Trump Aide Dictated Terms of Facebook Overhaul
After Donald Trump was elected, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a rightward turn and complained loudly about pressure supposedly put on him by the outgoing Biden administration. But it was all a lie: Zuckerberg’s new message was in fact dictated in response to threats from Trump aides.
TechDirt draws our attention to this detail from a New York Times profile of Trump aide Stephen Miller:
Mr. Miller told Mr. Zuckerberg that he had an opportunity to help reform America, but it would be on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s terms. He made clear that Mr. Trump would crack down on immigration and go to war against the diversity, equity, and inclusion, or D.E.I., culture that had been embraced by Meta and much of corporate America in recent years.
Mr. Zuckerberg was amenable. He signaled to Mr. Miller and his colleagues, including other senior Trump advisers, that he would do nothing to obstruct the Trump agenda, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting, who asked for anonymity to discuss a private conversation. Mr. Zuckerberg said he would instead focus solely on building tech products. …
Earlier this month [January], Mr. Zuckerberg’s political lieutenants previewed the changes to Mr. Miller in a private briefing.
Add to this a whistleblower’s report that Facebook tried to build a censorship system to satisfy China’s dictatorship, and Zuckerberg looks like a frightened courtier trying to satisfy whoever holds power—which is exactly what Trump is demanding from media companies.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.