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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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Meta's Mark Zuckerberg announced major changes to the company's policies on Tuesday, in the latest sign of its embrace of President-elect Donald Trump.
In a video posted on Facebook, Zuckerberg said the election felt like a "cultural tipping point" as he announced Meta would end its fact-checking program and replace it with a community-driven model like that seen on Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter), as well as lift restrictions on certain topics such as immigration and gender identity.
"There's a real opportunity here, with President Trump coming into office, with his commitment to free expression, for us to get back to those values and really provide space for people to have the discourse and debate they want to have," Joel Kaplan, a Republican who was recently appointed Meta's chief global affairs officer, said Tuesday on Fox & Friends.
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The move is the latest sign that Zuckerberg, once a champion of liberal causes, is following Musk's playbook and seeking to shift Meta's platforms—which include Facebook and Instagram—to the right, as well as currying favor with the incoming Trump administration.
Musk bought X in 2022 and transformed it into a social media megaphone for conservative voices. The world's richest man also spent an estimated $250 million supporting Trump's campaign and now appears to be wielding significant influence over the president-elect.
In his announcement, Zuckerberg accused governments and "legacy media" of pushing for more censorship. It comes after he wrote a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in August, saying the Biden administration had pressured the company to censor content during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Zuckerberg is "following in Elon Musk's footsteps," Robert Lalka, a professor at Tułane University's Freeman School of Business and author of The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power, told Newsweek. "But currying favor with Trump and his supporters will be far harder for Zuckerberg, given recent history."
Lalka said that "by directly crediting Elon Musk's company policies in announcing these shifts, and by claiming the Biden administration coerced prior censorship and now blaming the legacy media directly, Zuckerberg is attempting to reinvent himself for a new era now—the Trump era."
He added that the changes at Meta "will have lasting consequences for us all. Even Zuckerberg admitted today: 'It means that we're going to catch less bad stuff.' Future historians take note."
Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, told Newsweek that "like other businesses, Meta recognizes Trump is expected to be in the White House for the next four years, and Zuckerberg wants the president to be favorably disposed to him and his interests.
"A good relationship with Trump, or at least not a bad one, could be useful to Meta, and these initial steps are largely symbolic, designed to send a signal to Trump that Zuckerberg will play ball," Panagopoulos said.
But he noted that there "are limits to what Zuckerberg will be willing to do to assuage Trump, just as there are limits to what Trump can do to get in Meta's way."
Zuckerberg has long had a tense relationship with Trump. The president-elect was banned from Facebook after the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, with Zuckerberg saying that Trump was seeking to "undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor."
Trump accused Zuckerberg of conspiring against him in the 2020 election and said that the Meta CEO would "spend the rest of his life in prison" if he did "anything illegal" to influence the 2024 election. Trump also said that banning TikTok would make Facebook—which he labeled an "enemy of the people"— more popular.
But in recent months, Zuckerberg appears to be taking steps to improve his standing with the next president. He dined with Trump at his Mar-a Lago estate just weeks after the Republican won back the White House. Also, Meta, like other tech companies, has donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund.
Meta recently put Kaplan, a longtime Republican who served in President George W. Bush's administration, in charge of global policy. Kaplan has been one of the most vocal forces inside the company against restrictions on political speech, according to Semafor, which first reported the news.
In addition, UFC CEO and President Dana White, a Trump ally, is joining Meta's board of directors.
Grant Davis Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, told Newsweek: "These moves are "much more about an attempt to rebalance the company in reaction to the increasing sense among the general public that Meta and other large-scale media outlets have demonstrated a slant in recent years toward more liberal perspectives and have tended to make editorial decisions that favor the Democratic Party politically."
He continued: "If it's a reaction to anything specifically, I'd peg it to the broader election outcomes, rather than to Trump himself or his presidency per se. And always bear in mind that at their core, these organizations are profit-driven, and if you're alienating half the country, you're not positioning yourself to grow."
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