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Editor's Note: The following column was first published in City Magazine.
last week, Mark Zuckerbergthe CEO of Meta, formerly Facebook, made a startling announcement. He has been eliminating the company's DEI programs and discontinuing its relationship with fact-checking organizations, which he admitted has become a form of “censorship.” Left-wing media immediately attacked the decision, accusing it of adopting the MAGA agenda, and predicting a dangerous rise in so-called disinformation.
Zuckerberg's move was carefully calculated and precisely timed. He said the November election seemed like “a cultural turning point toward once again prioritizing expression.” DEI initiatives, especially those related to immigration and gender, have become “detached from the mainstream conversation” — and untenable.
This is not easy. Just four years ago, Zuckerberg spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding left-wing election platforms; His role was widely resented by conservatives. Meta was at the forefront of any identity-based or left-wing ideological cause.
Induction policy chief says decision to end DEI ensures company hires 'most talented people'
Not anymore. As part of the announcement, Zuckerberg released a video and appeared on Joe Rogan's show, which now serves as a confessional for American elites who no longer believe in leftist beliefs. On the podcast, Zuckerberg sounded less like a California progressive than a right-winger, arguing that culture needs a better balance between “masculine” and “feminine” energies.
Executives at Meta It quickly implemented the new policy, issuing pink slips to DEI employees, and moving the company's content moderation team from California to Texas, to, in Zuckerberg's words, “help alleviate concerns about biased employees over-censoring content.”
Zuckerberg wasn't the first tech executive to make such an announcement, but he was perhaps the most important. Facebook is one of the largest companies in Silicon Valley, and with Zuckerberg setting the precedent, many smaller companies are likely to follow suit.
However, the most important signal from this decision is not related to a specific shift in policy, but rather to a general shift in culture. Zuckerberg has never been an ideologue. He seems more interested in building his company and staying within elite society. But like many successful, self-respecting men, he's also independent-minded and clearly troubled by the cultural constraints DEI has imposed on his company. So he jumped at the opportunity, correctly sensing that the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump reduced the risks and maximized the rewards of such a change.
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Zuckerberg is certainly not brave in telling the truth. He has approved DEI for the past decade because that is where his elite status signals. Now, those signals have flipped, like a barometer suddenly dropping, and he's changing course with them and trying to shift the blame to the outgoing Biden administration, which, he told Rogan, pressured him to implement censorship — an equally convenient excuse. A more convenient moment.
But the good news is that whatever subsequent justifications executives might use, DEI and its cultural assumptions suddenly faced serious resistance. Perhaps we are entering a critical period where people feel confident enough to express their true beliefs about DEI, which is antithetical to excellence, and stop pretending that they believe in the cultural ideology of “systemic racism” and guilt based on race.
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DEI remains deeply rooted In public institutions, of course, but private institutions and companies have more flexibility and can send such programs with the stroke of a pen.
Zuckerberg revealed what this might look like at one of the largest companies. Conservatives can applaud him for his decision, while remaining cautious. “Trust but verify” proverb Ronald Reagan He used to say, it's good politics everywhere.
