Priscilla Chan, left, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Lauren Sanchez are amongst guests attending Donald Trump’s inauguration because the forty seventh U.S. president within the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg kicked off 2025 with an Instagram video that outlined his vision for what he called restoring “free expression” to Meta‘s platforms and for working with President Donald Trump to ward off on governments Zuckerberg said have gone after American corporations and stifled innovation.Â
What Zuckerberg didn’t say in his five-minute monologue was that Meta would use its own internal moderators to censor worker criticism of his plan. He also didn’t say that by cozying as much as the brand new president, his company might have the option to shift Trump’s ire within the direction of Meta’s loathed rival Apple.
For Meta’s staff of virtually 75,000 people, the singular power of its 40-year-old founder and CEO is more evident than ever in the corporate’s rightward shift since Trump’s election victory in November and inauguration in January.
On Feb. 6, Zuckerberg visited the White House so as “to debate how Meta will help the administration defend and advance American tech leadership abroad,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a post on X.
Based on interviews with over a dozen current and former employees who asked to not be named so as to speak candidly on what they see happening contained in the company, there is a profound sense of uncertainty as to how Meta’s culture will change in the approaching years of Trump’s second presidency.
At headquarters in Silicon Valley, tensions are palpable as Meta goes through its latest round of job cuts. In January, the corporate announced plans to put off its lowest performers, or 5% of its overall workforce, and commenced the cuts this week.
Meta has been attempting to thwart pushback from employees by censoring criticism inside its Workplace in-house social network, people aware of the matter said. Employees who left comments that management viewed as negative on Workplace were told that their statements can be utilized in performance reviews, potentially affecting their employment, they said.Â
Sources also told CNBC that employees who might otherwise leave due to their disillusionment with policy changes are concerned about quitting now due to how they might be perceived by future employers provided that Meta has said publicly that it’s hunting down “low performers.”
Meta, like lots of its tech peers, began downsizing in 2022 and has continued to trim around the sides. The corporate cut 21,000 jobs, or nearly 1 / 4 of its workforce, in 2022 and 2023. Amongst those that lost their jobs were members of the civic integrity group, which was known to be outspoken in its criticism of Zuckerberg’s leadership.Â
Some big changes at the moment are going down that appear to directly follow the lead of Trump on the expense of company employees and users of the platforms, the people aware of the matter said.
Most notably, Meta recently ended its diversity, equity and inclusion program and relaxed content-moderation guidelines, each areas that Trump has attacked in his war on “woke policies.”
When Meta filed its annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late January, the document noted its drastic shifts, listing them within the section about business risks.
“In January 2025, we announced certain changes to our content policies and enforcement efforts to further free expression on our platform and mitigate over-enforcement of certain of our content policies,” Meta said. “If we will not be able to take care of and enhance our brands, our ability to take care of or expand our base of users, marketers, and developers could also be impaired, and our business and financial results could also be harmed.”
Meta declined to comment.
Taking aim at Apple
Zuckerberg is willing to tackle such risks due to the potential advantages that include smoothing his relationship with Trump, the people aware of the matter said. In contrast to Meta’s previous strategy of advocating for a good playing field across the tech industry, Zuckerberg now sees opportunities to realize a strategic advantage for his company, the people said.
But greater than AI and Musk, Zuckerberg is in search of a leg up on Apple, the people said.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, center left, attends Apple’s iPhone 16 launch in Recent York City, Sept. 20, 2024.
Timothy A. Clary | Afp | Getty Images
Zuckerberg hopes that Meta’s improved relationship with the White House could help put pressure on the iPhone maker, after a yearslong battle between the 2 tech heavyweights. Each corporations were targets of antitrust suits from the U.S. government.
The Meta founder remains to be upset about Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update, which made it harder for Meta to trace users across the web and which put a $10 billion dent in the corporate’s 2022 promoting revenue. Internally, this era has come to be known amongst some Meta employees as “the Tim Cook recession.”Â
Many app developers, including Spotify and Epic Games, have battled Apple either in public or in court over the corporate’s app store rules and control over its ecosystem. Zuckerberg has been considered one of the loudest critics of Apple prior to now, but he has grow to be much more antagonistic toward the corporate in recent public interviews. Sources told CNBC that it’s all a part of an effort to shift antitrust scrutiny off Meta and onto Apple.
In a January interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg claimed that Apple is becoming less modern and that it’s putting resources toward stopping third parties from creating hardware peripherals that integrate easily into Apple’s mobile operating system.
“They construct stuff like Air Pods, that are cool, but they’ve just thoroughly hamstrung the flexibility for anyone else to construct something that may hook up with the iPhone in the identical way,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta’s business has recovered from its downdraft that followed the iOS changes, due mostly to the corporate’s investments in AI and the brand new capabilities they’ve provided to advertisers. In January, the corporate reported $160.6 billion in promoting revenue for 2024, up nearly 40% from 2021. The corporate’s shares have been on an enormous upswing since a brutal 2022, quadrupling over the past two years and shutting at a record $728.56 on Thursday.
Zuckerberg told Rogan that Meta’s profit would double if Apple stopped applying “random rules” that tax his company.Â
Meta’s actions against Apple aren’t limited to the U.S. In considered one of the corporate’s first steps this yr to use more policy pressure on Apple, Meta filed a grievance against the iPhone maker in late January with Brazil’s competition regulator, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense.
Within the grievance, Meta alleged that Apple’s iOS update unfairly singles out third-party apps but not its own. Meta has been considering an antitrust grievance against Apple in Brazil since last yr, a source aware of the matter said.
Apple and X didn’t reply to requests for comment.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, right, and Joel Kaplan, the corporate’s vice chairman of world public policy, leave the Elysee Palace in Paris after a gathering with French President Emmanuel Macron, May 23, 2018.
Aurelien Morissard | IP3 | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Not afraid to ruffle some feathers
Leading Meta’s latest policy charge is Joel Kaplan, a former White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush with longstanding ties to the Republican Party.Â
Other notable Republicans at Meta include Vice President of Global Public Policy Kevin Martin, a former Federal Communications Commission chairman under President George W. Bush, and Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead, whom Trump previously appointed as a legal advisor on the State Department.
Kaplan’s ascendency at Meta coupled with the corporate’s policy changes has solidified a political shift to the correct, multiple sources said.
Since joining Meta in 2011 as a policy vice chairman, Kaplan has built a fame as an executive who takes calculated risks even when it means upsetting some people internally, the people said.
In 2018, Kaplan made headlines for attending Brett Kavanaugh’s highly contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearing as a private friend. His appearance caused a lot controversy that Meta was forced to handle the matter in an announcement, saying the “leadership team recognizes that they’ve made mistakes handling the events of the last week and we’re grateful for all of the feedback from our employees.”
What could have been an issue for Kaplan on the time is now viewed as a strength. That is because the chief is seen as an ally to the Republicans in charge, the people said.
Clegg, in contrast, represented a more center-left position, they said. He was vocal in his support of banning Trump from Facebook’s platform after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, while Kaplan was noticeably more reluctant about such a move, an individual aware of the matter said. Kaplan has also favored less strict content moderation policies, the person said.
Meta in January agreed to pay $25 million as a part of a settlement with Trump over the corporate’s decision to suspend his accounts following the Capitol riot. In January 2023, Meta said it was reinstating Trump on its platform after the two-year suspension.
The corporate’s efforts to win favor with Trump appear to be working, a minimum of based on what the president has publicly said.
After Kaplan announced Meta’s major content-moderation and related policy shifts in early January on “Fox and Friends,” Trump gave the impression to be impressed.
“Truthfully, I believe they’ve come a great distance. Meta, Facebook, I believe they’ve come a great distance,” Trump told reporters during a Jan. 7 press conference. About Kaplan, Trump said, “The person was very impressive.”
— CNBC’s Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report.
Watch: Zuckerberg feels he’s beyond criticism anymore, says Wired’s Steven Levy
