What’s behind Meta’s makeover ahead of Trump’s second term?

For years, Mark Zuckerberg tried to keep his social networks above partisan fray.

And why not? Meta’s flagship apps—Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—were noisy nation-states unto themselves, with billions of users, fragile internal policies, fragile advertisers, perpetually offended influencers, and a sprawling, uneven enforcement regime (known as “content moderation”) that was supposed to preserve the peace.

Given the headaches associated with leading his quasi-governments, the last Mr. Zuckerberg wanted to get too involved actually governments—the kind that could use the power of law to demand that he censor certain voices, thumb the scale on politically sensitive topics, or threaten to throw Meta bosses in jail for noncompliance.

But that was then. Now, on the eve of a second Trump term, Mr. Zuckerberg gave his company a full MAGA makeover.

In the process, he also reveals that Meta—a shape-shifting company that has jumped on every major technology trend of the last decade, from crypto to the metaverse to generative AI to wearable computing—has a fundamental hollowness at its core. It is not entirely certain what it is or where its next phase of growth will come from. But in the meantime, it will adopt the values ​​that Mr. Zuckerberg believes it needs to survive.

The latest changes started before the election, when Mr. Zuckerberg — whose contributions to 2020 election integrity efforts had prompted President Donald J. Trump to threaten him with life imprisonment — called Mr. Trump’s recovery from an attempted murder “badass”. But they have accelerated in recent weeks after Mr. Trump and Mr. Zuckerberg met at Mar-a-Lago to mend fences.

Last week, Meta’s global political chief, Nick Clegg — a former British deputy prime minister who was chosen for his centrist bona fides — was replaced by Joel Kaplan, a longtime Republican operative who has served for years as Mr. Zuckerberg’s liaison to the pro-Trump right.

On Monday, Meta announced the appointment of three new board members, including Dana White, the top executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close friend and political ally of Mr. Trump.

And on Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg – wearing one $900,000 wristwatch and an air of strained enthusiasm—announced in an Instagram Reel that Meta was replacing its fact-checking program with an X-style “community notes” feature. The company is also revising its rules to allow more criticism of certain groups, including immigrants and transgender people, letting users see more “civic content” in their feeds and moving its content reviews from California to Texas to avoid, he said, the appearance of political bias.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s stated reason for these changes — that Meta had realized that its old rules had resulted in too much censorship and that it needed to return to its roots as a free speech platform — was nonsense. (For starters: What roots? Facebook was inspired by a hot-or-not website for Harvard students, not a Cato Institute white paper.)

In reality, Mr. Zuckerberg his views on speech many times, usually in the direction of the prevailing political winds. And the details of the latest changes (a laundry list of right-wing speech demands) as well as the delivery method (Mr. Kaplan went on “Fox & Friends” to announce them) made it clear what the real purpose was.

The most popular theory about Mr. Zuckerberg’s motives are that he is just doing what is politically expedient: cozying up to the incoming Trump administration, as many Silicon Valley tycoons are, hoping to get better deals for themselves and Meta, while Mr. Trump is in office.

Another theory—one supported by conversations I’ve had with several friends and associates of Mr. Zuckerberg’s in recent months — is that the billionaire’s personal politics have shifted sharply to the right since 2020, and that his embrace of Mr. Trump can stutter. less from cynical opportunism than genuine enthusiasm.

I can neither prove nor disprove this theory. Mr. Zuckerberg, unlike Elon Musk, does not broadcast his unfiltered political opinions dozens of times a day. But I find it plausible. I have spent a lot of time studying the right-wing conversion stories of disgruntled liberals, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s latest arc fills the bill surprisingly well: A wealthy 40-year-old man with a tarnished public reputation begins to listen to Joe Rogan and develops an interest in mixed martial arts and other hypermasculine hobbies, becomes irritated by the vigilante left and angry at the mainstream media, rebrands himself as a bad boy and adopts the label “classical liberal” while quietly supporting most of the principles of MAGA conservatism.

If nothing else, Mr. Zuckerberg clearly studied Mr. Musk’s playbook. In his video this week announcing Meta’s changes, he spoke with dripping disdain about “legacy media” — a favorite phrase of Mr. Musks — and accused his California employees of political bias, which Mr. Musk did when he took over Twitter.

Whatever the reason, these changes correspond to Meta’s biggest political realignment since 2016, when it responded to widespread misinformation on Facebook and widespread criticism over its role in Mr. Trump’s election by changing its rules and investing billions of dollars in content moderation.

The list of people hurt by Meta’s new rules could be long: immigrants, trans people, victims of online bullying and harassment, the targets of future QAnon-style conspiracy theories, and Facebook and Instagram users who want to see reliable information when they log in .

But the most unexpected victim may be Mr. Zuckerberg himself, who has always taken pains to avoid being painted into a corner by political pressure, will now (at least for the next four years, or until the wind shifts again) be judged on his willingness to surrender to the right on speech issues.

He may find that his new allies on the right make more censorship demands of him and are less forgiving of his mistakes than the left ever was. (Already some right-wing media outlets are encouraging Mr. Trump and his allies not to trust mr. Zuckerberg’s change of heart.) And the advantages he imagines of enjoying himself with Mr. Trump, may not be as full as he hopes. (A complicating factor: Mr. Musk, the president-elect’s top technology adviser, is no fan of him.)

Meta’s real problem, however, is that the company still doesn’t know what it is. Is it a vendor of aging (but still profitable) social media apps? A champion of open source AI development? A creator of next-generation augmented-reality hardware? A way for people to connect with their families and friends? A TikTok-style algorithmic feed filled with a mix of professional influencers and AI slop? A builder of immersive virtual worlds? Anything else strange?

A political reset might give Mr. Zuckerberg some time to answer these questions. But for Meta to thrive beyond the Trump years, he’ll have to do more than bend the knee.