Consequences for Meta platforms of Trump presidency

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I think we need to spend time determining what a Trump presidency will mean for Meta.

Background:
As we know, Meta, like all other major social platforms, imposed a suspension of Trumps account on January 7, 2021 after the march on the capital.
This suspension was lifted on January 25, 2023 while keeping some “guardrails” in place like additional scrutiny measures to limit the reach of some posts that defy standards, or higher risk of suspension.
Those guardrails have been lifted two days ago in order to ensure equal voice and opportunity for both presidential candidates ahead of the 2024 election.

As a response to losing his audience and “reach” Trump built truth social an alternative social network that struggled to gain significant traction.

There is also the long standing critiquism that social media platforms are biased against conservative voices.

While speaking at the libertarian national convention in May 2024, Trump said, “I am proud that I have put forward a detailed plan to smash the censorship and industrial complex and restore free speech. On day one, I will sign an executive order banning federal agencies from colluding to censor the lawful speech of Americans.”

I assume that this “industrial complex” is in large part a platform like Meta platforms.

Trump also called Meta recently “enemy of the people”.

And threatened to send “election fraudsters” like Zuckerberg to prison on July, 10 2024 shortly before Meta restrictions have been lifted.

My current take remains that Trump likely does not want to engage in major fights with Meta but only prevent them from having leverage over him and limiting his reach.

That said deeper research is required to make sure that there is no more substantial risk coming from that front.
(Without research, I would not know how large risks are, but I would like to determine if there are scenarios in which Trump could threaten Meta to force them to comply or even impose presidential orders on them or if if there are any other risks like criminal prosecution)

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These are some of the steps or plans in his free speech policies, which seem to be more aimed a government changes more than any particular company.

  • Executive Order: Ban federal agencies from collaborating with external entities, like big tech companies, to censor speech. This includes actions against labeling free speech as misinformation or disinformation.
  • Firing Bureaucrats: Identify and fire federal bureaucrats involved in domestic censorship, targeting officials in DHS, HHS, FBI, DOJ, and other agencies.
  • DOJ Investigation: Investigate how federal agencies may have worked with private companies to suppress lawful speech.
  • Section 230 Reform: Push for reform to ensure tech companies only receive immunity if they adhere to high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination​.
  • Cutting Funding: Cut federal funding for nonprofits and academic programs that support censorship, such as flagging social media content.
  • Digital Bill of Rights: Propose a “digital bill of rights” to guarantee digital due process, this would require government officials to secure a court order before taking down content rather than making direct requests to tech companies​
  • Preservation Letters: Urge Republicans to send preservation letters to the Biden administration, Biden campaign, and tech companies to prevent the destruction of documents related to censorship activities.
  • Criminal Penalties: Propose criminal penalties for federal employees who collude with private companies to censor Americans, with a cooling-off period before working for tech companies.

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In 2020, Trump already signed an order with similar objectives, but it had limited impact because according to legal experts, an executive order cannot amend Section 230 or override judicial interpretations of the law.

In particular, an executive order cannot amend Section 230 or overrule the hundreds of state and federal judicial decisions that have interpreted it since its passage in 1996.

Moreover, although the NTIA’s petition attempts to justify relying on FCC action to “clarify” the scope and operation of Section 230, it is far from clear that the agency has the authority to issue interpretations of Section 230 that would bind social media platforms or others, and an executive order cannot expand the statutory limitations on that agency’s regulatory authority.

In 2021 Biden revoked the order.

I have not found until now commentary or analysis about the current proposed policies, or implications for Meta, but I will probably continue tomorrow on it.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2024-republican-party-platform

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Cool thank you. I think those first insights and Section 230 is reassuring to some degree.

Nevertheless it would be great to get even more insights and an as decisive as possible assessment of potential risks coming from that side.
I am mainly worried about any past actions of Meta like banning Trumps account or censoring alt-right conspiracy theories that could be used to attack Meta or Zuckerberg.

Given that the market is currently rotating out of tech this topic has high priority.

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These are the 2 posts from Trump about Zuckerberg recently:

The Zukerbucks seems to have been a theme for a while, because of a $400 donation Mark and his wife made in the 2020 elections. The Republicans claim counties or cities that leaned Democrat received more money influencing the results.

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But it seems the Republicans and Trump already accused Zuckerberg about this, for election interference and other alleged fraudulent activities related to the 2020 election, however, he was already investigated and the claims were dismissed due to lack of evidence.

Unanimous 6-0 bipartisan vote, the FEC dismissed complaints against Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan regarding their $350 million in grants to election administrators in 2020. The FEC found no evidence that the grants violated campaign finance laws or were used to improperly influence the election.

I haven’t found any analyst, analysis, videos making commentary about the recent events, other than the recent suspension of the ban or Trumps threat without further comments on implications for Meta. So markets are not focused on this currently.

I used AI to help assess how likely the president could act on his words:

  • Without credible evidence of actual crimes committed by Zuckerberg, it would be extremely difficult for Trump to legally justify imprisoning him, due to the separation of powers in the US (check and balances), the president does not have the authority to unilaterally imprison individuals.
  • Despite the recent presidential immunity ruling, is very likely the courts and Congress would likely intervene to prevent an abuse of power.
  • Trump has a history of making bold threats against his perceived enemies, but has rarely been able to follow through in a meaningful way.

From these, the recent presidential immunity ruling appears the most concerning to me. Because there are already reports that Trump wants to exert control over the Justice Department and the FBI. Threatening to erode the separation of powers, and combined with this new immunity, it could enable actions beyond the current constraints on the presidency.

Apparently, Trump has tried to distance himself from this project 2025 because of the scrutiny it has received, but at the same time the people and organizations behind it seem to be deeply linked with him. And his named VPJD Vance apparently has close ties with them too.

The plan for the DOJ is essentially twofold, according to the nine people interviewed by Reuters, some of whom requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

First: flood the Justice Department with stalwart conservatives unlikely to say “no” to controversial orders from the White House. Second: restructure the department so key decisions are concentrated in the hands of administration loyalists rather than career bureaucrats.

I got a bit scared of this Project 2025 initiative, not only because of Meta, but because it sounds like an outright way to a dictatorship.
The project however is very extreme, and very difficult to get executed, but even if some of it does, is pretty bad.

It’s difficult to assess without much information available, and that I’m far from an expert on this. However, it’s clear he strongly dislikes Zuckerberg and will likely attempt to have him investigated again at least. However, I think the likelihood of his success without changes in presidential privileges is lower because similar attempts have been made before (changes in section 230 or Zuckerberg’s accusations) without success, but if he indeed gets some control of the DOJ and FBI, I think it could be more dangerous.

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I agree. I personally think Trump has been a threat to democratic institutions from the beginning and now in his second term he appears to be better prepared than ever to attack them.

I also think that Trump views social media companies like Meta as “power centers” which he would likely want to control or influence as much as possible.

Overall I think we have to start prioritizing politics more given the political climate and drastic implications it could have for companies & the economy at large.

It appears that the U.S. is increasingly polarizing which brings risks of “some sort of civil war” with no side accepting established institutions or processes as Dalio describes it and the system as we know it could be changed forever.

To Do & Assessment
Unfortunately I don’t know how strong institutions are as of now and how hard it would be to change them but this is a question we could research in a new topic. For now I am assuming that they are sufficiently strong and I view any laws or actions that would aim to take control of a company like Meta for political purposes as unlikely. This is due to the fact that the U.S have strong traditions of ownership, controlling a company and its employees against the wills of its leadership and owners can be difficult and the U.S would likely want to remain a strong jurisdiction for business, investors & innovation.
What would be more likely and easy to implement in my opinion is to pressure a company into compliance.
Please feel free to argue against this preliminary assessment esp. if you have reasons or research to believe it is unreasonable optimistic.

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I am increasingly hearing on Bloomberg that the latest tech sell of is also due to political reasons not just rotation into small caps due to interest rates.
Trumps recently selected VP J.D Vance is apparently in favor of breaking up big tech companies like Google or Facebook.

https://www.wsj.com/video/jd-vance-on-big-tech/77769E96-70F5-45B6-8483-A7158C78A4D8

@Magaly can you continue to look into this? (How likely is it that they would go for something like this? Is it possible etc?)

Ps: Here a short overview from perplexity on a presidents influence on the FTC. As we know there is an FTC case against Meta regarding the acquisition of Instagram + WhatsApp. How the court will decide on that case is another question though.
I also found another article describing that Vance anti big tech rethoric resonated well with Voters and describes his connection with Thiel in more detail.
What we ultimately want to figure out is how deep this anti big tech sentiment runs and how much of a problem it could become for Meta (By understanding the sentiment + administrative/poltical/jurisdictive system better)

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I haven’t found any specific policies they plan to implement against big tech, aside from changes to Section 230.
However, from reading various articles, it’s clear that he is very vocal and determined to fight big tech. Therefore, I agree with the video that if he is put in charge of this effort, he is very likely to do everything they can under their power.

Some of his positions have been 1 2 3:

  • He has praised the work of FTC Chair Lina Khan, which has shown a willingness to challenge big tech.
  • In 2021, Vance filed an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit to declare Google a public utility and accused Google of anti-competitive behavior.
  • He believes Google search results are biased to the left and advocates for breaking up the company.
  • In May 2023, he criticized digital trade and tech companies’ attempts to influence international agreements in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.
  • Vance has spoken against the protections social media companies enjoy under Section 230, which shields them from lawsuits related to user-generated content.
  • At a recent Y Combinator conference, he emphasized the need for a competitive marketplace prioritizing innovation and consumer choice over monopolistic pricing power.
  • He has criticized AI systems like ChatGPT for being too left-wing and advocates for open-source technology as a solution. He is skeptical of companies pushing for AI regulation, suggesting it could benefit large players.

Obviously, the president or executive branch cannot change regulations or laws alone, but they can influence outcomes and drive action towards this goal through some of the following means:

  • Propose and support new antitrust laws to strengthen enforcement against monopolistic practices.
  • Use executive orders to direct federal agencies to prioritize antitrust investigations
  • Appoint leaders in the FTC and DOJ who are committed to aggressive antitrust enforcement.
  • Increase investigations into tech companies for anticompetitive practices. This could lead to lawsuits aiming to break up companies or force them to change their business practices
  • Work with state attorneys general who have shown an interest in regulating big tech.
  • Collaborate with other countries facing similar concerns about big tech eg EU.
  • Implement stricter scrutiny and approval processes for mergers and acquisitions by big tech companies to prevent them from further consolidating power.

Now, there was also a comment from Trump yesterday on TikTok ban that could have also had an impact

“Now [that] I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok, because you need competition,” he says. “If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram—and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.”

There were also comments from both Trump and Biden that could impact the semiconductors industry and geopolitical issues.

Trump:

Trump makes it clear that, despite recent bipartisan support for Taiwan, he’s at best lukewarm about standing up to Chinese aggression. Part of his skepticism is grounded in economic resentment.

“Taiwan took our chip business from us,” he says. “I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy.” What he wants is for Taiwan to pay the US for protection. “I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?” he asks.

Biden

Shares of semiconductor stocks have come under pressure as the U.S. is considering more stringent trade curbs in its crackdown on China’s access to advanced chips.

The Biden administration is said to be weighing stricter trade restrictions if companies such as Tokyo Electron Ltd. and ASML (AS:ASML) continue to provide China access to advanced semiconductor technology.

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Thank you. I think what we need next is even deeper research how deep those anti-big-tech sentiments run, if the goal of the new administration would likely be to gain leverage on companies or seriously change the landscape over the long run + more details how effectively the administration could use the tools at their disposal or how effectively the likes of Meta and Google could defend themselves.

I am genuinely worried the first time since a long time about the Meta position and even consider decreasing it.
This comes mainly from a lack of knowledge on that important front that we did not have on our radar so far but I think it is crucial and of highest importance to build that knowledge.

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I just listened to JD Vance’s speech he did on antitrust back in February (the whole conference was about this topic)

He seems very motivated on the topic due to his previous experience, it does not seem to be simply another policy he thinks is cool to support or something of this nature.
His “genuine” motivation and the way he expressed it could potentially gather more significant support than Trump’s approach which is often seen as only “vengeful” motivations.
However he admits breaking up these companies would be extremely difficult whoever is the president, and that the way they could try to make policy right in this aspect is in getting the right people on the right roles.

These are some of my notes:

His Motivations:

  • Smaller tech companies while experiencing rapid growth do not have the ability to compete and gain market share against the dominant incumbents. True Innovation is harmed because of the lack of competition (40:00)
  • He wants to build a competitive marketplace that is pro-innovation, pro-competition that allows consumers to have the right choices and is not over-obsessed over pricing power, ignoring everything else
  • He emphasizes the importance of consumer quality and worker wages.
  • Concentrated private power could be as dangerous as concentrated public power (55:00)
  • Current tech advertising is harmful, especially to children. (41:45)

His criticism aimed at Google/ Meta:

  • While Google and Meta got so big and powerful because of the network effect, he asks the question of why these companies need to have all the platforms under the same company umbrella
  • He is after separating all the market verticals of these businesses as much as possible to allow for more innovation and competition in each one (44:00)
  • He also thinks Google and Meta have disrupted the political process, potentially influencing results or peoples opinions, and threatening democracy (48.30)
  • He admits that while they should be more assertive in breaking up some existing tech incumbents, this is not going to happen whoever is the president because they are a lot of barriers and how expensive ligation is. He thinks then that the regulation of crypto is extremely important to allow for new digital entrants to disrupt the digital ecosystem with this new tech (52:00 → very important statement imo, he is admitting breaking them up would be not possible)

How Trump thinks about this according to him: (59:00)
He is expressing what he has heard because have not talked about it with him as of Feb.

  • He thinks Trump does not consider they can’t do anything about these companies because it would be a violation of some ephemeral free market principle as the old orthodox thinks.
  • What will determine antithrust policy in a Trump administration is who ultimately takes the reigns of the senior roles because they are the ones that will execute it. So focus would be on getting the right personnel in the right roles to get the policy right. (This is what I have heard from other sources, their focus will be on getting “loyalists” to Trump in important roles)
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The part at which he says it is difficult to break up those companies is interesting indeed.
I think a few further topics we could investigate are e.g.

Antitrust:

  • Are there any (bi-partisan) efforts to strengthen anti-trust laws that enjoy wide support? There are certainly people like Elizabeth Warren supporting it like outlined in this old article or in her 2020 campaign but how broad is the support? → Here is a first good article about the state of Antitrust in April 2022 and another one in Dec 2022.
  • Are we able to identify leading scholars/professors/lawyers who share their assessment of how difficult it is for agencies like the FTC or DOJ to win major anti-trust lawsuits against companies like Meta?
  • Which courts are deciding those cases and which are the main laws they use for their decisions?
  • I heard that Meta loosing its FTC Instagram + WhatsApp case more than 10 years after the acquisition and needs to divest is seen as quite unlikely. How much could a new administration change this outcome and increase the risk? As an example could a newly passed law change an old anti-trust case?

Free Speech:

  • How wide is (bi-partisan) support to change Section 230? (Bill would need to pass the house and senate)
  • Which are the major laws and agencies which regulate free speech and the censorship of (misleading) informations today? (Partially answered here)
  • How much resistance would republicans face from democrats if they want to implement plans like outlined here? What are ways in which democrats could hinder the trump administration from achieving its goals?

Criminal investigations:

  • Are there any arguments to be made why certain decisions of Meta like to block Trumps account would be unlawful or have all action from Meta been in clear compliance with laws and regulatory practices so that we can be confident that there is no risk coming from that side?

Other

  • Are there any other major concerns that Meta is facing when it comes to political risk from a new administration?

Given the breath of the topics I think it might be good to organize the informations in a Wiki article.

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Mark Zuckerberg is preemptively stating that he wants his social media platforms to be less political and they are recommending political content less.

He also said that the way Trump stood up after the shooting was “badass”.

The full interview will air on Tuesday.

Assessment
I agree with commentators that his remarks have likely been calculated. I think it is certainly the right strategy though to try get Meta out of larger political troubles.

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Trump defends Zuckerberg and says he called after assassination attempt

Wow Trump demonstrated again in the subcontext of this interview that as long people are standing behind him and are loyal to him there will be no problem for them.

He said that Mark Zuckerberg called him multiple time after the assassination attempt and credited him for not endorsing a democratic candidate but complains that no one from Google called.

He hinted that it will be difficult to remove Section 230 because checking every piece of content is not feasible.

@Magaly Are you still working on that topic? I think this recent interview drastically reduces its importance.

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I was planning to continue this week with the 230 section research, to be able to finish and close the topic for now. Should I do it or not?

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I would say if you already have work in progress finish it so we don’t loose it, but do not invest more times in newer parts of the topic that you did not start yet.

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Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, another effort to rebuild its relationship with the incoming administration.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-12/meta-donates-1-million-to-donald-trump-s-inaugural-fund

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President Trump blasted the EU Commission for targeting Meta, Apple and Alphabet.

“These are American companies whether you like it or not,” Trump said in comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “They shouldn’t be doing that. That’s, as far as I’m concerned, a form of taxation. We have some very big complaints with the EU.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-23/trump-blasts-eu-regulators-for-targeting-apple-google-meta

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Analysts said Trump’s tariffs could slow ad growth for Meta and Google

  • Analysts said Trump’s tariffs on China (including suspension de mini minimis rule) and those imposed on Canada and Mexico may slow advertising growth for Meta and Google.
  • Youssef Squali, managing director of Truist Financial said the tariff turmoil “absolutely impact everybody, including the large ad platforms.”
  • Squali pointed out that investors believe Meta Platforms may be well-positioned to absorb the blow given its scale and grip on advertisers, as evidenced by its own price hikes.
  • Arun Kumar of AlixPartners said the pandemic led to a 20% decline in overall ad spending and that Trump’s tariffs would likely power a 5% to 15% drop.
  • Kumar expects the tariffs to cause car makers to shift ad spend from brand marketing in favor of digital performance campaigns.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-tariffs-loom-over-ad-industry-from-brands-to-digital-sellers-58af3116

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