Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally addressed his employees' concerns around recent changes within the company.
Zuckerberg on Thursday discussed a range of issues during a meeting, most noticeably the dismantling of Meta's fact-checking policies and diversity programs. Zuckerberg made it clear that the company was abandoning both in order to curry favor with the Trump administration.
“I want to be clear, after the last several years, we now have an opportunity to have a productive partnership with the United States government,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, according to a leaked interview provided to the New York Times. “We’re going to take that.”
Zuckerberg also further confirmed the end of its DEI initiatives were due to the Trump's administration's views.
“We’re in the middle of a pretty rapidly changing policy and regulatory landscape that views any policy that might advantage any one group of people over another as something that is unlawful,” Zuckerberg said. “Because of that, we and every other institution out there are going to need to adjust.”
A number of large companies, from Apple to Costco, are sticking with their diversity programs regardless of Trump's push against them.
404 Media, another outlet that obtained audio from the meeting, shared how Zuckerberg later lamented how there are certain topics he couldn't address due to media leaks.
“Everything I say leaks," Zuckerberg said. "And it sucks, right?” (Meta reportedly sent an internal memo to employees after the meeting to let them know that anyone talking to the media would be fired.)
In the meeting, Zuckerberg also touched upon the looming TikTok ban. The Meta CEO acknowledged that TikTok was one of the company's biggest competitors but that Meta did not have control over the issue.
Zuckerberg also addressed the Chinese AI app DeepSeek, which has upended the tech industry. This week, DeepSeek released an AI model it created for significantly cheaper than U.S.-based AI models. According to Zuckerberg, DeepSeek's choice to release their AI model as free and open-source would help Meta as the company has the same strategy with its own AI model, Llama. Being that Meta doesn't charge for its AI but has much more funding than DeepSeek, Zuckerberg claimed the Chinese app will not affect their business negatively, as it has with companies like Nvidia and OpenAI.
