There has been a lot of change at Facebook lately. Since 2019, five members of its nine-member board have left, with departures including Jeffrey Zients (former Obama administration adviser); Kenneth Chenault (former American Express CEO); Erskine Bowles (former Clinton White House chief of staff), Susan Desmond-Hellmann (former CEO of the Bill Gates Foundation, Democrat), and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings (a prominent Democratic Party supporter).
The four remaining are venture capitalist Peter Thiel (conservative/libertarian), Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (Democrat), venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (moderate), and Mark Zuckerberg (Democrat). Out of nine members, that’s seven Democrats, one moderate, and one libertarian conservative. Diversity!
This kind of exodus is rarely a coincidence, despite formal messaging to the contrary. All board members that left have privately expressed frustrations either centered around the company’s political policies, or a sense that their input was being disregarded. Facebook’s censorious approach toward conservative discourse is well-documented. And incredibly, much of the internal rancor that led to departures has argued Facebook isn’t censoring speech enough, with a focus on Facebook’s polarizing advertisement policy.
Peter Thiel is the pioneer and leading advocate of Facebook’s correct decision to not be the arbiter of truth for political ads. Unsurprisingly, an overwhelmingly neoliberal board hasn’t taken too kindly to Thiel and his conservative stances. Hastings has described Thiel’s public support of President Trump as “catastrophically bad judgment,” and former Democratic administration board members apparently had tensions with the venture capitalist. Silicon Valley tech companies are notorious for their monolithic political views while trumpeting an affinity for “diversity and inclusion.” However, that inclusion and love of differences does not quite extend to the political or ideological realm.
Thiel is unquestionably the voice Zuckerberg trusts the most, and his disproportionate influence is, in large part, due to the history the two have together. Thiel was the very first outside investor in Facebook back in August 2004 and helped 21-year-old Zuckerberg navigate the business world for the first time and build Facebook to what it is today, almost 16 years later. Relationships like that are akin to a mentorship, and Thiel’s tutelage is, in large part, why Facebook is a massive success. Zuckerberg has not forgotten this.
These board departures have been capitalized on by Zuckerberg, as he fills the seats with those he’s already close with, and unlikely to dissent. New members include Drew Houston, the CEO of Dropbox and friends with Zuckerberg since 2012, as well as Peggy Alford, who previously worked for Zuckerberg at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
This broadening of Zuckerberg’s control will, by extension, expand Thiel’s influence at a critical juncture in the social media timeline. As Trump continues to get censored and “fact-checked” by Jack Dorsey and Twitter, who, at this point, seem to actively want regulatory confrontation, it’s conceivable that the only thing standing between Facebook adopting the same “gatekeeper of truth” policy is Thiel’s hold on Zuckerberg’s ear.
There’s still work to be done. Zuckerberg’s newfound lip-service dedication to free speech is nice to hear, but outside of the advertisement space, it still amounts to sloganeering, beginning and ending at freedom of speech for political campaigning. The platform still actively polices language by its users. While social media remains in the business of dictating language, Thiel’s influence at least has Facebook trending in a better direction. As Trump looks to repeal Twitter’s Section 230 protections as it continues to editorialize and behave as a publisher, not the platform it claims to be, Facebook is not quite in these crosshairs as it does and says just enough to avoid direct targeting.
The seeds of open discourse have been planted with the ad policy, let’s hope Thiel can continue to spread this First Amendment mentality at a company that is largely a duopoly on the informational commons.
Jason Orestes (@market_noises) is a former Wall Street financial analyst who focuses on contemporary political developments affecting economics, markets, and culture. His financial commentary can be found on Jim Cramer’s TheStreet, and he is regularly syndicated on MSN Money, RealClearMarkets, and RealClearPolitics.
