Why Meta had to 'bend the knee to Trump' ahead of his inauguration


Why Meta had to

JAN 11 2025 Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement this week that Meta would pivot its moderation policies to allow more “free expression” was widely viewed as the company’s latest effort to appease President-elect Donald Trump. More than any of its Silicon Valley peers, Meta has taken numerous public steps to make amends with Trump since his election victory in November. That follows a highly contentious four years between the two during Trump’s first term in office, which ended with Facebook — similar to other social media companies — banning Trump from its platform. As recently as March, Trump was using his preferred nickname of “Zuckerschmuck” when talking about Meta’s CEO and declaring that Facebook was an “enemy of the people.” With Meta now positioning itself to be a key player in artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg recognizes the need for White House support as his company builds data centers and pursues policies that will allow it to fulfill its lofty ambitions, according to people familiar with the company’s plans who asked not to be named because they weren’t 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, Zuckerberg said Meta will end third-party fact-checking, remove restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender identity and bring political content back to users’ feeds. Zuckerberg pitched the sweeping policy changes as key to stabilizing Meta’s content-moderation apparatus, which he said had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”8:00 AM EST