Do you remember that there was a highly publicized spat between Musk and Zuckerberg around June 2023. It culminated in the two of them agreeing to a cage match. Musk had challenged Zuckerberg on Twitter and Zuckerberg responded with “Send Me Location” on Instagram; the exchange quickly went viral, sparking a lot of interest and speculation. And they publicly talked about potential venues like the Colosseum in Rome or the Vegas Octagon. By August Musk backed, refusing to commit to a date or even a private practice round at one of their homes. But it— and even a dick-measuring contest— just kind of fizzled out and both moved on to other endeavors, their rivalry continuing in arenas like AI development, social media competition and, more recently, sucking up to Trump.
Yesterday, I woke up to a barrage of posts on Zuckerberg’s Threads denouncing the platform. Dan Pfeiffer termed his behavior an opportunity for Democrats. He called it part of “a bidding war to see who can quickly curry the most favor. Most egregiously, in the last 24 hours, Meta and Amazon— two companies that were in Trump’s crosshairs for years— undertook some disgusting moves to endear themselves to Trump. According to the New York Times, “Meta on Tuesday announced changes to its content moderation practices that would effectively end a fact-checking program instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps. Instead of using news organizations and other third-party groups, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, will rely on users to add notes to posts that may contain false or misleading information. The reversal of the years-old policy is a stark sign of how the company is repositioning itself for the Trump presidency in the weeks before it begins. Just in case Trump, his allies, or anyone else missed Mark Zuckerberg’s incredibly awkward video, in which he is dressed like a divorced dad who recently took up DJing as a hobby, Meta dispatched its newly appointed Vice President for Policy to appear on Fox and Friends to discuss the new policy and named Trump BFF and UFC President Dana White to the company's board of directors.”
Pfeiffer noted that Bezos had no intention of being outdone, noting that he “concocted a scheme to funnel money directly to Melania Trump. Puck’s Matt Belloni reported on Monday night: “Amazon will release a Melania Trump documentary directed by Brett Ratner, the Rush Hour filmmaker who has not made a Hollywood movie since 2018, when he was accused of sexual malfeasance by several women.” Even more interesting: Amazon is paying a cool $40 million to license the film, per three sources familiar with the deal. That price includes the Ratner documentary, which will get a small theatrical release and then appear on Prime Video, plus a previously undisclosed two-to-three-episode follow-up docuseries on the first lady. Melania will participate in both projects. (Amazon declined to comment.) That’s quite a payday for Mrs. Trump. It’s vomit-inducing.”
Eight years ago, most major corporations were concerned about being in close vicinity to Trump. Don’t get me wrong, they wanted their tax cuts and fewer regulations, but they believed there was a brand risk in being tied to the guy who bragged about sexual assault, attacked Gold Star families, and called Nazis “very fine people.”
No longer.
Meta and Amazon are at the forefront of a larger trend. Major corporations and billionaires are becoming supplicants for Trump. I suspect that, in the end, these folks will regret their decision to buddy up with a dangerous demagogue. In the interim, Democrats must understand that these corporations are not our allies or friends. They have made their allegiances clear. Time to adopt a more populist message and agenda while portraying Republicans as the party of corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
During Trump’s first term, Democrats believed that some corporations (and especially Big Tech companies) should be our allies against MAGA extremism. Many of these CEOs and founders opposed Trump in the 2016 campaign— some were big donors to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The tech companies claimed to value diversity, support immigration reform and efforts to fight climate change. They should have been on our side in a fight against a racist, anti-immigrant climate change denier.
Progressives exhausted valuable time and energy pressuring Facebook, Tesla, Twitter, and others to live up to their self-professed values. We wanted these companies to speak out against Trump and enforce their own policies against disinformation and hate speech. There were some victories in this effort. Under immense pressure, Facebook and YouTube banned dangerous conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones; and all of the platforms banned Trump after he incited the January 6th riot. But ultimately, Facebook et al failed to do the right thing for one reason and one reason only: these companies only care about shareholder value. In the first Trump term, they maintained the patina of progressivism and made as much money as humanly possible. In the second Trump term, they are comfortable being explicitly pro-Trump.
Despite this, Democrats can benefit if we have the wherewithal to take advantage of it.
Thanks to a confluence of unforeseen events, a series of understandable but mistaken strategic choices, a sincere desire to defend norms, and then running Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton— two dyed-in-the-wool institutionalists— in consecutive elections, the Democrats inadvertently became the party of institutions. We were the defenders of government, the media, and a broken political system. Trump won for many reasons. Foremost among them was the idea that Trump would upend a broken system. According to the exit polls, 28% of voters said that the ability to bring needed change was most important to their vote. Trump won those voters by 50 points.
The axis of politics is no longer Left/Right; it’s inside/outside. Trump is misreading the electoral results and surrounding himself with elite institutions and individuals who he ran against. In addition to buddying up with Zuckerberg and Bezos, Trump appointed 13 different billionaires to serve in his administration. If Trump wants to be pro-corporation and pro-billionaire, Democrats can— and must— position themselves as the opposite. The public is still very angry about the state of affairs. These corporations are in league with Trump, and we need to explain why.
Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Donald Trump are giving Democrats an opportunity to get on the right side of public opinion.
Judd Legum and Noel Sims coined a cute phrase: Meta Goes MAGA and wrote that each aspect of Zuckerberg's announcement about how Facebook, Instagram and Threads will handle content moderation appeared designed to ingratiate the company with Trump and his MAGA base. “For example, Zuckerberg said that Meta would ‘move its Trust and Safety and Content Moderation teams out of California and our U.S.-based content review is going to be based in Texas.’ According to Zuckerberg, ‘as we work to promote free expression, I think it will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.’ The only people who believe that people in California are inherently more biased than people in Texas are right-wing partisans. The reality is that there are millions of conservative people in California and millions of liberal people in Texas. And content moderators are only enforcing policies created by Zuckerberg and his executive team. But moving part of Meta to Texas allows Zuckerberg to follow the lead of Elon Musk, who has relocated the headquarters of Tesla and Twitter to Texas. The idea, advanced by Zuckerberg in his announcement, that Texas is a bastion of free speech is also a myth. Last month, for example, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) ‘threatened to pull funding from Texas Children’s Hospital’ because a doctor in Houston posted a viral TikTok video advising patients that they do not have to answer questions about their citizenship status. After Abbott's threats, the video was taken down. In 2021, Texas enacted a law censoring how teachers can discuss race and gender in the classroom. Since 2017, Texas has had a law requiring most companies doing business with the state to sign a statement about their views on Israel.”
In November 6,081,697 Californians voted for Trump, more than in any states other than Texas and (barely) Florida. And 4,835,250 Texans voted for Kamala, more than in any state other than California. If Zuckerberg wants to nut crackpot conspiracy theory fanatics in California… there are plenty to chose from.
Zuckerberg also announced that Meta would "get rid of a bunch of content restrictions on immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse." The previous restrictions on immigration and gender content on Meta platforms involved hate speech.
The new rules permit users to “call for exclusion or use insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration, or homosexuality.” Specifically, it is now permissible to describe people as feces or filth based on their immigration status or gender identity. Meta also now allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality.”
Whether attempting to limit this kind of hateful speech is effective is the subject of debate. But Zuckerberg says Meta's current restrictions on hate speech, which he oversees as the company's CEO, are actually an effort to "shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas." Disparaging immigrants or people with certain gender identities, however, is not an "idea" or a meaningful component of "mainstream discourse."
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