Mark Zuckerberg and his company Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, will stay out of politics indefinitely, it was recently announced.
After facing backlash over the past few years in the political realm, Zuckerberg wants to stay out of politics for the foreseeable future. His desire to move away from politics also involves his company, Meta. According to The New York Times, Meta has placed automatic settings on both Facebook and Instagram to tone down posts related to politics on users’ algorithms.
Zuckerberg’s wish to stay out of politics
A couple of years ago, Zuckerberg was enthusiastic about sharing his political views. He used to write in columns about issues he felt passionately about and started multiple philanthropic campaigns to influence change.
However, Zuckerberg has faced much scrutiny due to his path, and now he is staying away from politics altogether. As he works to get himself and Meta out of politics, he has also attempted to repair his relationship with former President Donald Trump. He has had two phone calls with Trump, which came after his battles with Trump over social media usage. Those had strained their relationship.
Zuckerberg has been slowly withdrawing from the philanthropic programs he began years ago that were based on his politics, only supporting bipartisan programs. As he grew older, the Meta CEO realized he had gone about his political involvement incorrectly.
“The political environment, I think I didn’t have much sophistication around, and I think I just fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem,” Zuckerberg said on the Acquired podcast live in San Francisco.
Not mixing business and political affiliations
In the live podcast event, Zuckerberg also mentioned that his political involvement damaged Meta. He stated that while he thinks it will take time to recover, Meta will eventually return to where he desires it to be.
“I think it’s going to take another ten years or so for us to fully work through that cycle before our brand is back to the place that it could have been,” said Zuckerberg at the podcast event.
Meta leaders’ decision to stay out of politics is in line with Zuckerberg’s drastic decision to remove himself from politics. In the 2020 elections, Facebook leaders desired the social media website to be the main place for political discussion and debate among people, but now, that’s changed as Zuckerberg attempts to remain more neutral.
“It’s quite the pendulum swing because a decade ago, everyone at Facebook was desperate to be the face of elections,” said Katie Harbath, former Facebook employee and chief executive of Anchor Change, a tech consulting firm.
Meta has steadfastly committed to toning down politics on the platform moving forward, citing users’ desire to see less political content.
Dani Lever, a Meta spokeswoman, said, “As we’ve said for years, people have told us they want to see less politics overall while still being able to engage with political content on our platforms if they want to, and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.”
