Meta had to “kneel to Trump” before his inauguration

Jakub Porzycki | Nuphoto | Getty Images

Mark Zuckerberg's announcement this week that Meta would evolve its moderation policy to allow more “free speech” was widely seen as the company's latest effort to appease President-elect Donald Trump.

More than any of his Silicon Valley peers, Meta has taken numerous public steps to make amends with Trump since his election victory in November.

This follows four highly contentious years between the two during Trump's first term, which ended with Facebook, like other social media companies, banning Trump from its platform.

As recently as March, Trump used his favorite nickname “Zuckerschmuck” to talk about Meta's CEO and declare Facebook to be an “enemy of the people.”

As Meta now positions itself as a key player in artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg recognizes the need for support from the White House as his company builds data centers and pursues policies that will allow it to realize its lofty ambitions, according to people familiar with the company's plans who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak on the subject.

“Even though Facebook is as powerful as it is, it still had to kneel 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 would end third-party fact-checking, remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity, and bring political content back into users' feeds . Zuckerberg touted sweeping policy changes as key to stabilizing Meta's content moderation apparatus, which he said has “reached a point where there are just too many errors and too much censorship.”

This policy shift is the latest strategic shift Meta has made to ally himself with Trump and the Republicans since Election Day.

A day earlier, Meta announced that UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime friend of Trump, was joining the company's board of directors.

And last week, Meta announced that it was replacing Nick Clegg, its president of global affairs, with Joel Kaplan, who had been the company's vice president of politics. Clegg previously had a career in British politics in the Liberal Democratic Party, including as deputy prime minister, while Kaplan was deputy White House chief of staff under former President George W. Bush.

Kaplan, who joined Meta in 2011 when it was still known as Facebook, has long-standing ties to the Republican Party and once worked as a law clerk for the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In December, Kaplan posted photos on Facebook of himself with Vice President-elect JD Vance and Trump during their visit to the New York Stock Exchange.

Joel Kaplan, Facebook vice president of global policy, April 17, 2018.

Niall Carson | PA Images | Getty Images

Many Meta employees have criticized the policy change internally, with some saying the company is absolving itself of its responsibility to create a safe platform. Current and former employees also expressed concern that marginalized communities could face more online abuse due to the new policy, which is expected to take effect in the coming weeks.

Despite employee backlash, people familiar with the company's thinking said Meta was more willing to take such steps after laying off 21,000 employees, or nearly a quarter of its workforce, in 2022 and 2023.

These cuts affected a large portion of Meta's civic integrity, trust, and security teams. The civic integrity group was the closest thing to a white-collar union, with members willing to oppose certain policy decisions, former employees said. Since the job cuts, Zuckerberg faces less friction when making broad policy changes, the sources said.

Zuckerberg's overtures toward Trump began in the months leading up to the election.

After Trump's first assassination attempt in July, Zuckerberg called the photo of Trump raising his fist with blood streaming down his face “one of the most badass things I've ever seen in my life “.

A month later, Zuckerberg wrote a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, alleging that the Biden administration had pressured Meta teams to censor certain content about Covid-19.

“I think the government pressure was wrong and I regret that we were not more upfront about it,” he wrote.

After Trump's presidential victory, Zuckerberg joined several other tech executives who visited the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund.

Meta revealed to its employees in a memo obtained by CNBC on Friday that it intends to close several internal programs related to diversity and inclusion in its hiring process, representing another pro-business move. Trump.

The day before, some details of the company's new relaxed content moderation guidelines were published by news site The Intercept, showing the kind of offensive rhetoric Meta's new policy would now allow, including statements such as “Migrants are no better than vomiting.” and “I bet it was Jorge who stole my backpack after track practice today. Immigrants are all thieves.”

Recalibration for Trump

Zuckerberg, who has been dragged to Washington eight times to testify before congressional committees over the past two administrations, wants to be seen as someone who can work with Trump and the Republican Party, people familiar with the matter said.

Although Meta's content policy updates surprised many of its employees and fact-checking partners, a small group of executives were formulating the plans in the wake of the U.S. election results. As early as New Year's Day, leaders began planning public announcements of their policy change, the people said.

Meta typically undergoes major “recalibrations” after major U.S. elections, said Katie Harbath, former Facebook political director and CEO of technology consulting firm Anchor Change. When the country experiences a change in power, Meta adjusts its policies to best suit its business needs and reputation based on the political landscape, Harbath said.

“In 2028, they will do a new calibration,” she said.

After the 2016 election and Trump's first victory, for example, Zuckerberg toured the United States to meet people in states he had never visited before. He released a 6,000-word manifesto highlighting the need for Facebook to create more community.

After the 2016 election, the social media company faced heavy criticism over fake news and Russian election interference on its platforms.

After the 2020 election, in the midst of the pandemic, Meta took a stronger stance on Covid-19 content, with one politician saying in 2021 that “the amount of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine that violates our policies is too high by our standards.” These efforts may have appeased the Biden administration, but they angered Republicans.

Meta is once again reacting to the moment, Harbath said.

“There was no business risk here in Silicon Valley in being more right-wing,” Harbath said.

While Trump has offered few specific policy proposals for his second administration, Meta has a lot at stake.

The White House could create looser AI regulations compared to those in the European Union, where Meta says harsh restrictions have led the company to not release some of its most advanced AI technologies . Meta, like other tech giants, also needs more massive data centers and cutting-edge computer chips to help it train and run its advanced AI models.

“There is a business advantage to the Republican victory because they are traditionally less regulatory,” Harbath said.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reacts during his testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 31 2024.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Meta isn't the only one trying to cozy up to Trump. But the extreme measures taken by the company reflect a particular level of animosity expressed by Trump over the years.

Trump accused Meta of censorship and expressed resentment over the company's two-year suspension of his Facebook and Instagram accounts following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

In July 2024, Trump posted on Truth Social that he intended to “prosecute election fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time”, adding “ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!” Trump reiterated that statement in his book “Save America,” writing that Zuckerberg plotted against him in the 2020 election and that the Meta CEO would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if it happened again.

Meta spends $14 million annually to ensure the personal security of Zuckerberg and his family, according to the company's 2024 proxy statement. As part of this security, the company analyzes any real or perceived threats against its CEO, according to a person familiar with the matter. These threats are cataloged, analyzed, and dissected by Meta's multitude of security teams.

After Trump's comments, Meta security teams analyzed how Trump could use the Justice Department and the nation's intelligence agencies against Zuckerberg and what it would cost the company to defend its CEO against a president in office, said the person, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality.

Meta's efforts to appease the new president carry their own risks.

After Zuckerberg announced the new speech policy on Tuesday, Boland, the former executive, was among a number of users who turned to Meta's Threads service to inform their followers that they were leaving Facebook.

“Last post before deletion,” Boland wrote in his post.

Before the post could be seen by any of his followers on Threads, Meta's content moderation system had removed it, citing cybersecurity reasons.

Boland told CNBC in an interview that he couldn't help but laugh at the situation.

“It’s deeply ironic,” Boland said.

CNBC's Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report.

WATCH: Meta Returns to Free Speech Tradition, Says Former Facebook Privacy Officer Chris Kelly

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