Mark Zuckerberg’s Political Evolution - The New York Times
Sept. 24, 2024Updated 12:35 p.m. ET
As recently as June at the Allen and Company conference — the “summer camp for billionaires” in Sun Valley, Idaho — Mr. Zuckerberg complained to multiple people about the blowback to Meta that came from the more politically touchy aspects of his philanthropic efforts. And he regretted hiring employees at his philanthropy who tried to push him further to the left on some causes.
In short — he was over it.
His preference, according to more than a dozen friends, advisers and executives familiar with his thinking, has been to wash his hands of it all.
In public, that means Mr. Zuckerberg is declining to engage with Washington except when necessary. In private, he has stopped supporting programs at his philanthropy that could be perceived as partisan, and he has tamped down employee activism at Meta, said these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to do so or did not want to jeopardize their relationships with Mr. Zuckerberg.
He has also spoken to President Trump in one-on-one telephone calls twice over the summer, these people said, a move that some have characterized as an attempt to repair a long-strained relationship between the two men.
“The political environment, I think I didn’t have much sophistication around, and I think I just fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem,” Mr. Zuckerberg said during a recent interview at a live podcast event in San Francisco.
Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg publicly expressed regret around some of his political activity in a letter to Congress. He said that in 2021, the Biden administration “pressured” Meta into censoring more Covid-19 content than Mr. Zuckerberg felt comfortable with. And he said he would not repeat the contributions he made in 2020 to support electoral infrastructure because the gifts made him appear not “neutral.”
Mr. Zuckerberg’s evolution has drawn comparatively little attention compared to that of tech titans like Elon Musk, who have publicly attached themselves to conservatives and former President Donald J. Trump. But it is also reflective of a larger shift in Silicon Valley, where chief executives have grown frustrated with contentious social issues. Their response has largely been to back away from it.
“Mark and his peers are probably looking at the risks of political engagement and deciding neutrality is the safer choice until this election is over,” said Nu Wexler, a principal at the political consulting firm Four Corners Public Affairs and a former Facebook employee.
Privately, Mr. Zuckerberg now considers his personal politics to be more like libertarianism or “classical liberalism,” according to people who have spoken to him recently. That includes a hostility to regulation that restricts business, an embrace of free markets and globalism and an openness to social-justice reforms — but only if it stops short of what he considers far-left progressivism. And Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, have been privately aghast about what they see as a rise of antisemitism on college campuses, including at their alma mater, Harvard.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s and Dr. Chan’s representatives at Meta and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative declined to comment.
The asshole should be in jail he's played politics every day he's own FBFuck You liar
https://archive.is/sBBCh