Zuckerberg Bends The Knee To The Trump Regime Ahead Of Inauguration Day

By: Abbie Mood

Jan 12, 2025

We always knew that Trump could be bought — and has been known to shell out hush money himself — but buckle up because it appears that we are entering a whole new era of pay to play.

Tim Cook, a gay man, LGBTQ+ advocate, and CEO of Apple, has led the trend since 2019 when Apple was facing a tariff on all imports from China.

The company produces many of its products there, and just days after his call with Cook, Trump happened to issue a series of tariff exceptions for electronics, which of course included the iPhone. This time, Cook donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund under the guise of “a spirit of unity,”¹ though it’s rather convenient considering the Department of Justice has an open case with Apple for violating antitrust laws.²

Then there’s Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, OpenAI’s Sam Altman (who is also gay and has a history of supporting Democrats and criticizing Trump), Google, Toyota, Uber, Microsoft… the list goes on.

And then finally, we have Mark Zuckerberg/ While things seemed to be good between the Meta CEO and Trump, Zuckerberg famously booted the then-former President from his platforms in 2021 after the Trump terrorists invaded the Capitol in 2021. Since then, Trump has called Facebook an “enemy of the people.” He’s called Zuckerberg a “criminal.” He accused “Zuckerbucks” of plotting against him during the 2020 election. He even threatened the CEO with life in prison if he tried to rig the 2024 election against the former President.³

Photo Credit: Mirror Now on Facebook

But once it seemed as though Trump may win a second presidency, Zuckerberg went to work mending the relationship, and the two even met for dinner in late November 2024. Fast-forward to today and Zuck has donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration fund and posted a video explaining how he’s turning back the clock on Facebook policies to let the racists, homophobes, transphobes, and incels take the reins of the social media platform.

Proving to the world that Zuck has fully completed his transformation from tech robot to Rogan bro, the changes include:

Facts are no longer relevant. Removing fact checkers and implementing community notes, citing “free speech” and arguing that fact checkers have been “too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created.” He is also moving the content moderation team from California to Texas, saying there is “less concern for bias” in the Lone Star state.⁴ If this sounds familiar, it’s because Elon Musk did the same when he bought Twitter, now known as X.
Hate speech is acceptable. The updated Hate Speech Policy⁵ has conveniently reworded or altogether deleted language that prohibits derogatory language towards certain groups, including transgender individuals and women.

In the first example below, you can see that the policy now allows “sex- or gender-exclusive language,” which opens the door for transphobes, while the second example is under the Do not post, Tier 1 section and eliminates that you may not refer to women as property or non-binary people as “it.” (It also strikes out not referring to Black people as farm equipment, but that was moved to a separate section.)

There’s also “We do allow content arguing for gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs. We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious beliefs,” and “We do allow content arguing for gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs. We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious beliefs.”

Before and after Zuckerberg embraced his definition of masculinity

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is out. DEI is cancelled under the argument that the legal landscape around DEI is changing, according to an employee memo first obtained by Axios.⁶ Janelle Gale, vice president of human resources, wrote: "The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI… The term 'DEI' has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.” And now Meta will focus on "apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background.” (We all know what that is code for.)
Meta = MAGA. Meta has made some interesting personnel changes, including adding Dana White to the board and naming Joel Kaplan as Global Policy Chief. White is best known for building the UFC into a highly profitable sports enterprise — and for drunkenly slapping his wife in the face at a New Year’s Eve Party in 2023. He and Trump go back to 2001 when a UFC was hosted at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.

Kaplan, on the other hand, is a former deputy chief of staff under President George W. Bush, and has been with the company since 2011. Kaplan was the big influence behind leaving Trump's looting and shooting post during the George Floyd protests in 2020 and is buddies with Supreme Court Justice and r*pist Brett Kavanaugh. In his new role, it’s expected that Kaplan will focus on avoiding conservative backlash and protect the company from the potential penalties of spreading misinformation.

What Does This Really Mean?

In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg said that corporate America has been “culturally neutered” and thinks that “having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.^”7 He believes Western society has been “emasculated” and Trump “just wants America to win.” He’s credited this shift in perspective to MMA and hunting.⁸

Combine that with the comments from his video and phrases pulled straight out of the uber-conservative playbook, and it means that the Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) are going to be a free-for-all in the name of “free speech.” The Proud Boys and the like can say whatever they want without consequence, only further fueling all of the -isms and aggression that we saw during the first Trump presidency.

I’d like to believe that Zuckerberg is too smart to be brainwashed like that, but at the very least, he’s definitely playing the game. Just like Cook and Bezos and Altman. All of their companies have been under scrutiny at one time or another for their practices or lack thereof, and with Trump coming back into office, they see an opportunity to protect their investments. We’ve already seen Trump filling his cabinet with billionaires who are poised to benefit from tax cuts and other favorable decisions around cryptocurrency, FTC and SEC regulations, and disbanding agencies like the FDIC (which currently only protects accounts up to $250,000).

Despite Trump running on a platform of helping the average person with the price of groceries, he is putting the pieces in place for a government that does anything but that. The tech bros can see the writing on the wall and want their piece of the pie.

What we’ll see over the next four years is the United States no longer hiding that it’s a plutocratic oligarchy, or a system of government that is ruled by a small group of wealthy people. This isn’t new, of course, so you could argue that Trump is just putting it in plain sight vs. hiding it or pretending that’s not how things are run, but it’s going to take a long time to recover from the deregulation that is about to take place.

What to Do About Instagram, Facebook, and Threads?

These changes put a lot of us in a sticky situation (which I assume Zuckerberg is counting on). Personally, I don’t use Threads for much, but I use Instagram a lot both personally and professionally, and then Facebook is a way that I keep in touch with family and real-life friends on the East Coast.

But I do think one of the best ways to resist is to not participate, so for now, my plan is to get rid of Threads, download all of my content and temporarily deactivate my Facebook until I see how this all shakes out, and take a break from Instagram, though it does feel a little easier to insulate yourself on IG, in my opinion.

If you’re considering the same, here’s how to download your content:

Log in to Facebook
Click your profile picture in the top right corner
Select Settings & Privacy, then Settings
On the left side, scroll down to Your Information
Click Download Your Information (it will transfer you to the Meta Accounts Center)
Click Download or transfer information
Click the accounts/profiles that you want to download (includes Facebook and Instagram)
Decide if you want to download all available information or specific types of information if you don’t want everything
Click next to go through each profile
Click Date range and change to All time (Click Save)
Make sure your email address is correct, leave the format at HTML, and choose the media quality that you’d like (Click Save)
Click Create files

Note: It may take several days for your information to be available for download once you request it.

If you’d like to delete or deactivate any of your accounts, you can also do that from the Accounts Center (click Personal Details, Account ownership and control, then you can deactivate or delete your account(s)).

What do you think about the changes? Are you going to stay on Meta platforms?

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