For years, Mark Zuckerberg tried to keep his social media above the fray of partisan politics.
And why not? Meta's flagship apps (facebook, instagram, and WhatsApp) were noisy nation-states in themselves, with billions of users, fragile internal policies, skittish advertisers, perpetually aggrieved influencers, and a sprawling and unequal law enforcement regime. (known as “content moderation”) which was supposed to keep the peace.
Given the headaches associated with running his quasi-governments, the last thing Zuckerberg wanted was to get too involved with current governments, the kind that could use the force of the law to demand that you censor certain voices, shift the balance on politically sensitive issues, or threaten to jail Meta executives for non-compliance.
But that was then. Now, on the eve of a second Trump term, Zuckerberg is giving his company a complete MAGA makeover.
In the process, it's also revealing that Meta, a shape-shifting company that has jumped on every major tech trend of the last decade, from cryptocurrencies to the metaverse, generative ai to wearable computing, has a void fundamental at its core. You're not quite sure what your next phase of growth is or where your next phase of growth will come from. But in the meantime, he will adopt whatever values Zuckerberg thinks he needs to survive.
The most recent changes began before the election, when Zuckerberg, whose contributions to election integrity efforts in 2020 had led Trump to threaten him with life imprisonment – called Mr. Trump's recovery of a “rough” murder attempt. But they have accelerated in recent weeks, after Trump and Zuckerberg met at Mar-a-Lago to patch things up.
Last week, Meta's global policy chief, Nick Clegg (a former British deputy prime minister who was chosen for his centrist bona fides) was replaced by Joel Kaplan, a veteran Republican operative who has for years acted as Zuckerberg's liaison to the Trump party is right.
On Monday, Meta announced the appointment of three new board members, including Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close friend and political ally of Trump.
And on Tuesday, Zuckerberg, dressed in a $900,000 wristwatch and an air of tense enthusiasm: It 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, allowing users to see more “civic content” in their feeds and moving its content review operations from California to Texas to avoid, it said, the appearance. of political bias.
Zuckerberg's stated reason for these changes – that Meta had realized that its old rules had resulted in too much censorship and that it should return to its roots as a platform for free expression – was nonsense. (For starters: What roots? facebook was inspired by a popular or unpopular website for Harvard students, not a Cato Institute whitepaper.)
In reality, Zuckerberg changed his opinion on the speech many times, usually in the direction of the prevailing political winds. And the details of the latest changes (a long list of right-wing speech demands) as well as the delivery method (Mr. Kaplan went to “Fox & Friends” announce them) made it clear what the true purpose was.
The most popular theory about Zuckerberg's motives is that he's simply doing the politically expedient thing: cozying up to the incoming Trump administration, as many Silicon Valley moguls have done, in hopes of securing better deals for himself and Meta while Trump is away. in office.
A different theory, supported by conversations I've had with several of Zuckerberg's friends and associates in recent months, is that the billionaire's personal politics have shifted sharply to the right since 2020, and that his embrace of Trump may slow. less out of cynical opportunism than out of true enthusiasm.
I cannot prove or disprove this theory. Zuckerberg, unlike Elon Musk, does not broadcast his unfiltered political opinions dozens of times a day. But I find it plausible. I've spent a lot of time studying the right-wing conversion narratives of disaffected liberals, and Zuckerberg's recent arc fits surprisingly well: A wealthy 40-year-old man with a tarnished public reputation begins to listen <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/26/tech/mark-zuckerberg-joe-rogan-interview/index.html” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>Joe Rogan and develops an interest in mixed martial arts and other hypermasculine hobbies, becomes upset with the woke left and angry at the mainstream media, rebrands himself as a bad boy, and adopts the “classical liberal” label while supporting silently most of the principles. of MAGA conservatism.
At the very least, Zuckerberg has clearly been studying Musk's playbook. In his video this week announcing Meta's changes, he spoke disparagingly about “legacy media” (a favorite phrase of Musk's) and accused his California-based employees of political bias, as Musk did when he took over twitter. .
Whatever the cause, these changes represent Meta's biggest political realignment since 2016, when it responded to rampant misinformation on facebook and widespread criticism over its role in Trump's election by revamping its rules and investing billions of dollars in content moderation. content.
The list of people harmed by Meta's new rules may be long: immigrants, transgender people, victims of online harassment and bullying, 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 cornered by political pressure, and will now (at least for the next four years, or until the winds change again) be judged for his will of surrender to the right in matters of expression.
You may find that your new allies on the right demand more censorship of you and are less forgiving of your mistakes than the left. (Some right-wing media outlets are already urging Trump and his allies to Don't trust Mr. Zuckerberg's change of heart..) And the benefits he anticipates from reaching out to Trump may not materialize as fully as he hopes. (A complicating factor: Musk, the president-elect's chief technology advisor, is <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/26/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-tweets-why-he-doesnt-like-facebook.html” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>no fan of his.)
However, the real problem with Meta is that the company still doesn't know what it is. Is it a provider of old (though 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 family and friends? A TikTok-style algorithmic feed, filled with a mix of professional influencers and ai detritus? An immersive virtual world builder? Anything else weirder?
A political reset could give Zuckerberg some time to answer these questions. But for Meta to prosper beyond the Trump years, it will have to do more than bend the knee.
