Mark Zuckerberg is working to get into Donald Trump’s good graces. But 10 years ago, the Meta CEO wanted to punish him.
In late 2015, Trump called for America to bar Muslims from entering the country in a fiery Facebook post, eliciting an outcry from Facebook employees. Zuckerberg, with other senior executives, argued Trump’s post was offensive and should be removed under the platform’s hate speech rules.
The company’s top Republican lobbyist, Joel Kaplan, disagreed. A veteran of the George W. Bush administration, Kaplan urged the then 31-year-old CEO to keep Trump’s post up. Privately, the executives reached a decision: Zuckerberg would exempt politicians from the bulk of Meta’s content rules, allowing Trump and some boundary-pushing figures to post virtually anything on the site, even as the CEO publicly condemned “hate this week.”
During Trump’s first term, the company and its then left-leaning CEO frequently deferred to Kaplan behind closed doors, instituting policies about content, promotion and fact-checking favoring Republicans. But the strategy did little to endear Zuckerberg to the right. So today, the Meta founder is done playing both sides.
With Trump back in the Oval Office, Zuckerberg is rebranding the company to go all-in on a MAGA-dominated Washington, shelving Meta’s once-lauded fact-checking program, eliminating DEI initiatives and installing Kaplan as the face of the company’s policy division to replace the liberal-leaning former British politician Nick Clegg.
After pledging to stay neutral during the election, Zuckerberg has deepened his relationship with Trump, jetting to Mar-a-Lago for private meetings, green-lighting Meta’s $1 million donation to his inauguration fund, and adding a Trump ally, Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, to the company’s board.
In a vivid demonstration of the newfound alliance, Zuckerberg joined Trump’s family, Cabinet picks and fellow billionaire allies on the dais for his inauguration. On Facebook and Instagram, the CEO beamed in a shot of his inaugural ball finery, alongside his wife, Priscilla Chan. “Optimistic and celebrating us,” read the caption, alongside an American flag emoji.
If Meta’s new political playbook works, the company may avoid attacks from a president known for punishing his opponents and gain a new ally to fight against a ballooning set of tech regulations around the world. The strategy, however, risks alienating employees, Democrats and users, many of whom have bristled at the company’s dramatic transformation. Meta declined to comment.
“Facebook made some content concessions during the first Trump term but they did them quietly,” said Nu Wexler, a public relations consultant who used to work for Meta. “I think the difference in what you’re seeing now during the second term is that they’re leaning into those changes much harder.”
Bending the rules
After Trump’s 2016 victory, it largely fell to Kaplan, then Meta’s vice president for global public policy, to win friends in the administration. The Republican operative had joined Meta in 2011 after eight years in the Bush White House, serving as deputy chief of staff. A former Marine Corps officer, Kaplan had clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and served a stint as an energy lobbyist.
His Republican bona fides were unquestioned, but the Bush-era traditionalist faced a challenge with the unconventional Trump. Kaplan hadn’t backed Trump during the 2016 primaries, giving to the campaigns of former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) instead.
The Harvard University grad quickly warmed to the administration, making a pilgrimage to Trump Tower in December 2016 to interview for a post overseeing the Office of Management and Budget, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak to private company matters.
His politics stood out at Meta, then Facebook, a company known for its liberal workforce and close relationships with the Obama administration.
Kaplan’s 2018 appearance at Brett M. Kavanaugh’s contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearing sparked outrage among rank-and-file staffers. In a companywide meeting, Kaplan explained he was supporting his longtime friend and did not apologize, according to two other people familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak to private company matters.
“Silicon Valley at this point in time was very left-leaning,” said Katie Harbath, a former Meta policy official and former chief digital strategist at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “The reaction [to the election] and the backlash specifically at Facebook, very much shaped what they did” in Washington.
Still, Kaplan tried to deepen Meta’s relationships in Trump’s world. He arranged a private dinner for Zuckerberg and Chan at the White House. Meta’s DC office interviewed former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski for a lobbying job and eventually hired Sandra Luff, a former legislative director under Sen. Jeff Sessions (Alabama), who served as Trump’s attorney general. He created an anti-China lobbying group, American Edge, to align Facebook’s messages to the hawkish White House.
But winning over Trump proved challenging for the seasoned operative. Right-wing influencers had long accused Facebook’s news feed algorithm of suppressing conservatives, and Trump added himself to the bevy. The president launched a barrage of attacks on what conservatives were starting to call “Big Tech,” claiming it was responsible for “fake news” and biased against him and his followers.
Kaplan tried to stem the assault inside Facebook. He helped block the security team’s efforts to crack down on outlets and pages that peddled false news reports, arguing that doing so would disproportionately impact conservatives and right-wing users and pushed for an overhaul to the news feed algorithm to surface more right-wing voices.
In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, Zuckerberg touted the company’s plan to register more than 4 million people to vote along with a newly designed election information centre promoting mail-in ballots and accurate voter information.
Behind the scenes, however, Kaplan’s team found ways to bend its revamped policies to avoid having to take action on the then-president’s misleading claims.
When Trump falsely alleged in May 2020 that the Michigan secretary of state had illegally sent absentee ballots to voters, staffers urged Kaplan to remove the post under the company’s voter suppression rules, which barred misleading claims about how to vote. But Kaplan argued users should be able to falsely claim election rules are “illegal” since they might eventually be challenged in court, according to two people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence recently obtained by The Washington Post. Meta left the post - along with others questioning the legality of mail-in ballots - untouched.
Policy staffers urged Kaplan to remove Trump’s post stating that looting could lead to “shooting” during the 2020 George Floyd protests, warning that it could bolster critiques that the company’s content triggered real-world violence, according to two people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence obtained by The Post. Kaplan and other leaders again argued the post should stay up in the name of free expression.
Meta’s strategy of privately appeasing Trump would falter after rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, an incident organized, partially, on social media. In response, Meta and other tech companies suspended Trump’s account, effectively depriving him of his social media megaphone.
But Trump’s decisive 2024 victory has opened the door to many Republican-friendly changes at Meta. The company tapped Dustin Carmack as a lobbyist; the former adviser to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign who helped develop the conservative Heritage Foundation’s agenda known as Project 2025.
And while many Republicans, including Trump, have hailed the slew of changes Meta rolled out earlier this month, conservatives’ biggest victory might be its CEO’s public performance.
Zuckerberg described the company’s years-long efforts to police speech as a form of “censorship,” embracing a Republican characterization that rejects the industry’s preferred phrase, “content moderation.” He referred to mainstream news publishers - whose work his company has relied on for years - as a “legacy media” he no longer trusts. His new hate speech rules refer to “-” and “homosexuality” - words that some LGBTQ+ activists consider offensive or outdated.
Meanwhile, over the last several years, Meta leaders have worked to insulate the company from unhappy employees and politicians. Rules limiting discussion of contentious topics at work have curtailed the once-freewheeling culture on internal message boards. And amid widespread job cuts, Silicon Valley workers who once staged walkouts are now more scared to lose their jobs.
On internal message boards, Meta employees have complained that posts criticizing the company have been removed, while others argued the company’s new free speech ethos seems to apply only to conservatives on its public social networks, according to copies of the messages viewed by The Post.
Zuckerberg has shown no signs of backing down. In a video explaining the changes, he argued rolling back content moderation was necessary because Trump’s victory demonstrated the country had reached a “cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech.”
It’s unclear how Trump second presidency will change the country’s culture, but Zuckerberg has already made clear he intends for it to define Meta’s.
- Washington Post