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Editor’s note: The following column was originally published on City Journal.
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, formerly Facebook, made a surprising announcement. He was ending the company’s DEI programs and severing its relationships with fact-checking organizations, which he admitted had become a form of “audit.” The leftist media attacked that decision, accused him of accepting MAGA’s agenda, and predicted a dangerous increase in so-called disinformation.
Zuckerberg’s moves were carefully calculated and impeccably timed. The November election, she said, felt like a “cultural tipping point that re-prioritized the discourse.” DEI’s efforts, especially those related to immigration and gender, were “cut off from the mainstream conversation”—and disallowed.
This is not a small thing about the face. Just four years ago, Zuckerberg spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding left-wing election campaigns; his role was much hated by conservatives. And Meta has always been at the forefront of any identity-based or left-wing cause.
META’S POLICY HEAD SAYS DECISION TO END DEI ENSURES COMPANY HIRES ‘HIGHLY RESPONSIBLE PEOPLE’
That’s not the case anymore. As part of the announcement, Zuckerberg released a video and appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast, which now serves as a confession for American officials who no longer believe in left-wing orthodoxies. In the podcast, Zuckerberg sounded less like a progressive Californian than a right-wing activist, arguing that culture needs a better balance of “masculine” and “feminine” power.
Meta executives 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 that biased employees are over-screening content.”
Zuckerberg wasn’t the first tech executive to make such an announcement, but he’s perhaps the most important. Facebook is one of the largest firms in Silicon Valley and, as Zuckerberg sets the example, many smaller companies will likely follow suit.
The most important signal from this decision is not about a specific change in policy, however, but a general change in culture. Zuckerberg has never really been a genius. He seems to be very interested in building his company and staying in the good deeds of the elite society. But like many successful, self-respecting men, he is also independent-minded and has clearly resented the cultural barriers DEI has placed on his company. So he seized the moment, knowing full well that Donald Trump’s impending suspension would reduce the risk and increase the benefit of such a change.
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Zuckerberg is not a brave truth teller. He endorsed the DEI over the past decade because that’s where the signs of elite status were pointing. Now, those signs are back, like a sudden drop in the barometer, and he’s reversing course with them and trying to blame the outgoing Biden administration, which he told Rogan, pressured him to use the audit — an easy excuse for a better time.
But the good news is that, wherever managers may use post hoc rationalizations, the DEI and its cultural assumptions have suddenly met with serious opposition. We may be entering an important period when people feel confident enough to express their true beliefs about DEI, which is anti-virtuous, and stop pretending to believe in the religious ideology of “systematic racism” and racially based guilt.
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DEI remains rooted in government institutions, of course, but private institutions and companies are more flexible and can deploy such programs with the stroke of a pen.
Zuckerberg revealed what this might look like at one of the biggest companies. Conservatives can praise him for his decision, while remaining cautious. “Trust but verify,” as Ronald Reagan used to say, is good policy all around.
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