Just a little over a decade ago, Mark Zuckerberg had little qualms about being public about his political views.
Earnest and optimistic (perhaps naively), he catapulted himself onto the national stage to debate issues he cared about: immigration, social justice, inequality, and democratic achievement. He wrote columns in national newspapers to advocate for his views, started foundations and charities, and employed hundreds of people to channel his vast fortune into his political goals.
That was Mark Zuckerberg in his 20s. Mark Zuckerberg in his 40s is a very different Mark Zuckerberg.
In conversations with friends, colleagues and advisers over the past few years, Mr. Zuckerberg has expressed a skeptical attitude toward politics, born of years of bitter experiences in Washington. He and the heads of Facebook parent company Meta believed both parties hated tech and that continued involvement in political campaigns would only bring greater scrutiny to the company.
As recently as June at the Allen & Company “summer camp for billionaires” conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, Zuckerberg complained to multiple people that the politically sensitive aspects of his philanthropy were creating backlash for Meta, and he regretted hiring employees at his philanthropy who tried to push him further left on some causes.
In short, he got over it.
He has stepped away from it all, according to more than a dozen friends, advisers and executives familiar with his thinking.
That means Mr. Zuckerberg has publicly refused to engage with Washington except when necessary, while privately he has halted charitable giving that could be perceived as partisan and throttled the activities of Meta’s employees, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they did not have the authority to do so or did not want to jeopardize their relationship with Mr. Zuckerberg.
Mr. Trump also held two one-on-one calls with former President Donald J. Trump over the summer, according to people familiar with the matter, and some have described the move as an attempt to repair long-standing tensions between the two men.
“I think I was very naive about the political environment and I think I fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem,” Zuckerberg said in a recent interview at a live podcast event in San Francisco.
Zuckerberg publicly regretted some of his political activity in a letter to Congress last month, saying the Biden administration “pressured” Meta in 2021 to censor coronavirus-related content beyond what Zuckerberg would have tolerated. He also said he would not repeat donations he made to election infrastructure support in 2020 because it would make him appear less “neutral.”
Zuckerberg’s change has received relatively little attention compared with other tech titans like Elon Musk, who has publicly described himself as close to conservatives and former President Donald J. Trump. But it also reflects a larger shift in Silicon Valley, where CEOs have grown increasingly frustrated with controversial social issues. Their response has largely been to distance themselves from them.
“Mark and his colleagues are likely weighing the risks of political involvement and deciding that remaining neutral until after the election is the safer option,” said Nu Wexler, a principal at political consulting firm Four Corners Public Affairs and a former Facebook employee.
According to people who have spoken with him recently, Mr. Zuckerberg now personally considers his political beliefs to be closer to libertarianism or “classical liberalism,” which includes hostility to business-restricting regulations, support for free markets and globalization, and openness to social justice reforms, so long as they stop short of what he considers far-left progressivism. Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, are also personally appalled by the rise of anti-Semitism on college campuses, including at his alma mater, Harvard University.
Representatives for Mr Zuckerberg and Dr Chan at Mehta and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative declined to comment.
It’s a major shift for the executive who in 2013 helped found and became president of Fwd.US, a political advocacy group that sought to create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Two years later, inspired by Bill Gates, Zuckerberg and Dr Chan founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a charitable foundation that has funneled $436 million over five years to issues like drug legalization and reducing incarceration.
In a 2015 letter to their newborn daughter, Mr Zuckerberg and Dr Chan wrote that they dreamed of an equal world where we could “end poverty and hunger,” “provide basic health care for all,” and “foster peaceful and understanding relations between the people of all nations.” He hired David Plouffe, a former top adviser to former President Barack Obama, to oversee the effort.
But in the years since, Facebook has faced accusations that Russia used it to polarize voters, and Mr. Zuckerberg and the company have become the subject of political criticism, with Democrats and Republicans lambasting Facebook and its sister service, Instagram, for allowing too much, or too little, political speech.
Mr. Zuckerberg began to feel troubled by changes in the country’s politics in 2019, two people close to him said, and the scrutiny made him think his more overt political activism at CZI was less effective.
People close to Mr Zuckerberg and Dr Chan said they were caught off guard by the actions of activists at the charity. After protests over the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, CZI employees called on Mr Zuckerberg to resign from Facebook and CZI in a staff meeting, citing his lack of willingness to moderate Mr Trump’s rhetoric at the time.
This incident and similar incidents upset Mr. Zuckerberg and distanced him from the foundation’s progressive political work, according to people familiar with the matter. He came to see the Justice and Opportunity team, one of three core parts of the effort, as a distraction from the foundation’s overall work and not a reflection of his own bipartisan views.
In 2021, Zuckerberg and Chan decided to end the group’s internal political activities and instead fund two bipartisan groups that address those issues, and many of the roughly 30 employees who had focused on politics resigned, were transferred or seconded to those two groups.
Some employees at the initiative wanted the organization to focus on protecting access to abortion after the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade in 2022. But Dr. Chan, who runs CZI on a day-to-day basis, sent a memo to employees categorically rejecting that. “We need to stay clear and focused on what we’re here for, and that means focusing on science, education and community engagement,” Dr. Chan wrote, according to a portion of the memo reviewed by The Times. “We have no plans to expand our grantmaking into new areas.”
Mr Zuckerberg, who now co-heads the initiative with Dr Chan, is less involved than he was two or three years ago, the people said.
Other incidents piled up. After the 2020 election, Mr Zuckerberg and Dr Chan were criticized for donating $400 million to the nonprofit Center for Technology and Civic Life to promote safety at polling places during the pandemic lockdowns. Though Mr Zuckerberg and Dr Chan framed their donation as a bipartisan effort, advisers warned they would be criticized for taking sides.
The donations became known in Republican circles as “Zuckerbucks,” and conservatives including Trump and Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, accused Zuckerberg of trying to boost voter turnout in Democratic areas.
In private conversations with advisers and friends, Zuckerberg and Chan have expressed regret over the donation and how it backfired.
“We should be having a parade for them, and they’re under attack,” said David Becker, who runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a 2020 program backed by Mr. Zuckerberg. “I understand that Mark Zuckerberg is frustrated by the controversy that’s been created.”
Within Meta, Zuckerberg and his executive team are policing politics.
Meta’s head of human resources, Lori Goller, introduced a new company policy called “community engagement expectations” in late 2022 that prohibited employees from raising issues like abortion, racial justice movements or war in the workplace, according to a copy of the memo reviewed by The New York Times. Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, pushed for the policy, and Zuckerberg supported it, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Instead of publicly negotiating with Washington, Mr. Zuckerberg has been mending his relationships with politicians behind the scenes. After his “Zuckerbacs” diatribe, Mr. Zuckerberg hired Brian Baker, a prominent Republican strategist, to improve his standing with right-wing media and Republicans. Ahead of the November election, Mr. Baker stressed to Mr. Trump and his aides that Mr. Zuckerberg had no plans to make similar donations, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Zuckerberg has yet to form a relationship with Vice President Kamala Harris, but he spoke with Trump over the summer for the first time since leaving office, according to people familiar with the conversation.
During the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Trump thanked the billionaire for publicly saying he was “praying” for Trump after the recent assassination attempt, according to a person briefed on the call.
Just a few weeks later, they spoke again.
After Meta mistakenly removed images of the assassination attempt that were circulating on the platform, Mr. Zuckerberg called the former president directly to apologize for the mistake, according to two people familiar with the conversation. Representatives for Mr. Trump and Mr. Zuckerberg have given differing accounts of the call.
“Private discussions between President Trump and anyone else are just that — private,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chang said.
Zuckerberg doesn’t believe that playing down politics will solve all his personal frustrations and the company’s problems, but he believes Meta can eventually bounce back.
“I think it’s going to take us about another decade to fully get through this cycle and get our brand back to where it should be,” Zuckerberg said during a podcast event. “If I don’t screw up the first time.”
Sheila Frenkel contributed reporting from San Francisco.
