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To repair his ties with Donald Trump, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is introducing pro-conservative changes to his platforms

On January 7, the US social media giant Meta announced it was abandoning third-party fact-checking, easing restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender identity. Soon after, it confirmed the termination of internal programmes to diversify its workforce. The changes are among several that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president on January 20.

What next

Meta faces the threat of becoming embroiled in a highly partisan battle over content moderation. However, its greatest risk lies in potential Republican-led reforms to Section 230 — the legal shield that protects social media platforms from content liability — putting its advertising-driven business model in jeopardy. Simultaneously, Zuckerberg will aim to influence the Trump administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policies, not least to check the sway that rival Elon Musk has with Trump.

Subsidiary Impacts

Analysis

Relations between President-elect Donald Trump and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg had been strained since at least 2021, when Facebook and Instagram suspended Trump’s accounts for two years following the January 6 Capitol Hill riot.

Since then, Trump has more than once threatened Zuckerberg with life imprisonment following the entrepreneur’s admission that Meta had removed online content during the COVID-19 pandemic under pressure from the Biden administration, and on the 2020 election cycle following an FBI warning that certain content related to Hunter Biden might be Russian disinformation.

The Facebook founder is now at the forefront of the Big Tech executives seeking to repair relations with Trump.

  • In July, Zuckerberg phoned Trump after an attempted assassination to wish him well, and in November, attended a Thanksgiving dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate, marking the first public indication of a thawing of relations between the two. The tech entrepreneur subsequently donated USD1mn to Trump’s inauguration fund, which pays for the celebratory networking events surrounding the swearing-in of a new president.
  • On January 3, Mark Zuckerberg replaced Nick Clegg, the former UK Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader, as Meta’s head of global affairs — a role that oversees the company’s content moderation policies. Clegg’s deputy, Joe Kaplan, a former senior official in George W. Bush’s administration with strong Republican ties, will step into the position. Additionally, Zuckerberg appointed Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and a long-time Trump ally, to Meta’s board.
  • On January 7, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram would replace their third-party fact-checkers with user-generated ‘community notes’, a system similar to the one used on Elon Musk’s X (see UNITED STATES: Meta’s content changes to be domestic – January 8, 2025). Trump and other Republicans have long criticised Meta’s platforms of using content moderation to censor conservative voices. Zuckerberg said dropping third-party fact-checking would address institutional pressure on Meta to censor content on ideological grounds and enhance user voices.
  • On January 10, Meta said it would end several internal programmes designed to diversify its workforce. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the workplace have been a particular target of conservative activists’ fight against corporate ‘wokeism’.

Zuckerberg is not the only tech executive trying to make amends with Trump. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post newspaper and Amazon founder, is another USD1mn donor to Trump’s inauguration fund. However, Meta has particular reasons for feeling potentially vulnerable to a Trump administration.

Meta feels potentially vulnerable to a Trump administration

Antitrust

An antitrust case brought by the Federal Trade Commission in 2020 is due to go to court in April. Its suit alleges that Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were anti-competitive. Although the second Trump administration is expected to be more lenient towards antitrust concerns in tech mergers and acquisitions, it will be least lenient with Big Tech (see UNITED STATES: Tech sector M&A could rise sharply – September 4, 2024).

Nevertheless, Meta will still hope that it can encourage the new administration to drop a case that has a highly uncertain outcome.

Section 230

A bigger worry is the fate of Section 230, a provision of the Communications Act of 1934 that has carried down to later legislation and exempts social media platforms from liability for user-generated content. There is a bipartisan agreement that Section 230 is broken and out of date, but no unanimity on how to revise it.

Democrats want to address what they say is Section 230’s enabling of an excess of hate speech, misinformation and toxicity online; Republicans want to remove even the limited requirements for content moderation, claiming they are used disproportionately to censor conservative voices.

With Republicans now having unified government control, Section 230 legislation is potentially in play, which carries a commercial risk to Meta. Facebook and Instagram operate on advertising-driven business models with Meta’s annual advertising revenue exceeding USD130bn across its apps.

USD130bn
Meta’s annual advertising revenue
Although Meta, like all social media platforms, has reaped the benefits of Section 230, if Facebook and Instagram become inhospitable environments for advertisers, there is a risk that the money-spinning big brand advertisers, who are highly sensitive to the nature of the content surrounding their marketing messages, will abandon them — much like they did with X following Elon Musk’s takeover (see INTERNATIONAL: The future of X remains challenging – November 26, 2024).Musk can choose (and afford) to operate X as a private megaphone rather than a business, but Zuckerberg does not have that luxury. By abandoning its previous content moderation practices, Meta may be attempting to dissuade Congress from taking action on Section 230 while appeasing conservatives regarding their criticisms of censorship. The worst outcome for Meta would be losing the safe haven of Section 230, which could occur if, for example, Republicans pushed through its repeal.Narrowly focused, piecemeal changes to address particular problems, such as deepfakes in political advertising, are more likely than a blanket repeal of Section 230. Yet the inherent uncertainty of that is also a business risk for Meta, and Zuckerberg will want a voice in developing policy proposals.Further uncertainty surrounds the extent to which the content increasingly generated by social media companies’ AI algorithms, including algorithmically created recommendations, is protected under Section 230. In 2023, the Supreme Court heard two cases intended to test that point. It dismissed the terrorism-related one (Twitter v. Taamneh) and sent the other (Gonzalez v. Google) back to the lower courts, but it did not rule in either on Section 230 applicability.

AI

As Meta positions itself as a key player in AI, Zuckerberg will aim to secure an influential role in shaping policies that align with the company’s interests as the White House pursues its goal of global AI leadership. He will also seek a prominent role in discussions around federal research funding, keen to outmanoeuvre rival Musk’s xAI.

Simultaneously, Meta will require robust licensing and regulatory support to power its energy-intensive data centres with nuclear energy, while also protecting its substantial investments in renewable energy initiatives.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, January 31, 2024 (Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images)

Authored by:

Giles Alston

Dr Giles Alston

Deputy Director & Senior Analyst,
North America

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