Zuckerberg’s rightward policy shift puts Meta staffers on edge, targets Apple
Priscilla Chan, left, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Lauren Sanchez are among guests attending Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th U.S. president in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg kicked off 2025 with an Instagram video that outlined his vision for what he called restoring “free expression” to Meta‘s platforms and for working with President Donald Trump to push back on governments Zuckerberg said have gone after American companies and stifled innovation.
What Zuckerberg didn’t say in his five-minute monologue was that Meta would use its own internal moderators to censor employee criticism of his plan. He also didn’t say that by cozying up to the new president, his company might be able to shift Trump’s ire in the direction of Meta’s loathed rival Apple.
For Meta’s staff of almost 75,000 people, the singular power of its 40-year-old founder and CEO is more evident than ever in the company’s rightward shift since Trump’s election victory in November and inauguration in January.
On Feb. 6, Zuckerberg visited the White House in order “to discuss how Meta can help the administration defend and advance American tech leadership abroad,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a post on X.
Based on interviews with over a dozen current and former employees who asked not to be named in order to speak candidly on what they see happening inside the company, there’s a profound sense of uncertainty as to how Meta’s culture will change in the coming years of Trump’s second presidency.
At headquarters in Silicon Valley, tensions are palpable as Meta goes through its latest round of job cuts. In January, the company announced plans to lay off its lowest performers, or 5% of its overall workforce, and began the cuts this week.
Meta has been trying to thwart pushback from employees by censoring criticism within its Workplace in-house social network, people familiar with the matter said. Employees who left comments that management viewed as negative on Workplace were told that their statements would be used in performance reviews, potentially affecting their employment, they said.
Sources also told CNBC that employees who might otherwise leave because of their disillusionment with policy changes are concerned about quitting now because of how they will be perceived by future employers given that Meta has said publicly that it’s weeding out “low performers.”
Meta, like many of its tech peers, began downsizing in 2022 and has continued to trim around the edges. The company cut 21,000 jobs, or nearly a quarter of its workforce, in 2022 and 2023. Among those who lost their jobs were members of the civic integrity group, which was known to be outspoken in its criticism of Zuckerberg’s leadership.
Some big changes are now taking place that appear to directly follow the lead of Trump at the expense of company employees and users of the platforms, the people familiar with the matter said.
Most notably, Meta recently ended its diversity, equity and inclusion program and relaxed content-moderation guidelines, both areas that Trump has attacked in his war on “woke policies.”
When Meta filed its annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late January, the document noted its drastic shifts, listing them in the section about business risks.
“In January 2025, we announced certain changes to our content policies and enforcement efforts to further free expression on our platform and mitigate over-enforcement of certain of our content policies,” Meta said. “If we are not able to maintain and enhance our brands, our ability to maintain or expand our base of users, marketers, and developers may be impaired, and our business and financial results may be harmed.”
Meta declined to comment.
Taking aim at Apple
Zuckerberg is willing to take on such risks because of the potential benefits that come with smoothing his relationship with Trump, the people familiar with the matter said. In contrast to Meta’s previous strategy of advocating for an even playing field across the tech industry, Zuckerberg now sees opportunities to gain a strategic advantage for his company, the people said.
One major concern for Zuckerberg is Elon Musk’s central position in the Trump administration, where he’s focused on slashing regulations. Meta competes with Musk’s X and is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence, an area of particular interest to Musk and his startup xAI. Musk’s role in the White House could put Meta at a disadvantage when it comes to policies surrounding AI.
But more than AI and Musk, Zuckerberg is looking for a leg up on Apple, the people said.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, center left, attends Apple’s iPhone 16 launch in New York City, Sept. 20, 2024.
Timothy A. Clary | Afp | Getty Images
Zuckerberg hopes that Meta’s improved relationship with the White House could help put pressure on the iPhone maker, after a yearslong battle between the two tech heavyweights. Both companies were targets of antitrust suits from the U.S. government.
The Meta founder is still upset about Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update, which made it harder for Meta to track users across the internet and which put a $10 billion dent in the company’s 2022 advertising revenue. Internally, this period has come to be known among some Meta employees as “the Tim Cook recession.”
Many app developers, including Spotify and Epic Games, have battled Apple either in public or in court over the company’s app store rules and control over its ecosystem. Zuckerberg has been one of the loudest critics of Apple in the past, but he has become even more antagonistic toward the company in recent public interviews. Sources told CNBC that it’s all part of an effort to shift antitrust scrutiny off Meta and onto Apple.
In a January interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg claimed that Apple is becoming less innovative and that it’s putting resources toward preventing third parties from creating hardware peripherals that integrate smoothly into Apple’s mobile operating system.
“They build stuff like Air Pods, which are cool, but they’ve just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta’s business has recovered from its downdraft that followed the iOS changes, due mostly to the company’s investments in AI and the new capabilities they’ve provided to advertisers. In January, the company reported $160.6 billion in advertising revenue for 2024, up nearly 40% from 2021. The company’s shares have been on a huge upswing since a brutal 2022, quadrupling over the past two years and closing at a record $728.56 on Thursday.
Zuckerberg told Rogan that Meta’s profit would double if Apple stopped applying “random rules” that tax his company.
Meta’s actions against Apple aren’t limited to the U.S. In one of the company’s first steps this year to apply more policy pressure on Apple, Meta filed a complaint against the iPhone maker in late January with Brazil’s competition regulator, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense.
In the complaint, Meta alleged that Apple’s iOS update unfairly singles out third-party apps but not its own. Meta has been considering an antitrust complaint against Apple in Brazil since last year, a source familiar with the matter said.
Apple and X did not respond to requests for comment.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, right, and Joel Kaplan, the company’s vice president of global public policy, leave the Elysee Palace in Paris after a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, May 23, 2018.
Aurelien Morissard | IP3 | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Not afraid to ruffle some feathers
Leading Meta’s new policy charge is Joel Kaplan, a former White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush with longstanding ties to the Republican Party.
Kaplan took over Meta’s top policy position from Nick Clegg, a former U.K. deputy prime minister, who said in January that he would step down after seven years at the company.
Other notable Republicans at Meta include Vice President of Global Public Policy Kevin Martin, a former Federal Communications Commission chairman under President George W. Bush, and Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead, whom Trump previously appointed as a legal advisor at the State Department.
Kaplan’s ascendency at Meta coupled with the company’s policy changes has solidified a political shift to the right, multiple sources said.
Since joining Meta in 2011 as a policy vice president, Kaplan has built a reputation as an executive who takes calculated risks even if it means upsetting some people internally, the people said.
In 2018, Kaplan made headlines for attending Brett Kavanaugh’s highly contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearing as a personal friend. His appearance caused so much controversy that Meta was forced to address the matter in a statement, saying the “leadership team recognizes that they’ve made mistakes handling the events of the last week and we’re grateful for all the feedback from our employees.”
What may have been a problem for Kaplan at the time is now viewed as a strength. That’s because the executive is seen as an ally to the Republicans in charge, the people said.
Clegg, by contrast, represented a more center-left position, they said. He was vocal in his support of banning Trump from Facebook’s platform after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, while Kaplan was noticeably more reluctant about such a move, a person familiar with the matter said. Kaplan has also favored less strict content moderation policies, the person said.
Meta in January agreed to pay $25 million as part of a settlement with Trump over the company’s decision to suspend his accounts following the Capitol riot. In January 2023, Meta said it was reinstating Trump on its platform after the two-year suspension.
The company’s efforts to win favor with Trump seem to be working, at least based on what the president has publicly said.
After Kaplan announced Meta’s major content-moderation and related policy shifts in early January on “Fox and Friends,” Trump appeared to be impressed.
“Honestly, I think they’ve come a long way. Meta, Facebook, I think they’ve come a long way,” Trump told reporters during a Jan. 7 press conference. About Kaplan, Trump said, “The man was very impressive.”
— CNBC’s Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report.
Watch: Zuckerberg feels he’s beyond criticism anymore, says Wired’s Steven Levy
Shares of advertising technology company AppLovin and stock trading app Robinhood Markets each jumped about 7% in extended trading on Friday after S&P Global said the two will join the S&P 500 index.
The changes will go into effect before the beginning of trading on Sept. 22, S&P Global announced in a statement. AppLovin will replace MarketAxess Holdings, while Robinhood will take the place of Caesars Entertainment.
In March, short-seller Fuzzy Panda Research advised the committee for the large-cap U.S. index to keep AppLovin from becoming a constituent. AppLovin shares dropped 15% in December, when the committee picked Workday to join the S&P 500. Robinhood, for its part, saw shares slip 2% in June when it was excluded from a quarterly rebalancing of the index.
The S&P 500 already has a heavy concentration of large technology companies. Datadog and DoorDash entered earlier this year.
It’s normal for stocks to go up on news of their inclusion in a major index such as the S&P 500. Fund managers need to buy shares to reflect the updates.
AppLovin and Robinhood both went public on Nasdaq in 2021.
Robinhood has been a favorite among retail investors who have bid up shares of meme stocks such as AMC Entertainment and GameStop.
AppLovin itself became a stock to watch, with shares gaining 278% in 2023 and over 700% in 2024. As of Friday’s close, the stock had gained only 51% so far in 2025. AppLovin’s software brings targeted ads to mobile apps and games.
Earlier this year, AppLovin offered to buy the U.S. TikTok business from China’s ByteDance. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly extended the deadline for a sale, most recently in June.
At Robinhood’s annual general meeting in June, a shareholder asked Vlad Tenev, the company’s co-founder and CEO, if there were plans for getting into the S&P 500.
“It’s a difficult thing to plan for,” Tenev said. “I think it’s one of those things that hopefully happens.”
He said he believed the company was eligible.
Shares of MarketAxess, which specializes in fixed-income trading, have fallen 17% year to date, while shares of Caesars, which runs hotels and casinos, are down 21%.
AppLovin and Robinhood ytd stock chart.
U.S. Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter raised questions on Friday about the status of an artificial intelligence chatbot complaint against Snap that the agency referred to the Department of Justice earlier this year.
In January, the FTC announced that it would refer a non-public complaint regarding allegations that Snap’s My AI chatbot posed potential “risks and harms” to young users and said it would refer the suit to the DOJ “in the public interest.”
“We don’t know what has happened to that complaint,” Slaughter said on CNBC’s ‘The Exchange.” “The public does not know what has happened to that complaint, and that’s the kind of thing that I think people deserve answers on.”
Snap’s My AI chatbot, which debuted in 2023, is powered by large language models from OpenAI and Google and has drawn scrutiny for problematic responses.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Snap declined to comment.
Slaugther’s comments came a day after President Donald Trump held a White House dinner with several tech executives, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“The president is hosting Big Tech CEOs in the White House even as we’re reading about truly horrifying reports of chatbots engaging with small children,” she said.
Trump has been attempting to remove Slaughter from her FTC position, but earlier this week, U.S. appeals court allowed her to maintain her role.
On Thursday, the president asked the Supreme Court to allow him to fire her from the post.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, who was selected by Trump to lead the commission, publicly opposed the complaint against Snap in January, prior to succeeding Lina Khan at the helm.
At the time, he said he would “release a more detailed statement about this affront to the Constitution and the rule of law” if the DOJ were to eventually file a complaint.
WATCH: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter on President Trump’s latest attempt to fire her.
Technology
Google leads monster week for tech, pushing megacaps to combined $21 trillion in market cap
Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai meets with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk at Google for Startups in Warsaw, Poland, on February 13, 2025.
Klaudia Radecka | Nurphoto | Getty Images
From the courtroom to the boardroom, it was a big week for tech investors.
The resolution of Google’s antitrust case led to sharp rallies for Alphabet and Apple. Broadcom shareholders cheered a new $10 billion customer. And Tesla’s stock was buoyed by a freshly proposed pay package for CEO Elon Musk.
Add it up, and the U.S. tech industry’s eight trillion-dollar companies gained a combined $420 billion in market cap this week, lifting their total value to $21 trillion, despite a slide in Nvidia shares.
Those companies now account for roughly 36% of the S&P 500, a proportion so great by historical standards that Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, told CNBC by email, “there are no comparisons.”
There was a certain irony to this week’s gains.
Alphabet’s 9% jump on Wednesday was directly tied to the U.S. government effort to diminish the search giant’s market control, which was part of a years-long campaign to break up Big Tech. Since 2020, Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta have all been hit with antitrust allegations by the Department of Justice or Federal Trade Commission.
A year ago, Google lost to the DOJ, a result viewed by many as the most-significant antitrust decision for the tech industry since the case against Microsoft more than two decades earlier. But in the remedies ruling this week, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said Google won’t be forced to sell its Chrome browser despite its loss in court and instead handed down a more limited punishment, including a requirement to share search data with competitors.
The decision lifted Apple along with Alphabet, because the companies can stick with an arrangement that involves Google paying Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. Alphabet rose more than 10% for the week and Apple added 3.2%, helping boost the Nasdaq 1.1%.
Analysts at Wedbush Securities wrote in a note after the decision that the ruling “removed a huge overhang” on Google’s stock and a “black cloud worry” that hung over Apple. Further, they said it clears the path for the companies to pursue a bigger artificial intelligence deal involving Gemini, Google’s AI models.
“This now lays the groundwork for Apple to continue its deal and ultimately likely double down on more AI related partnerships with Google Gemini down the road,” the analysts wrote.
Mehta explained that a major factor in his decision was the emergence of generative AI, which has become a much more competitive market than traditional search and has dramatically changed the market dynamics.
New players like OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity have altered Google’s dominance, Mehta said, noting that generative AI technologies “may yet prove to be game changers.”
On Friday, Alphabet investors shrugged off a separate antitrust matter out of Europe. The company was hit with a 2.95-billion-euro ($3.45 billion) fine from European Union regulators for anti-competitive practices in its advertising technology business.
Broadcom pops
While OpenAI was an indirect catalyst for Google and Apple this week, it was more directly tied to the huge rally in Broadcom’s stock.
Following Broadcom’s better-than-expected earnings report on Thursday, CEO Hock Tan told analysts that his chipmaker had secured a $10 billion contract with a new customer, which would be the company’s fourth large AI client.
Several analysts said the new customer is OpenAI, and the Financial Times reported on a partnership between the two companies.
Broadcom is the newest entrant into the trillion-dollar club, thanks to the company’s custom chips for AI, already used by Google, Meta and TikTok parent ByteDance. With Its 13% jump this week, the stock is now up 120% in the past year, lifting Broadcom’s market cap to around $1.6 trillion.
“The company is firing on all cylinders with clear line of sight for growth supported by significant backlog,” analysts at Barclays wrote in a note, maintaining their buy recommendation and lifting their price target on the stock.
For the other giant AI chipmaker, the past week wasn’t so good.
Nvidia shares fell more than 4% in the holiday-shortened week, the worst performance among the megacaps. There was no apparent negative news for Nvidia, but the stock has now dropped for four consecutive weeks.
Still, Nvidia remains the largest company by market cap, valued at over $4 trillion, with its stock up 56% in the past 12 months.
Microsoft also fell this week and is on an extended slide, dropping for five straight weeks. Shares are still up 21% over the last 12 months.
On the flipside, Tesla has been the laggard in the group. Shares of the electric vehicle maker are down 13% this year due to a multi-quarter sales slump that reflects rising competition from lower-cost Chinese manufacturers and an aging lineup of EVs.
But Tesla shares climbed 5% this week, sparked mostly by gains on Friday after the company said it wants investors to approve a pay plan for Musk that could be worth up to almost $1 trillion.
The payouts, split into 12 tranches, would require Tesla to see significant value appreciation, starting with the first award that won’t kick in until the company almost doubles its market cap to $2 trillion.
Tesla Chairwoman Robyn Denholm told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin the plan was designed to keep Musk, the world’s richest person, “motivated and focused on delivering for the company.”
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