in prison. A coffee table
book published in September and written by Trump also made
the threat to imprison Zuckerberg. If Zuckerberg's about face has
(07:57):
come off as craven to liberals, the Maga crow isn't
necessarily buying it either. They're still tremendous distrust, says Alex
bruce Witz, a digital strategy adviser to Trump who runs
his political social media accounts and who met a briefed
on its Trump friendly content moderation changes before announcing them.
I don't know what it will take for our base
(08:17):
and our voters to forgive him fully. I don't know
if they ever will. For years, the working assumption in
Silicon Valley and d C was that tech leaned democratic.
The industry's young, largely California based workforce aligned more closely
with the party on social issues. Obama was the first
president to successfully leverage a digital campaign in his path
(08:39):
to the oval office, and Democrats were content to take
a light touch approach to internet regulations. Zuckerberg, who was
twenty four when Obama took office, interacted regularly with the president.
The company's user base expanded from about two hundred million
to almost two billion during Obama's administration. The scale made
Facebook ever more intant, but mistrust began to mount over
(09:02):
the company's approach to privacy and its influence over politics.
Then came the twenty sixteen presidential election. Zuckerberg was shocked
and confused by Trump's victory, but said the suggestion that
misinformation on Facebook had played a role was crazy. Still,
the company quickly attempted to mollify concerns about how its
platform had become vulnerable to manipulation, developing stronger tools for
(09:26):
fact checking and content moderation. Democrats were unmoved. Trump and
other Republicans began attacking the company for what they claimed
was anti conservative censorship. From twenty eighteen to twenty twenty four,
Zuckerberg was hauled before congressional committees on eight separate occasions
to answer questions about Meta's policies and business. The company
(09:47):
tried its best to make inroads with the first Trump administration.
Kaplan at the time, Meta's vice president of Global Policy,
who'd been deputy chief of Staff for President George W.
Bush and had briefly considered taking a job in the
new administration, worked to build relationships with Trump's inner circle.
At the same time, he sought to convince Zuckerberg that
aligning the company with a business friendly Republican administration and
(10:10):
conservative Supreme Court were of vital importance within Meta, This
approach to fending off a potential breakup or other existential
regulatory threats became known as the Clarence Thomas strategy, according
to people familiar with the matter. As the twenty twenty
election approached, Kaplan's pitch about the benefits of a Republican
administration was resonating with Zuckerberg. On the sidelines of a
(10:33):
tech conference where he was speaking. Zuckerberg turned to his
staffer with a question, Joel keeps telling me Republicans are
better for us than Democrats. They are right. From Zuckerberg's perspective,
he'd tried to play it down the middle and gotten
punished for it from all sides. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
donated more than four hundred million dollars in election related
(10:53):
grants awarded to forty nine states for unobjectionable actions such
as helping fund poll workers, voting equips, in face masks
for volunteers, but Republicans accused him of trying to sway
the election in Biden's favor, and Zuckerberg also grew frustrated
that Democrats didn't give him much credit for the gesture.
According to people familiar with his thinking, throughout the election,
(11:15):
it was clear Zuckerberg wasn't winning Biden over. In a
campaign q and a with The New York Times, the
Democratic candidate said that he'd never been a big Zuckerberg
fan and that he saw the CEO as a real problem.
Any hope of a fresh start following Biden's victory was
dashed almost immediately. Trump used Facebook to reject the election
(11:35):
results and spread florid conspiracy theories. We knew this would happen.
We pleaded with Facebook for over a year to be
serious about these problems, Biden Deputy communications director Bill Russo
tweeted just days after the election. They have not Our
democracy is on the line. We need answers. The violence
(11:56):
on January sixth reinforced the incoming administration's view that facebooks
in action on misinformation had serious consequences. Biden never sought
a personal relationship with Zuckerberg after taking office. His staffers, however,
were in almost constant communication with the company, and at
times with Zuckerberg directly over misinformation related to the pandemic
(12:18):
and the rollout of the first vaccines. Although Facebook announced
actions to crack down on misleading content, the White House
wasn't impressed. In emails and text messages that became public
as part of a Republican led congressional inquiry into allegations
of online censorship, white House officials expressed frustration and outrage
about Facebook's approach to misinformation. You are hiding the ball,
(12:41):
began the subject line of one email. In the messages,
white House officials accused Facebook of giving them the run around.
Not for nothing. But the last time we did this dance,
it ended in an insurrection, one Biden staffer wrote. In
internal messages, company executives complained that its staff members were
being harassed. The feud spilled into public on a swampy
(13:02):
Friday afternoon in July twenty twenty one, when a reporter
yelled a question about Facebook and COVID just as Biden
was climbing onto his helicopter for a weekend at Camp David.
They're killing people, Biden replied, I mean it really look,
the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and
they're killing people. The unexpected comments sent staff in the
(13:24):
West Wing and at Facebook into a tizzy. Nick Clegg,
who oversaw the company's policy organization, messaged his colleagues that
Biden officials had been highly cynical and dishonest about the
interactions over COVID misinformation, adding that Facebook had gotten positive
feedback from the Surgeon General's office earlier that day, contrary
(13:45):
to Biden's remarks. Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg, then the company's
chief operating officer Muld going public about the discussions as
a way to push back against Biden. Zuckerberg said he
suspected Biden's comments were part of a coordinated pressure camp.
I also wonder if we should change our model of
how we work with the White House on this, he
(14:05):
wrote to colleagues in messages that came out during the
congressional inquiry. If they're more interested in criticizing us than
actually solving the problems, then I'm not sure how it's
helping the cause to engage with them further. The President
walked back his comment the following week, though he continued
to criticize social media companies, and especially Zuckerberg's, until the
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final days of his presidency, Zuckerberg retreated from the role
of statesman. He changed the name of Facebook to Meta
in late twenty twenty one, a rebrand that reflected a
new vision for the company and had the added benefit
of distancing it from recent controversies. Then he tasked Clegg
with serving as president of Global Affairs, turning his attention
(14:47):
toward the metaverse and AI. We'll be right back with
Mark Zuckerberg Loves Magan now? Will Maga ever love him back?
Welcome back to Mark Zuckerberg Loves Maga now, Will Maga
ever love him back? Throughout his struggles with Washington, Zuckerberg
(15:08):
couldn't help but notice that a more satisfying approach was
being modeled by another tech ceo, Elon Musk. The two
had been rivals for years, and not always in a
friendly way. When Musk laid out doomsday scenarios related to AI,
Zuckerberg described such talk as irresponsible. Musk said in twenty
twenty three that Instagram makes people kind of depressed and
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called Zuckerberg a kuck. The two men flirted with meeting
in a UFC style cage match, but Musk backed out,
citing a back injury. Several times a year, a Meta
marketing team conducts polls measuring public opinion about, among other things,
Zuckerberg himself. Past polling has looked at whether he's seen
as honest, mature, or passionate, and how he measures up
(15:54):
against other tech leaders. According to documents viewed by BusinessWeek,
Zuckerberg has regularly been mocked as being robotic or disingenuous,
whereas Musk has often been described as a visionary. Zuckerberg
has also expressed frustration that Meta's own polling has previously
shown that people considered him less innovative than Musk. Zuckerberg
(16:15):
also watched Musk flout federal regulations, conduct mass firings, and
act boorishly online, all without suffering serious consequences. After years
spent apologizing for missteps and trying to build his own
political capital, Zuckerberg grew jealous of how Musk could disregard
any in all criticism. According to people who've worked with him,
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he developed what these people have described as Elon envy.
Around this time, Zuckerberg began to adopt the masculine energy
popular in corners of the Internet that embraced Musk. He
got into mixed martial arts, grew his hair out, and
started wearing gold chains and a T shirt, implicitly comparing
himself to a Roman emperor. He appeared on Manisphere friendly
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podcasts hosted by Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughan. I don't
apologize anymore, Zuckerberg deadpanned at a live taping of the
tech focused Acquired podcast in September, prompting laughter from the audience.
We've noticed, responded one of the hosts, well attuned to
the esthetics of the MAGA movement. Brucewitz, the Trump advisor,
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took note of Zuckerberg's conscious decision to kind of start
pivoting echoing right wing talking points. Maybe he's had a
change of heart, Brucewitz told Business Week before the presidential election.
With a newly sympathetic Zuckerberg and Musk at the helm
of X, Brucewitz said the social media environment was shifting
to look less like it did in twenty twenty and
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more like the Trump friendly landscape of twenty sixteen. Since
Trump's election, Meta has walked back the approach it took
for much of the previous eight years. In addition to
the laundry list of policy changes. In January, the company
moved its trust in safety teams to Texas as a
sop to conservatives who complain about California's left wing bias.
(18:01):
Employees say this gesture was meaningless given that many of
those staffers were already located in the state. Zuckerberg also
replaced Meta's fact checking program with a crowdsourcing feature similar
to the one Musk uses on x. Meta has often
copied competitors' products, but rarely acknowledges its doing so at
the time. In this case, Zuckerberg openly credited Musk and
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has used excess open source algorithm as the basis of
its fact checking replacement. The two have spoken privately on
multiple occasions since the election. According to people familiar with
the situation, Zuckerberg has always held enough voting power within
his company to take it wherever he chooses, but Meta
insiders say he was more willing in the past to
(18:44):
consider the council of other executives and board members. Key
advisers who once had his ear, including Sandberg and Elliott
schreg the former global communications and policy chief, have long
since departed. Well respected board members Jeff Zience, kenschen Nault,
Erskine Bowls, and Reed Hastings, known for their ties to
the Democratic Party and experience working with governments around the world,
(19:07):
have also moved on Privately. Colleagues say changes including eliminating
fact checking and loosening content rules, reflect a more authentic
version of Zuckerberg's beliefs. Still, many people who've worked with
him over the years have found themselves questioning whether his
values still align with their own, or if they ever
truly did. I thought tech was progressive, says Kelly stone Lake,
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former director of product marketing in Meta's visual reality unit,
who after fifteen years with the company, is suing Meta
for sexual harassment and discrimination. Metta has asked a federal
court to dismiss the lawsuit. But we were really just
good at performing inclusion and progressivism because that was a
means to an end. There are signs of flagging morale.
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Some current employees do wellness checks with each other at
the beginning of meetings. Others have created secret book clubs
to discuss Careless People, the best selling memoir by Sarah
Wynn Williams, Meta's former director of public policy. The company
saw the book, which includes unflattering personal portrayals of Zuckerberg
and his top deputies, as well as a sharp critique
(20:15):
of its dealings with foreign governments. As a violation of
a non disparagement agreement. It has taken Win Williams to
arbitration to keep her from promoting it. Metta maintains a
gag order to silence Miss winn Williams for speaking the truth,
says Ravi Nike, an attorney representing her, adding that the
company is pursuing a fifty thousand dollars penalty for each violation.
(20:37):
There are still some signs of Meta's continued aspirations to
be a conscientious workplace, such as the posters pinned around
its campus that preach things like nothing at Facebook is
someone else's problem. But Metta's leadership has sent signals to
its staff that protests aren't going to fly this time around.
When an employee voiced concerns about Metta's new direction on
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an internal work placetool earlier this year, chief technology officer
Andrew Bosworth replied that employees who disagreed with the changes
could either leave or get on board. There are reasons
even for critics to stick around. Meta remains a lucrative
place to work. Its share price is up more than
six hundred percent since its twenty twenty two lows at
(21:20):
a time when predictions of an economic downturn have sparked
concerns about job security. In January, Meta said it would
fire about thirty six hundred employees who were publicly labeled
low performers, a move some employees saw as a way
to quash ideological descent. Additional layoffs have followed. A Meta
spokesperson denies the idea that layoffs were intended to suppress
(21:43):
internal critics. The internal tension was on display among Meta's
highest ranks when the company flew its senior leaders to
Menlo Park, California, for annual planning meetings in January. Included
on the itinerary was a Q and A with Zuckerberg,
attended solely by employees who carey the title of vice
president or above. Zuckerberg had just announced the policy changes,
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and in a large auditorium on campus known as the Museum,
executives unhappy with the company's new direction, quizzed him about
his decisions to change directions on diversity, equity and inclusion,
as well as content moderation. According to people familiar with
the event. Eva Chen, who oversees fashion partnerships at Meta,
seemed frustrated by Zuckerberg's comments earlier that month on Rogan's podcast,
(22:29):
when he talked about corporate America needing more masculine energy.
She asked Zuckerberg for his definition of masculine energy. In
front of the group, Zuckerberg attempted to clarify his comments,
acknowledging that masculine may have been a poor choice of words,
but he didn't take them back. US businesses needed to
be more competitive and aggressive, he said. As to the
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other questions, Zuckerberg was unapologetic. He'd made his decisions and
wasn't interested in relitigating them. Over the past decade, many
powerful people have tried to adapt to Trump's whims and
gotten burned. The President has mocked Zuckerberg on multiple occasions
for coming to the White House during his first term
to kiss my ass, and since returning to office, he
(23:13):
hasn't shown him the affection that he's demonstrated for Musk,
but that doesn't mean Trump dislikes the pandering. When asked
to comment for this article, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly
sent an email saying Trump takes meetings with many CEOs
who are eager to participate in the Trump economy. Investors
see potential upside as well, says Schweta Kajuria, an analyst
(23:34):
for Wolf Research. Changing its policies to align with Trump's
doesn't undercut the company's financial performance, she says, and reduces
the chance it will be hit with new regulations if
Democrats take the White House or Congress in the future,
she perdict Zuckerberg will just adjust to work with that
administration too. Others seem more risk to Meta if the
(23:55):
political winds shift. For all the enviable access Musk secured
his support for Trump, his association with the administration has
done real damage to his popularity and to Tesla's shares.
Political strategists inside and outside Meta say there's a feeling
that Zuckerberg too, may have over corrected toward Trump. Zuckerberg
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himself was aware of how his changes to company policies
could alienate Democrats even as he was making them. He's
already directed executives to map out ways to secure their
support in the future, according to people familiar with the efforts,
but Meta may find it hard to pivot given the
real damage that progressives seek coming from the company's shifting policies.
(24:37):
Advocacy groups are already tracking increases in hate speech and
harassment against minority groups, women, and trans people. The Center
for Countering Digital Hate said in a February report that
hundreds of millions of posts each year that would have
previously been deemed harmful will likely stay up on the platform,
a finding that Meta has said is based on flawed methodology.
(24:59):
Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School who
spent years engaging with Meta on its content policies, says
such online abuse can translate into real world harm. What
do you think is going to happen when you greenlight
a policy that allows people to call LGBTQ people mentally ill,
when you green light slurs against trans people, she asks,
(25:21):
adding she is not speaking for Harvard. It's very clear
there's essentially a quid pro quo with Mark Zuckerberg. If
that's the decision they have to make, they'll sacrifice trans people,
They'll sacrifice women, They'll sacrifice minority groups. Even Meta's own
oversight board, an independent entity it formed to weigh in
on complicated content moderation Decisions said in late April that
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the changes were announced hastily in a departure from regular procedure,
with no public information shared as to what, if any,
prior human rights due diligence the company performed. It has
advised the company to assess and report the potential harm
of its new policies. META said it would respet on
to the recommendation within sixty days. Given all this, Zuckerberg
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would have a significant challenge presenting himself as a reliable
actor if Democrats return to power. The worst case scenario
is that he ends up with enemies on all sides.
This possibility was on display on April ninth, when, when
Williams testified before Congress, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, a Trump
ally who's been among the most outspoken critics of Silicon
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Valley from the right, noted that Zuckerberg's new political positioning
conveniently aligns with the MAGA movement. Do you buy this
latest reinvention? He asked When Williams, she began her answer
by asking rhetorically whether securing a gag order to keep
her from discussing her book publicly was the action of
someone who believed in free speech. This is a man
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who wears many different costumes, she continued. Now his new
costume is MMA fighting or whatever free speech. We don't
know what the next costume is going to be, but
it will be something different. It's whatever gets him closest
to power, she said,
Mark Zuckerberg loves Maga now will Maga ever love him back?
Meta CEO has done everything he can to win over Trump,
and it's not clear how much he has to show
for it. By Riley Griffin and Kurt Wagner, read aloud
by Mark Leedorf. In early February, Mark Zuckerberg boarded his
(00:20):
Gulfstream G six fifty for a trip to Washington, d C,
a cross country route he was flying with newfound frequency
after years on the outs. The chief executive officer of
Meta Platforms had regained something valuable. He'd lost direct access
to the president. Since November, Zuckerberg had already had a
string of post election get togethers with Donald Trump. He'd
(00:43):
made multiple trips to mar A Lago in Florida, and
he'd sat in the Capitol rotunda with other tech executives
when the President elect took the oath of office in January.
Metta had also donated one million dollars to the inauguration,
and Zuckerberg co hosted a black tie reception that evening
in Trump's honor. In a sign that he plans to
spend more time in Washington, Zuckerberg in March purchased a
(01:05):
twenty three million dollar mansion just paces from Vice President J. D.
Vance's residence at the Naval Observatory. On this particular February visit,
Zuckerberg had a short chat with Trump, according to people
familiar with the meeting, but his agenda centered on a
discussion with Vance. The Vice President was headed to Paris
for a summit on artificial intelligence, and Zuckerberg wanted him
(01:27):
to hammer home to European leaders that their regulators were
treating META unfairly, making it difficult to roll out AI products.
When Vance spoke in Paris five days later, his speech
delivered exactly the sort of message Zuckerberg had had in mind,
warning against overregulation in AI and abandoning the Biden administration's
more careful approach to the technology. Vance said he was
(01:50):
troubled by reports about governments considering tightening the screws on
US tech companies, telling his audience that America cannot and
will not accept that, and we think it's a terrible mistake.
Vance's speech seemed like tangible evidence that Zuckerberg's clout in
d C was on the upswing. Biden's disdain for Meta
was evident well before he assumed office, and once in
(02:13):
he pointed to the company as the source of some
of the US's greatest problems, among them the spread of
conspiracy theories, the surge in political polarization, and the exploitation
of children. He repeatedly called for the repeal of Section
two thirty of the Communications Decency Act of nineteen ninety six,
a rule shielding Internet platforms from legal liability for content
(02:34):
posted by their users, which Silicon Valley considers a critical protection.
Biden's appointees to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department
of Justice had pursued an aggressive antitrust agenda that included
Meta among its targets, and his administration had pushed Meta
to control misinformation in ways the company deemed inappropriate. Unlike
(02:55):
Trump and President Barack Obama before him, Biden never met
with Zuckerberg personally, and Meta insiders have heard he was
known to throw around demeaning nicknames for Zuckerberg in private,
Little Twerp and Eferberg were among the favorites, according to
Biden Aids. A spokesperson for Biden's office, declined to comment
for this article. Zuckerberg had been hinting at a move
(03:17):
toward Trump even before the election. He'd described the candidate's
reaction to an assassination attempt in July as badass, called
him personally on several occasions last summer, and bashed the
Biden administration in a letter to Congress. Once the election
results were in, Zuckerberg sprinted Trump word. He appointed Ultimate
Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, a Trump ally, to Meta's
(03:41):
board of directors, elevated Republican strategist Joel Kaplan to chief
global affairs officer, and rolled back diversity efforts both at
his company and his family's philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Meta weakened hate speech policies, broke up its civil rights team,
and eliminated the outs outside fact checking system that had
(04:01):
so infuriated Trump during his first term. The company even
paid Trump twenty five million dollars to settle a lawsuit
he'd filed after it suspended him from Facebook and Instagram.
Even though insiders viewed the case as an easy win
for the company, the speed and scope of these moves
by Zuckerberg have left many onlookers with a sense of whiplash.
(04:22):
He declined to be interviewed for this article, but Bloomberg.
BusinessWeek spoke with more than fifty people about his approach
to politics, including more than thirty current and former Meta
employees and a dozen government officials who've engaged with Meta
during the Obama, Biden, and Trump administrations. Many of them
asked for anonymity out of fear of retribution. What emerges
(04:43):
is a portrait of someone who isn't motivated by a
political ideology as much as a finely tuned sense of
self preservation. Mark is always going to do what's best
for the business, says Katie Harbath, a former Republican digital
strategist who worked on Facebook's public policy team from twenty
eleven to twenty twenty one. He is always worried about
(05:04):
being out innovated, and he is always thinking about his
own legacy, she says. For years, Zuckerberg's vocal and financial
support of liberal approaches to immigration reform and diversity initiatives
had been driven by the same calculation. Harbath says. When
those values were no longer politically expedient, she adds, he
shed them easily. It's become clear since Trump took office
(05:27):
that business leaders will need to overhaul their formula for
playing politics. The President's vindictiveness creates risks for holdouts, and
his transactional style leaves open the chance of substantial rewards
for those who win him over. Zuckerberg's bending of the
knee stands out as a particularly revealing test case. There
are reasons to question how well it's working out Vance's
(05:50):
chiding of the Europeans. Notwithstanding, Trump is still looking for
a way to keep key Meta rival TikTok operational in
the US, despite widespread suspicion in com Congress that its
ties to China represent a national security risk, He's done
little to signal support for Section two thirty, which remains
in Congress's crosshairs. The president's tariff policies have sparked concerns
(06:12):
of a looming recession. When reporting first quarter earnings, Meta
warned that it expects its hardware costs to go up
because of Trump trade policies. It also made more than
eighteen billion dollars in sales from China based advertisers last year,
a revenue stream that remains at risk as negotiations between
the countries continue. The limits of Zuckerberg's influence were also
(06:34):
on display in the weeks before the FTC's antitrust suit
against Meta went to trial in April, when his last
ditch effort to persuade Trump and FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson
to settle the case was unsuccessful. Zuckerberg and other executives
spent days on the witness stand going over the company's
inner workings in uncomfortable detail, and Meta rested its case
(06:55):
on May twenty first. If the FTC prevails, Meta could
be forced to spin off off Instagram and WhatsApp, a
prospect that would destroy the one point six trillion dollar
business Zuckerberg is built. The FTC didn't respond to requests
for comment. At least so far, the action Zuckerberg has
taken to make Meta more Trump friendly haven't resulted in
(07:16):
much tangible gain. We haven't seen evidence, one way or
another that these changes have benefited Meta, says Stefan Slowinski,
an analyst at BNP Peribah Exana. None of this should
be particularly surprising. Trump has been regularly attacking Zuckerberg and
his company for alleged anti conservative bias for almost a decade.
(07:36):
During the twenty twenty four campaign, Trump referred to him
as Zuckerbuck's in a post on truth Social claiming without
evidence that he might be engaging in election fraud and
suggested he could end up in prison. A coffee table
book published in September and written by Trump also made
the threat to imprison Zuckerberg. If Zuckerberg's about face has
(07:57):
come off as craven to liberals, the Maga crow isn't
necessarily buying it either. They're still tremendous distrust, says Alex
bruce Witz, a digital strategy adviser to Trump who runs
his political social media accounts and who met a briefed
on its Trump friendly content moderation changes before announcing them.
I don't know what it will take for our base
(08:17):
and our voters to forgive him fully. I don't know
if they ever will. For years, the working assumption in
Silicon Valley and d C was that tech leaned democratic.
The industry's young, largely California based workforce aligned more closely
with the party on social issues. Obama was the first
president to successfully leverage a digital campaign in his path
(08:39):
to the oval office, and Democrats were content to take
a light touch approach to internet regulations. Zuckerberg, who was
twenty four when Obama took office, interacted regularly with the president.
The company's user base expanded from about two hundred million
to almost two billion during Obama's administration. The scale made
Facebook ever more intant, but mistrust began to mount over
(09:02):
the company's approach to privacy and its influence over politics.
Then came the twenty sixteen presidential election. Zuckerberg was shocked
and confused by Trump's victory, but said the suggestion that
misinformation on Facebook had played a role was crazy. Still,
the company quickly attempted to mollify concerns about how its
platform had become vulnerable to manipulation, developing stronger tools for
(09:26):
fact checking and content moderation. Democrats were unmoved. Trump and
other Republicans began attacking the company for what they claimed
was anti conservative censorship. From twenty eighteen to twenty twenty four,
Zuckerberg was hauled before congressional committees on eight separate occasions
to answer questions about Meta's policies and business. The company
(09:47):
tried its best to make inroads with the first Trump administration.
Kaplan at the time, Meta's vice president of Global Policy,
who'd been deputy chief of Staff for President George W.
Bush and had briefly considered taking a job in the
new administration, worked to build relationships with Trump's inner circle.
At the same time, he sought to convince Zuckerberg that
aligning the company with a business friendly Republican administration and
(10:10):
conservative Supreme Court were of vital importance within Meta, This
approach to fending off a potential breakup or other existential
regulatory threats became known as the Clarence Thomas strategy, according
to people familiar with the matter. As the twenty twenty
election approached, Kaplan's pitch about the benefits of a Republican
administration was resonating with Zuckerberg. On the sidelines of a
(10:33):
tech conference where he was speaking. Zuckerberg turned to his
staffer with a question, Joel keeps telling me Republicans are
better for us than Democrats. They are right. From Zuckerberg's perspective,
he'd tried to play it down the middle and gotten
punished for it from all sides. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
donated more than four hundred million dollars in election related
(10:53):
grants awarded to forty nine states for unobjectionable actions such
as helping fund poll workers, voting equips, in face masks
for volunteers, but Republicans accused him of trying to sway
the election in Biden's favor, and Zuckerberg also grew frustrated
that Democrats didn't give him much credit for the gesture.
According to people familiar with his thinking, throughout the election,
(11:15):
it was clear Zuckerberg wasn't winning Biden over. In a
campaign q and a with The New York Times, the
Democratic candidate said that he'd never been a big Zuckerberg
fan and that he saw the CEO as a real problem.
Any hope of a fresh start following Biden's victory was
dashed almost immediately. Trump used Facebook to reject the election
(11:35):
results and spread florid conspiracy theories. We knew this would happen.
We pleaded with Facebook for over a year to be
serious about these problems, Biden Deputy communications director Bill Russo
tweeted just days after the election. They have not Our
democracy is on the line. We need answers. The violence
(11:56):
on January sixth reinforced the incoming administration's view that facebooks
in action on misinformation had serious consequences. Biden never sought
a personal relationship with Zuckerberg after taking office. His staffers, however,
were in almost constant communication with the company, and at
times with Zuckerberg directly over misinformation related to the pandemic
(12:18):
and the rollout of the first vaccines. Although Facebook announced
actions to crack down on misleading content, the White House
wasn't impressed. In emails and text messages that became public
as part of a Republican led congressional inquiry into allegations
of online censorship, white House officials expressed frustration and outrage
about Facebook's approach to misinformation. You are hiding the ball,
(12:41):
began the subject line of one email. In the messages,
white House officials accused Facebook of giving them the run around.
Not for nothing. But the last time we did this dance,
it ended in an insurrection, one Biden staffer wrote. In
internal messages, company executives complained that its staff members were
being harassed. The feud spilled into public on a swampy
(13:02):
Friday afternoon in July twenty twenty one, when a reporter
yelled a question about Facebook and COVID just as Biden
was climbing onto his helicopter for a weekend at Camp David.
They're killing people, Biden replied, I mean it really look,
the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and
they're killing people. The unexpected comments sent staff in the
(13:24):
West Wing and at Facebook into a tizzy. Nick Clegg,
who oversaw the company's policy organization, messaged his colleagues that
Biden officials had been highly cynical and dishonest about the
interactions over COVID misinformation, adding that Facebook had gotten positive
feedback from the Surgeon General's office earlier that day, contrary
(13:45):
to Biden's remarks. Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg, then the company's
chief operating officer Muld going public about the discussions as
a way to push back against Biden. Zuckerberg said he
suspected Biden's comments were part of a coordinated pressure camp.
I also wonder if we should change our model of
how we work with the White House on this, he
(14:05):
wrote to colleagues in messages that came out during the
congressional inquiry. If they're more interested in criticizing us than
actually solving the problems, then I'm not sure how it's
helping the cause to engage with them further. The President
walked back his comment the following week, though he continued
to criticize social media companies, and especially Zuckerberg's, until the
(14:26):
final days of his presidency, Zuckerberg retreated from the role
of statesman. He changed the name of Facebook to Meta
in late twenty twenty one, a rebrand that reflected a
new vision for the company and had the added benefit
of distancing it from recent controversies. Then he tasked Clegg
with serving as president of Global Affairs, turning his attention
(14:47):
toward the metaverse and AI. We'll be right back with
Mark Zuckerberg Loves Magan now? Will Maga ever love him back?
Welcome back to Mark Zuckerberg Loves Maga now, Will Maga
ever love him back? Throughout his struggles with Washington, Zuckerberg
(15:08):
couldn't help but notice that a more satisfying approach was
being modeled by another tech ceo, Elon Musk. The two
had been rivals for years, and not always in a
friendly way. When Musk laid out doomsday scenarios related to AI,
Zuckerberg described such talk as irresponsible. Musk said in twenty
twenty three that Instagram makes people kind of depressed and
(15:31):
called Zuckerberg a kuck. The two men flirted with meeting
in a UFC style cage match, but Musk backed out,
citing a back injury. Several times a year, a Meta
marketing team conducts polls measuring public opinion about, among other things,
Zuckerberg himself. Past polling has looked at whether he's seen
as honest, mature, or passionate, and how he measures up
(15:54):
against other tech leaders. According to documents viewed by BusinessWeek,
Zuckerberg has regularly been mocked as being robotic or disingenuous,
whereas Musk has often been described as a visionary. Zuckerberg
has also expressed frustration that Meta's own polling has previously
shown that people considered him less innovative than Musk. Zuckerberg
(16:15):
also watched Musk flout federal regulations, conduct mass firings, and
act boorishly online, all without suffering serious consequences. After years
spent apologizing for missteps and trying to build his own
political capital, Zuckerberg grew jealous of how Musk could disregard
any in all criticism. According to people who've worked with him,
(16:36):
he developed what these people have described as Elon envy.
Around this time, Zuckerberg began to adopt the masculine energy
popular in corners of the Internet that embraced Musk. He
got into mixed martial arts, grew his hair out, and
started wearing gold chains and a T shirt, implicitly comparing
himself to a Roman emperor. He appeared on Manisphere friendly
(16:58):
podcasts hosted by Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughan. I don't
apologize anymore, Zuckerberg deadpanned at a live taping of the
tech focused Acquired podcast in September, prompting laughter from the audience.
We've noticed, responded one of the hosts, well attuned to
the esthetics of the MAGA movement. Brucewitz, the Trump advisor,
(17:20):
took note of Zuckerberg's conscious decision to kind of start
pivoting echoing right wing talking points. Maybe he's had a
change of heart, Brucewitz told Business Week before the presidential election.
With a newly sympathetic Zuckerberg and Musk at the helm
of X, Brucewitz said the social media environment was shifting
to look less like it did in twenty twenty and
(17:40):
more like the Trump friendly landscape of twenty sixteen. Since
Trump's election, Meta has walked back the approach it took
for much of the previous eight years. In addition to
the laundry list of policy changes. In January, the company
moved its trust in safety teams to Texas as a
sop to conservatives who complain about California's left wing bias.
(18:01):
Employees say this gesture was meaningless given that many of
those staffers were already located in the state. Zuckerberg also
replaced Meta's fact checking program with a crowdsourcing feature similar
to the one Musk uses on x. Meta has often
copied competitors' products, but rarely acknowledges its doing so at
the time. In this case, Zuckerberg openly credited Musk and
(18:23):
has used excess open source algorithm as the basis of
its fact checking replacement. The two have spoken privately on
multiple occasions since the election. According to people familiar with
the situation, Zuckerberg has always held enough voting power within
his company to take it wherever he chooses, but Meta
insiders say he was more willing in the past to
(18:44):
consider the council of other executives and board members. Key
advisers who once had his ear, including Sandberg and Elliott
schreg the former global communications and policy chief, have long
since departed. Well respected board members Jeff Zience, kenschen Nault,
Erskine Bowls, and Reed Hastings, known for their ties to
the Democratic Party and experience working with governments around the world,
(19:07):
have also moved on Privately. Colleagues say changes including eliminating
fact checking and loosening content rules, reflect a more authentic
version of Zuckerberg's beliefs. Still, many people who've worked with
him over the years have found themselves questioning whether his
values still align with their own, or if they ever
truly did. I thought tech was progressive, says Kelly stone Lake,
(19:30):
former director of product marketing in Meta's visual reality unit,
who after fifteen years with the company, is suing Meta
for sexual harassment and discrimination. Metta has asked a federal
court to dismiss the lawsuit. But we were really just
good at performing inclusion and progressivism because that was a
means to an end. There are signs of flagging morale.
(19:53):
Some current employees do wellness checks with each other at
the beginning of meetings. Others have created secret book clubs
to discuss Careless People, the best selling memoir by Sarah
Wynn Williams, Meta's former director of public policy. The company
saw the book, which includes unflattering personal portrayals of Zuckerberg
and his top deputies, as well as a sharp critique
(20:15):
of its dealings with foreign governments. As a violation of
a non disparagement agreement. It has taken Win Williams to
arbitration to keep her from promoting it. Metta maintains a
gag order to silence Miss winn Williams for speaking the truth,
says Ravi Nike, an attorney representing her, adding that the
company is pursuing a fifty thousand dollars penalty for each violation.
(20:37):
There are still some signs of Meta's continued aspirations to
be a conscientious workplace, such as the posters pinned around
its campus that preach things like nothing at Facebook is
someone else's problem. But Metta's leadership has sent signals to
its staff that protests aren't going to fly this time around.
When an employee voiced concerns about Metta's new direction on
(20:59):
an internal work placetool earlier this year, chief technology officer
Andrew Bosworth replied that employees who disagreed with the changes
could either leave or get on board. There are reasons
even for critics to stick around. Meta remains a lucrative
place to work. Its share price is up more than
six hundred percent since its twenty twenty two lows at
(21:20):
a time when predictions of an economic downturn have sparked
concerns about job security. In January, Meta said it would
fire about thirty six hundred employees who were publicly labeled
low performers, a move some employees saw as a way
to quash ideological descent. Additional layoffs have followed. A Meta
spokesperson denies the idea that layoffs were intended to suppress
(21:43):
internal critics. The internal tension was on display among Meta's
highest ranks when the company flew its senior leaders to
Menlo Park, California, for annual planning meetings in January. Included
on the itinerary was a Q and A with Zuckerberg,
attended solely by employees who carey the title of vice
president or above. Zuckerberg had just announced the policy changes,
(22:05):
and in a large auditorium on campus known as the Museum,
executives unhappy with the company's new direction, quizzed him about
his decisions to change directions on diversity, equity and inclusion,
as well as content moderation. According to people familiar with
the event. Eva Chen, who oversees fashion partnerships at Meta,
seemed frustrated by Zuckerberg's comments earlier that month on Rogan's podcast,
(22:29):
when he talked about corporate America needing more masculine energy.
She asked Zuckerberg for his definition of masculine energy. In
front of the group, Zuckerberg attempted to clarify his comments,
acknowledging that masculine may have been a poor choice of words,
but he didn't take them back. US businesses needed to
be more competitive and aggressive, he said. As to the
(22:51):
other questions, Zuckerberg was unapologetic. He'd made his decisions and
wasn't interested in relitigating them. Over the past decade, many
powerful people have tried to adapt to Trump's whims and
gotten burned. The President has mocked Zuckerberg on multiple occasions
for coming to the White House during his first term
to kiss my ass, and since returning to office, he
(23:13):
hasn't shown him the affection that he's demonstrated for Musk,
but that doesn't mean Trump dislikes the pandering. When asked
to comment for this article, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly
sent an email saying Trump takes meetings with many CEOs
who are eager to participate in the Trump economy. Investors
see potential upside as well, says Schweta Kajuria, an analyst
(23:34):
for Wolf Research. Changing its policies to align with Trump's
doesn't undercut the company's financial performance, she says, and reduces
the chance it will be hit with new regulations if
Democrats take the White House or Congress in the future,
she perdict Zuckerberg will just adjust to work with that
administration too. Others seem more risk to Meta if the
(23:55):
political winds shift. For all the enviable access Musk secured
his support for Trump, his association with the administration has
done real damage to his popularity and to Tesla's shares.
Political strategists inside and outside Meta say there's a feeling
that Zuckerberg too, may have over corrected toward Trump. Zuckerberg
(24:16):
himself was aware of how his changes to company policies
could alienate Democrats even as he was making them. He's
already directed executives to map out ways to secure their
support in the future, according to people familiar with the efforts,
but Meta may find it hard to pivot given the
real damage that progressives seek coming from the company's shifting policies.
(24:37):
Advocacy groups are already tracking increases in hate speech and
harassment against minority groups, women, and trans people. The Center
for Countering Digital Hate said in a February report that
hundreds of millions of posts each year that would have
previously been deemed harmful will likely stay up on the platform,
a finding that Meta has said is based on flawed methodology.
(24:59):
Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School who
spent years engaging with Meta on its content policies, says
such online abuse can translate into real world harm. What
do you think is going to happen when you greenlight
a policy that allows people to call LGBTQ people mentally ill,
when you green light slurs against trans people, she asks,
(25:21):
adding she is not speaking for Harvard. It's very clear
there's essentially a quid pro quo with Mark Zuckerberg. If
that's the decision they have to make, they'll sacrifice trans people,
They'll sacrifice women, They'll sacrifice minority groups. Even Meta's own
oversight board, an independent entity it formed to weigh in
on complicated content moderation Decisions said in late April that
(25:43):
the changes were announced hastily in a departure from regular procedure,
with no public information shared as to what, if any,
prior human rights due diligence the company performed. It has
advised the company to assess and report the potential harm
of its new policies. META said it would respet on
to the recommendation within sixty days. Given all this, Zuckerberg
(26:04):
would have a significant challenge presenting himself as a reliable
actor if Democrats return to power. The worst case scenario
is that he ends up with enemies on all sides.
This possibility was on display on April ninth, when, when
Williams testified before Congress, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, a Trump
ally who's been among the most outspoken critics of Silicon
(26:26):
Valley from the right, noted that Zuckerberg's new political positioning
conveniently aligns with the MAGA movement. Do you buy this
latest reinvention? He asked When Williams, she began her answer
by asking rhetorically whether securing a gag order to keep
her from discussing her book publicly was the action of
someone who believed in free speech. This is a man
(26:47):
who wears many different costumes, she continued. Now his new
costume is MMA fighting or whatever free speech. We don't
know what the next costume is going to be, but
it will be something different. It's whatever gets him closest
to power, she said,
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