Two weeks ahead of the inauguration, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg named Donald Trump ally and UFC boss Dana White to its board of directors.
Zuckerberg also pulled a page from Trump ally Elon Musk, turning over content moderation to users and loosening restrictions on hate speech on his company’s social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
Just days earlier, Meta elevated prominent Republican Joel Kaplan to lead its global affairs operation, after having served as a longtime executive at the tech giant. As part of the rollout, Kaplan touted the changes to Meta platforms on Fox News.
“It feels like we’re in a new era now,” Zuckerberg said, framing the shift as a return to the company’s roots around free expression.
While it’s common for large businesses to ingratiate themselves with an incoming administration, the approach is usually more subtle, said Dan Schnur, who teaches strategic political communications at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley.
“Trump might have never noticed a more traditional lobbying approach, but this was impossible for him to miss, which was the design from the very beginning,” Schnur said.
At a press conference Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump praised Meta for its MAGA makeover, saying “I think they’ve come a long way.” Asked if Meta was responding to threats he had made against the company and Zuckerberg, the President-elect said: “Probably.”
The relationship between Zuckerberg and Trump is complicated.
In 2019, Zuckerberg met with the president in the Oval Office. The following year, Trump had dinner with the billionaire social media CEO and said Zuckerberg congratulated him for being “No. 1 on Facebook.”
But tensions flared after Trump supporters invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6 and Zuckerberg suspended Trump from his company’s social media platforms.
Trump has called Facebook an “enemy of the people” and Zuckerberg a “criminal.” He accused “Zuckerbucks” of plotting against him during the 2020 election. Trump even threatened Zuckerberg with lifetime imprisonment if he tried to rig the 2024 election against him.
Sensing the shifting political winds, Zuckerberg has been working for months to reset the relationship. He called the President-elect a “badass” after the assassination attempt in July.
Following Trump’s decisive victory, Zuckerberg congratulated the President-elect on Threads: “Looking forward to working with you and your administration.”
After two days of meetings between their advisers, Zuckerberg dined with Donald Trump on the patio of his private Mar-a-Lago club in November and gave him a pair of his company’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. Meta then broke with company tradition and donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
With Republicans back in control of both chambers of Congress and calling for new regulation of Big Tech, Zuckerberg stepped up his charm offensive.
Last week, Zuckerberg shuffled his senior leadership ranks to replace Nick Clegg, a centrist former British deputy prime minister, with Kaplan as the company’s global policy chief.
This week, Zuckerberg referred to Trump’s election victory as “a cultural tipping point.”
In response to a years-long campaign from Trump and conservatives who accused Meta of suppressing their political views, he put an end to fact-checking and vowed to move trust and safety workers from California to Texas “where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.”
“We saw a lot of societal and political pressure, all in the direction of more content moderation, more censorship. And we’ve got a real opportunity now,” Kaplan said. “We’ve got a new administration and a new president coming in who are big defenders of free expression, and that makes a difference.”
Some in Trump’s entourage welcomed the political realignment.
“Thank you Zuck and Meta for recognizing that the censorship had gone too far, and seizing the opportunity to make a course correction. I do believe you are getting back to your roots,” David Sacks, Trump’s crypto and AI czar, said on X.
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan told reporters that he plans to meet with Zuckerberg in the next few weeks. That was likely welcome news.
Like other business leaders, getting back into Trump’s good graces and that of the GOP establishment could make a significant difference over the next four years.
On the one hand, Meta and other companies would like Trump’s ear on key policy issues for the tech sector such as immigration, trade and tariffs and energy.
Trump has already shown a willingness to break with his grassroots supporters and side with Musk and tech companies over visas for skilled workers.
Perhaps even more important is the promise of less regulation.
“He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said of Trump at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit. “If I can help do that, I’m going to help him.”
Avoiding regulatory battles is a top priority for Zuckerberg. Andrew Ferguson, Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Trade Commission, had vowed to target companies “that facilitate or promote censorship.” Meta is already facing an antitrust case from the FTC seeking to break it up.
Not all conservatives on Capitol Hill were so easily won over by Meta’s pivot.
In reality, the changes Zuckerberg made were not as sweeping as they appeared. Meta had already watered down policies to limit the spread of falsehoods. In the run-up to the election, Meta allowed claims the 2020 election was rigged in political ads.
“Now that President Trump is about to take office, Meta has allegedly decided to stop censoring conservatives,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, wrote on X. “This is a ploy to avoid being regulated. We will not be fooled.”
