Reports that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg traveled to Mar-a-Lago on Friday to meet with President-elect Donald Trump came as a surprise to one media analyst, who warned the move could set a dangerous precedent for the company.
“I’m shocked by this,” Axios senior media reporter Sara Fischer said during an appearance on CNN Friday night.
Zuckerberg is just one of a handful of tech CEOs who have heaped praise on Trump and made the journey to his Mar-a-Lago golf resort as the incoming president prepares to reemerge in the White House in a matter of days. The Meta CEO’s trip came the same day he appeared on Joe Rogan's show to lob bitter complaints at President Joe Biden's outgoing administration while delivering glowing remarks about Trump.
“I think Meta looks a little bit foolish,” Fischer said. “Because it's one thing to dip your toe in the water – a bunch of tech companies are going to Mar-a-Lago, a bunch of tech companies are donating to the inauguration – but Meta is taking a full swing right.”
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Fischer explained that the danger in the rightward direction Meta is now heading in “is that they look like they're flip-flopping.”
“During the Biden administration, they said they’d adhere to political pressure and that they overregulated information on the platform because of political pressure,” Fischer said during her interview. “Now they're saying they're removing DEI platforms, they are completely changing their ideas around content moderation – shifting to the right – how do I not know that if a Democratic administration comes in, you're not going to sway the other way around?”
CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams said Meta was “fully within their legal rights” to retool their content moderation efforts but otherwise agreed with Fischer’s analysis.
“I think it's more reputational when they look like they're flip-flopping,” Williams, a former federal prosecutor, said. “It's an about-face on all of these issues.”
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