As the inauguration draws closer in the US, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been positioning his company for the second Trump era.
Four years ago, after the January 6 riots, Meta kicked Donald Trump off his platform. Now, he gives US$1 million to Trump's inaugurationand Zuckerberg says the tech sector needs more “masculine energy” along with a revival of a corporate culture “that celebrates aggression.” “
He made the comments on the The Joe Rogan Experience podcast amid major structural and cultural changes at parent company Facebook and Instagram, including the removal of third-party data analysis and changing guidelines to allow slurs against certain vulnerable groups.
His moves provide a glimpse, media experts suggest, of how the winds of political change could lead to more discord on social media — and stifle diversity in the technology sector that largely homogeneous.
Indicates aggression
One of the main talking points in Zuckerberg's conversation was the idea that corporate workplaces have distanced themselves from a certain type of masculinity.
“Masculine energy is great, and obviously, society has enough of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it,” Zuckerberg said during his career a nearly three-hour conversation with Rogan.
“I think a culture that celebrates a bit more aggression has its own benefits which is really positive,” he said.
That language is important, according to Robert Lawson, an associate professor of sociolinguistics at Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom who studies the relationship between language and masculinity in online and offline settings. line.
He said it was surprising that Zuckerberg wanted more men, as technology is already a particularly male-dominated field.
As of June 2022, only 37.1 percent of Meta Platforms' global workforce were women. Women made up just 25.8 percent of technical positions and 36.7 percent of management positions, according to to data from Statista.
Lawson called this type of rhetoric “illegal entitlement” from men who, for a long time, have been at the center of society, and with increased diversity and inclusion efforts, perhaps that they don't feel that way anymore.
“And they're upset about it,” he said.
Lawson said the sentiment is becoming more mainstream in the United States because of the “type of male identity” that Trump represents.
But what does this kind of rhetoric mean for the future of Meta – both the workplace and its main products Facebook and Instagram?
Changes could lead to the 'slow decline' of minority groups
Since the US election, Zuckerberg has sought to better align himself with the incoming Trump administration through various structural and cultural changes.
The move comes as Meta prepares for face test in april over allegations by the US Federal Trade Commission that the social media platform bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush emerging competition.
Joe Rogan's interview was published just days after Meta announced major changes to its content moderation policies that have since drawn praise from Trump, who said the company has “come a long way”.
Some big tech CEOs, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, are pledging big donations to President Donald Trump's startup fund. Technology analyst Carmi Levy says it's an attempt to 'champion favours' by Trump, who is known as a 'commercial' leader.
The new directionswhich continues to ban insults about someone's mind or mental illness, now makes an exception and allows users to make posts accusing 2SLGBTQ+ people of being mentally ill because they are gay or trans sexual
The company defends them as prioritizing freedom of expression, but even free speech advocates have questioned creating clear exceptions that target vulnerable groups.
Meta did not respond to a CBC News request for comment regarding the changes.
End diversification, cost-cutting efforts
The company also said it would halt many of its diversity and inclusion efforts, prompting backlash from some. Internally, nearly 400 employees responded with a crying emoji to the announcement; with some calling it “despair,” according to a report from Business Insider.
The New York Times that employees were asked to remove tampons from the men's restrooms, which were available for the company's non-binary and transgender employees.
Lawson believes that these changes will lead to a “slow erosion” of women and various minority groups both working at, and engaging with, Meta's platforms.
He said that this is all due to “concern among young people about being decentralised” and that it is an attempt to regain control of places.
“I think it will eliminate directly those communities that will be in the crosshairs from the right, from the more toxic and more problematic people. “
The company is also ending third-party data analysis in the US, a move that dozens of intelligence agencies on criticism.
“If you allow the most dangerous users to thrive on your platform, the people who aren't concerned will leave,” said Elizabeth Lopatto, a senior writer at The Verge who reports on finance and technology.
She believes that these changes at Meta are both “ideologically motivated” and that she is trying to “cut costs,” and Meta would expect five percent of its global workforce cut this year.
“You might want to get rid of a certain part of your workforce and you can get them to quit by being like, hey, it's going to be miserable for you now,” Lopatto said.
What happens now?
The company is also going through personnel changes.
In addition to the large donation to the presidential election, Zuckerberg has appointed Dana White, the CEO of the UFC and a longtime friend of Trump, to the Meta board and is replacing the company's head of policy, Nick Clegg, with Joel Kaplan, a former Republican lobbyist with strong. join the party.
“It's pretty obvious with every trip Mark Zuckerberg has made to Mar-a-Lago, he has a wish list…
Lopatto said this idea of traditional masculinity in tech fields is not new.
Zuckerberg famously launched his career by creating FaceMash (which would eventually lead to the creation of Facebook), a website used to rate the attractiveness of women at Harvard University.
In a 2014 articleformer Facebook employee and Mark Zuckerberg ghostwriter Katherine Losse wrote about how FaceMash's gender dynamics continued with the creation of Facebook, citing the Harvard study found that women made up the majority of profiles viewed on the site, while men made up the majority of image viewers and site creators.
“It (Facebook) was not a very welcoming place for women. And looking at the diversity statistics, it could be said that it still isn't,” said Lopatto.
As for the future, Lopatto points to what happened at the cryptocurrency exchange site Coinbase in 2020, as a possible outcome. That year, dozens of employees left after their CEO they promised that the company would not participate in social activities.
