The Scoop
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, a source familiar with their encounter confirmed to Semafor.
Zuckerberg had been spotted earlier on Friday at Trump’s Florida compound, and the person familiar with the meeting and a Trump aide both declined to detail its contents. The visit comes just days after Zuckerberg announced sweeping changes at the company that ended two irritants to Trump and his supporters: fact-checking programs and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The new Meta policy also relaxes restrictions on speech — Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the shift that the changes came amid “too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
Know More
Meta is just one tech company that has moved quickly to build ties with Trump and his incoming administration, recently appointing Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White (a close friend of Trump’s) to its board. Zuckerberg also met with Trump over Thanksgiving in November — after which he set out to implement the changes announced this week.
“I have a much greater command now of what I think the policy should be, and this is how it’s going to be going forward,” Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan in an interview that aired on Friday.
Notable
- Meta killed its DEI program because “the legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” an executive wrote in a memo first reported by Axios.
- “The good thing about doing it after the election is you get to take this cultural pulse,” Zuckerberg told Rogan.
- OpenAI, Meta, and Uber CEOs will be in Washington for the inauguration.