Meta and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently made a variety of adjustments to the policies of his numerous assets and companies, all of which are being globally recognized as influenced by his newfound political standpoint. Only weeks before the inauguration of president elect Donald J. Trump, CEO Zuckerberg has allegedly seemed to have changed the direction of his policies in a right or conservative regard, according to the media.
A major decision made by Mark Zuckerberg was concerned with the fact checking and censorship policies on Meta platforms. The old fact checking policy was replaced with a less strict and more lenient counterpart, which would allow users to add comments and notes to posts in order to – in some cases – contribute additional information to the original post. Meta ensured that the comments and notes would only be visible to users had the commenter and poster exchanged agreements previously. Zuckerberg claimed that the adjustments would allow for open practice of the 1st Amendment rights, such as free speech. He ensured that violent or extremely offensive content would especially be flagged and targeted through the new system, and that less damaging or illegal posts would be handled through a far less extensive and precise method – users themselves must report content and posts which they believe to be inaccurate or offensive.
As most major decisions regarding social media apps do, the addition of the new policy has received a variety of reviews, praise, and criticism. Long-term users of Meta and Facebook platforms criticized the previous policy, claiming that the system had been politically rigged against conservative or right wing content. The addition of the policy has seemed to have a positive review from those who had disliked the former, many showing open support regarding the decision. On the contrary, a handful of employees have come forward about their alarm in respect of the new policy, claiming that removing the third-party fact checking could be extremely risky and viewed as strongly political. It is without a doubt that the new modifications to the guidelines have evoked an extensive amount of reactions from the public.
Zuckerberg himself stated that the recent election played a large role in his decision to alter Meta’s moderation strategies. He attested that Donald J. Trump’s victory in the 2024 election had driven his motivation to run his companies with thorough implications of the 1st Amendment rights, and that he seeks to work closely with the president-elect in order to ensure censorship is being appropriately handled by U.S. based corporations through the ‘support of the U.S. government’ .
Only days after the removal of the fact checking policies, another reconstruction of Meta – the dispersion of Meta’s DEI team, or division, equity, and inclusion team – surfaced. At Meta, this team was designed to incorporate diversity both on Meta’s various platforms and in Meta in-person workspaces. Alongside the removal of this unit, Meta reported that they would no longer be using their previous hiring technique, which allowed for an intensified level of diversity to be demonstrated in Meta staff. The inclusion of the DEI team on social media platforms had allegedly been criticized by conservatives before, furthering the agenda of disapprovers that Zuckerberg’s alterations to Meta have been strongly in favor of right wing users.
The actions of CEO Zuckerberg have not gone unnoticed by his staff. Nick Clegg, the former Chief Global Affairs Officer at Meta and a member of the Liberal Democratic party, resigned from his position at Meta on January 2nd, 2025, just days after Zuckerberg made a $1 million dollar grant to president-elect Donald J. Trump to fund his inauguration. The position was then filled by Joel Kaplan, former Deputy of Global Affairs at Meta, and a member of the Republican Party. These events have strongly been speculated to be uncoincidental, fitting the theme of Meta’s slow reconciliation to right wing agendas. On Threads, a Meta adaptation to Instagram, Clegg posted, “My time at the company coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between ‘big tech’ and the societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions, and norms affecting the sector.” It is unclear whether Nick Clegg’s resignation had any relation to Zuckerberg’s increased recognition of president-elect Donald J. Trump’s policies and political views.
With these adaptations to large Meta platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, users are now able to freely speak their minds, and are also at higher risk of seeing or spreading misinformation on highly trafficked websites and applications. It is undeniably important to recognize the essentiality of spreading reliable information with trustworthy sources online, and to follow the new policy of reporting any misinformation that one may come across on such websites in order to promote safe and dependable online forums.
