It didn’t take much to get Mark Zuckerberg to go along with Donald Trump’s aims.
According to The New York Times, Zuckerberg met with Trump adviser Stephen Miller in late November and was told by Miller that he could help America, but on Trump’s terms. Miller said that Trump was taking on diversity, equity, and inclusion principles, as well as cracking down on immigration.
Zuckerberg didn’t have a problem with any of it, the Times reported, citing anonymous sources. The Meta CEO told Miller and other Trump officials that he wouldn’t get in the way of Trump’s agenda and would focus on making tech products. He blamed the DEI initiatives at his company Meta on Sheryl Sandberg, his former chief operating officer, and said that things were changing at the company. This meant a reset, including layoffs.
In early January, Zuckerberg even gave Miller a private meeting where he explained the upcoming changes at Meta, and on January 10, the tech mogul announced to the public that Meta would be getting rid of its DEI policies.
The whole series of events indicates that Meta’s overhaul seems to have occurred in close coordination with Trump and his team, who are much more emboldened than they were eight years ago. Miller is more powerful now than he was in Trump’s first term, and has fewer internal opponents.