How Mark Zuckerberg Turned Meta Right

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

Zuckerberg, once a supporter of a handful of progressive causes, including fighting mass deportations, repeatedly met with – and sometimes criticized – Barack Obama during his presidency, he began dropping hints last summer that he was preparing to politically endorse Donald Trump, a maneuver he is now in the process of carrying out.

The first hints came in July, when Zuckerberg praised Trump’s reaction to being nearly assassinated, saying Trump’s raised fist after the shooting was “one of the meanest things I’ve ever seen in my life.” However, Zuckerberg tempered the praise at the time, saying he would not endorse a presidential candidate.

Also that month, Meta removed special restrictions it imposed on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts following the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol — essentially giving Trump a fresh start on the platforms after it suspended and then reinstated him .

Other steps to the right soon followed.

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

In late August, Zuckerberg let a personal threat from Trump go unanswered. After Trump released a book of photographs in which he said Zuckerberg “will spend the rest of his life in prison” if he does “anything illegal” to influence the presidential election, Meta declined to comment.

During the presidential campaign, Meta’s corporate political action committee did not give to any of the major candidates, although Meta’s individual employees gave generously to Vice President Kamala Harris — nearly $2 million, according to transparency website OpenSecrets. The company’s PAC gave $30,000 each to the Republican and Democratic senatorial campaign committees, spread cash around to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate, and emphasized supporting incumbents in Senate races.

After the Nov. 5 election, Zuckerberg posted greetings to Trump. Last month, Meta said it had donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. And last week, Zuckerberg elevated a longtime Republican insider, Joel Kaplan, to be Meta’s Head of Global Policywho replaces 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 WhiteCEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a longtime friend of Trump.

The speed with which Zuckerberg changed his political tune was breathtaking to longtime observers of the company.

“Zuck’s announcement is a total knee-jerk reaction to Trump and an attempt to catch up with Musk in his race to the bottom,” Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation expert, said on Blueskyreferring to tech billionaire Elon Musk. She is the executive director of the American Sunlight Project, which fights disinformation.

A Meta insider said: “Mark is a very centered leader. He is in no way partisan.” The person added: “But he has a cadre of professional political advisers and executives who have Republican profiles that are rising in the company.”

David Sacks, a venture capitalist who is Trump’s incoming adviser on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, said Zuckerberg’s announcement was a “turning point” and he credited Trump.

“Thank you President Trump for creating this political and cultural shift,” Sacks said on X.

Zuckerberg, who co-founded his company nearly 21 years ago, is hardly alone in corporate America in changing policy to match political windfalls, but his pivot is unique because of Meta’s dominant position in how Americans communicate online. Four Meta apps – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger – are among the most widely used internet platforms.

Zuckerberg, 40, has also cozyed up to some prominent Democrats over the years, including Obama, who visited the headquarters by Meta, then known as Facebook, in 2011.

Zuckerberg and Facebook were in the middle of a crisis when Trump was elected in 2016, fighting allegations that fake news on Facebook influenced the election results. In 2020, when Joe Biden won, Zuckerberg told employees that he had won fairly and made a point to loudly affirm the election results and reject Trump’s claim that the results were rigged, while noting that Trump had earned many legitimate votes.

In one five minute video When Zuckerberg announced 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 the media.” He also cited the November election, calling it a “cultural turning point” for less content moderation.

Asked about Meta’s move to the right over the past six months, a company spokesman declined to comment, but pointed to Georgetown Speech 2019 as evidence of coherence.

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

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

He has often shown an eye for where the political and legislative pressure was heading. In 2017, after Facebook revealed that Russian operatives had used the site to try to influence the 2016 presidential election, the company and its competitors mounted a massive effort to fend off new federal laws, including announcing voluntary transparency measures such as public database of ads.

But at other times, Zuckerberg has appeared caught off guard by criticism from the right. In 2020, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, poured $350 million into technology funds and other nonpartisan grants to election offices nationwide to try to improve election administration — only to be later carved out by Republican state legislatures despite the partisan nature of the effort. Zuckerberg abandoned the effort for the 2022 election cycle.

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

Four years ago, when Biden was preparing to take office, Meta said announced that they were hiring a lawyer who worked in Obama’s Justice Department, Roy Austin, as vice president for civil rights.

Now Zuckerberg has a growing staff of Republican operatives helping guide policy at Meta. Kaplan is a former deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush White House, and before his promotion last week, he joined Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance at a photo shoot last month on the New York Stock Exchange.

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

Kevin Martin, Meta’s recently promoted vice president for public policy, chaired the Federal Communications Commission during Bush’s second term.

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

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

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