Four years ago, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg banned Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram, saying the risks of allowing him on the platforms were \u201csimply too great\u201d after Trump repeatedly used the sites to broadcast election lies and cheer on the January 6 mob. <\/p>\n
A lot\u2019s changed. <\/p>\n
Now, Zuckerberg is making it crystal clear that Meta and MAGA can get along. <\/p>\n
The social media giant is canning its fact-checkers and making its platforms look a little more like X, the site owned by \u201cfirst buddy\u201d Elon Musk. At the same time, Meta named Trump ally and UFC boss Dana White to its board of directors on Monday, days after elevating Joel Kaplan, the most prominent Republican lobbyist for the company, to be its new head of global affairs. Meta was one of several large tech companies to donate $1 million to Trump\u2019s inauguration fund. And Zuckerberg \u2014 whom Trump once threatened with life in prison \u2014 has personally made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to dine with the incoming president since the election. <\/p>\n
While Zuckerberg is clearly trying to insulate Meta from Trump\u2019s looming corporate retribution tour, he\u2019s also courting a potential disaster if Meta\u2019s advertisers flee and users begin to associate the brand \u2014 already tarnished by AI slop and a yearslong dearth of innovation \u2014 with the kinds of unsavory characters who now dominate X. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday morning, Zuckerberg tapped the president-elect\u2019s favorite TV channel, Fox News, to announce that the world\u2019s dominant social media platforms are now, for all intents and purposes, pro-Trump. <\/p>\n
Meta is getting rid of its third-party fact-checkers, Zuckerberg said, because they have been \u201ctoo politically biased,\u201d made too many mistakes \u201cand have destroyed more trust than they\u2019ve created\u201d \u2014 unfalsifiable statements that echo the right\u2019s longtime claim that Facebook censors conservative views. Meta will replace fact-checkers with \u201ccommunity notes\u201d similar to those on X, in which users can add comments to posts that may contain false information. <\/p>\n
The hits kept coming on Tuesday, as my colleague Clare Duffy reported that Meta quietly updated its guidelines to free users who want to refer to gay and transgender people as having a \u201cmental illness,\u201d or refer to women as \u201chousehold objects\u201d and \u201cproperty.\u201d <\/p>\n
All of this buys Meta some insurance going into an era of Trump 2.0. As business leaders remember all too well from Round One, Trump has shown little restraint when he senses companies are being insufficiently loyal. Meta\u2019s own stock tumbled in March after Trump called in to CNBC to label Facebook an \u201cenemy of the people.\u201d <\/p>\n