Mark Zuckerberg defends embrace of Trump administration in Meta Q&A

San Francisco: In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with Meta employees Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, defended recent changes he had made to loosening restrictions on online speech and ending diversity initiatives, and doubled down on embracing President Donald Trump’s new administration.

“I want to be clear, after the last several years, we now have an opportunity to have a productive partnership with the United States government,” Zuckerberg said, according to a recording of the meeting shared with The New York Times. “We’re going to take that.”

Zuckerberg, 40, said it was “fundamental” for Meta — the world’s biggest social media company with Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp — to be on better terms with governments around the world.

“The government can sort of be actively opposing you, trying to get in the way and add a lot of friction, or can be actively trying to help you break down barriers to help you,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

In the hourlong meeting with Meta’s more than 70,000 employees, Zuckerberg also said that 2025 would be a significant year for potentially transformative initiatives of Meta’s business, including focusing on artificial intelligence, data centers and the immersive world of the metaverse.

Zuckerberg’s remarks signaled his tightened grip over Meta as he has remade the company for the Trump era, to the consternation of some of his employees. This month, Zuckerberg announced sweeping changes to reduce Meta’s restrictions on speech; ended a fact-checking program; and killed diversity efforts in the workplace. He also showed up to Trump’s inauguration and has criticized former President Joe Biden’s administration for being anti-tech.

At Meta, Zuckerberg has clamped down on employee dissent in recent years, including by banning workplace discussions around certain contentious social and political issues.

Some employees have pushed back on the changes, such as the removal of tampons from the men’s bathrooms at the company, which were provided for transgender and nonbinary employees. As recently as Thursday, some employees were circulating a sign-up form for workers to purchase sanitary products and bring them to Meta’s offices in an act of protest, said two people who have seen the form.

A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment. Business Insider previously reported on parts of Zuckerberg’s conversation.

During the meeting, Zuckerberg said some of Meta’s changes — such as eliminating many of its diversity, equity and inclusion teams — were a reflection of the times.

“We’re in the middle of a pretty rapidly changing policy and regulatory landscape that views any policy that might advantage any one group of people over another as something that is unlawful,” he said. “Because of that, we and every other institution out there are going to need to adjust.”

Zuckerberg said he personally believed that Meta had a “good track record” on diversity and that having a diverse workforce was a strength.

Janelle Gale, Meta’s head of people, said at the meeting that there were other types of discrimination that were not as widely recognized at Meta but still needed to be addressed. The company has fired women for sexual harassment, she said, and some people had been excluded for their political views.

Zuckerberg said Meta was bringing back a form of its unconscious bias training that would not just focus on “a few different groups.”

Some employees were upset that the meeting’s format had changed. For years, employees voted on which questions to ask Zuckerberg. Those that received the most votes were asked.

This time, that did not happen. A side chat room where employees used to be able to comment on the live presentation was also removed, two people who attended the call said.

Zuckerberg said the meeting changes were intentional because of an increasing number of leaks in recent years.

“I think there are a bunch of things that are value-destroying that I’m not going to talk about,” he said, referring to the types of questions that have become public. “Maybe it’s the nature of running a company of this scale. But it’s a little bit of a bummer.”

After the meeting, Meta sent an internal message saying that employees would be terminated if they talked to the media, two people who received the memo said.

During the call, Zuckerberg also noted the uncertainty around TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app that has been banned in the United States under a federal law that took effect this month. Trump has signed an executive order to pause the ban.

TikTok was one of Meta’s “main competitors,” Zuckerberg said, adding that he was watching developments closely.

Employees asked Zuckerberg about whether the emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup that produced an advanced AI model for a fraction of the cost of many other companies, raised questions about Meta’s rising spending on data centers.

Zuckerberg said DeepSeek would help Meta’s open-source strategy around AI, which includes freely sharing code so that other companies can build apps and keep improving the technology. Some of DeepSeek’s technological advancements have already helped improve Meta’s AI models, he said.

But spending on data centers — which provides computing power for AI advances — would still be a competitive advantage for Meta, Zuckerberg said.

“This year feels a little more like a sprint to me,” he said. “It’s going to be a crazy year.”