Meta announced major changes to start the new year, including ending its third-party fact-checking and DEI program. The move marks the latest evolution in Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership. You might call it Zuckerberg 3.0. And it comes just as Donald Trump takes power.
Mark Zuckerberg has proven himself to be Silicon Valley’s ultimate change-maker, and in the first weeks of 2025, we see the latest version of the meta CEO in his best form yet I was able to do that.
At the start of the new year, Zuckerberg made some big changes to his company, including eliminating third-party fact-checking and reducing its DEI efforts.
He appears to be reimagining Meta, at least in part, in the image of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, but did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment. And he faced backlash from some, including the same people who demonized him during the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the 2016 election, and even his own Meta employees. He doesn’t seem too worried about what he’s doing. Many of them have reacted negatively to his remarks. The latest decision to roll back DEI efforts.
His recent moves suggest that he is entering a new era in which his leadership increasingly reflects Trump’s preferences.
Zuckerberg’s transformation
For years, Mr. Zuckerberg was known as a robot in Silicon Valley. Some criticized him for copying ideas rather than innovating, while others clung to his image as a child prodigy who wore hoodies and applied too much sunscreen.
But by the end of 2023, CEO Mehta had undergone a major transformation and was garnering praise in business and cultural circles.
Zack was getting shredded and winning a jiu-jitsu match. He has appeared on popular podcasts like Joe Rogan to discuss his workouts and poke fun at himself.
As a business leader, he acted as the adult in the room, leading Meta’s “Year of Efficiency” and turning around the company’s stock price.
In 2024, he continued his transformation. I ditched my jeans and hoodie uniform for a designer T-shirt and gold chain. And his adoration for his wife, Priscilla Chan, evident in gifts like a statue of her, a custom Porsche minivan, and his own version of “Get Low,” won him fans.
His new swagger grew into a new kind of boldness.
Last fall, he said his biggest regret in his 20 years running Meta was taking responsibility and apologizing for problems he believed were not Meta’s fault.
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Until 2025. Mr. Zuckerberg now appears to be embracing some of the “anti-woke” ideas favored by some political billionaires like Mr. Musk, Peter Thiel, and, of course, Mr. Trump.
Although Zuckerberg did not endorse Trump or Harris in the 2024 election, he and other tech CEOs were quick to congratulate Trump on his victory. Zack met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago a few weeks after the election and donated $1 million to the inaugural committee through Meta.
Now he’s embracing what he calls “masculine energy” and putting it into practice in meta.
“I think masculine energy is a good thing, and obviously there’s a lot of that energy in society, but I think corporate culture has really tried to escape from masculine energy,” he said on Friday. He said this in an interview on the podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “I want feminine energy and I want masculine energy the same way.”
“But I think the corporate culture was leaning a little more toward neutrality,” he added.
He added UFC CEO and longtime Trump ally Dana White to Meta’s board of directors, and the company’s policy director, liberal Nick Clegg, and former Republican lobbyist Joel Kaplan. I started the new year by replacing it with .
Meta CTO Mark Zuckerberg supports UFC matches. Sean M. Huffey
He later ended third-party fact-checking on his meta platform, which some conservatives have criticized, in favor of a more hands-off approach. Similar to X, Meta will also allow users to monitor each other using “community notes.”
“The recent election feels like a cultural tipping point in favoring speech again,” Zuckerberg said while announcing the change, suggesting the choice was at least partially a response to the political climate. suggested that.
Meta CMO Alex Schultz also told BI that Trump’s election influenced policy changes.
The decision has come under scrutiny, with some saying the lack of content moderation opens the door to hate speech.
Under this policy, meth users can claim that members of the LGBTQ+ community are mentally ill because they are, for example, gay or transgender.
Dozens of fact-checking organizations signed a letter saying this is a “setback for those who want an internet that prioritizes accurate and reliable information.”
Still, others, including Musk and Trump, praised the change.
“Honestly, I think both Meta and Facebook, they’ve come a long way,” the president-elect said Tuesday.
Zuckerberg said in a recent interview with Rogan that while some may see the timing of the content changes as “purely political,” it’s something he’s been thinking about for a while.
“We feel like we have more control over what our policies should be and what we prefer, and this is the way forward,” Zuckerberg said.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s recent decision to curtail Meta’s DEI efforts may also appease conservatives who have criticized such policies.
President Trump has not commented on the DEI decision, but he has criticized DEI policies in the past.
On Friday, Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of human resources, said in an internal memo that the company will no longer have a team focused on DEI and will no longer consider diversity in hiring and supplier decisions.
“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” he said in the memo.
The decision sparked a backlash in some quarters. Inside the company, nearly 400 employees responded to the announcement with teary-eyed emojis. One person said it was a “disappointment” and another said it was a “setback”, according to a BI report on Friday.
“Wow, this week we really conceded on a lot of the values we had envisioned,” another employee commented, apparently referring to both the DEI and fact-checking movements.
But the move seemed to be supported by some, with 139 employees liking the post and 57 replying with heart emojis.
