Following the political winds

Meta’s bombshell announcement on Tuesday that it would end its fact-checking program was widely read as a major shift in policy meant to please President-elect Donald Trump and other conservatives.

In reality, the move was probably less radical than it initially seemed. But the turn still serves as a reminder that many corporate leaders see their highest priority as reading the room — one that Trump now dominates.

Mark Zuckerberg has been moving in this direction for some time. In relation to the 2016 election, the Meta chief, who has a history of tacking where political winds blow, followed other tech companies in partnering with fact-checking groups to police content on its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Since then, however, the tech mogul has fumed as Meta was criticized for both failing to do enough — and for removing too many user posts.

“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the changes, including a move to X-style user-policing known as Community Notes. (Katie Harbath, a former communications executive at Meta, told The Times, “This is an evolved return to his political origins.”)

The changes aren’t necessarily as big as they first appeared. Politico noted that Meta had been paring back its moderation efforts in recent years. And while Zuckerberg promoted plans to move such workers to Texas to “eliminate bias,” many such workers are already based there.

Zuckerberg isn’t alone: Tech companies haven’t ever wanted to be in the business of moderating user content. Last summer, YouTube began testing a version of Community Notes, though it was described as more of a supplemental feature.

Is the political payoff for Meta worth the criticism? Trump, who had railed against the company’s moves to police his content — including briefly shutting down his Facebook account after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol — said the tech giant had “come a long way.” (He also said his threats against Zuckerberg “probably” contributed to the new policy.)

Meta executives may hope that, along with the elevation of the longtime Republican executive Joel Kaplan to lead global affairs, a $1 million donation to the Trump inaugural fund and the addition of the Trump ally Dana White to its board, may get them into the president-elect’s good graces.

A factor worth watching: Zuckerberg said he would work with Trump to “push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more.” That was a thinly veiled shot against the European Union, which has sought to punish companies, including Meta, for insufficiently policing their platforms — and may increase its scrutiny of the tech giant after Tuesday’s move.

Will the move work? So far, advertisers aren’t publicly objecting. And Tuesday’s news most likely allays concerns that Trump regulatory picks, including Brendan Carr of the Federal Communications Commission, had about Meta.

But Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, wrote on X that Meta’s change was simply “a ploy to avoid being regulated.” She added, “We will not be fooled.”

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

Wildfires near Los Angeles force widespread evacuations. Parts of Santa Monica and the Pacific Palisades were hit by a blaze that destroyed homes and forced at least 30,000 to flee for safety. Another fire, near Pasadena, was also causing issues as officials warned of devastating losses.

Anthropic is close to raising billions more in capital. The artificial intelligence start-up is in advanced talks to collect $2 billion in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, The Times reports. If completed, the fund-raising would value Anthropic at $60 billion — roughly three times as much as it was worth a year ago — in another sign that the deal making frenzy around A.I. shows no signs of slowing.

JPMorgan Chase reportedly plans to call employees back to the office five days a week. That’s up from the requirement of three days a week, according to Bloomberg, though about 60 percent of Wall Street giant’s staff is already at the office full time. Other major companies have already reduced or eliminated work-from-home policies instituted during the coronavirus pandemic; JPMorgan’s C.E.O., Jamie Dimon, has long criticized hybrid working arrangements.

The markets are taking Trump seriously

Coming into 2025, the big questions hanging over President-elect Donald Trump’s second term included tax cuts, the Fed’s independence and potential new trade war.

But few could have foreseen the president-elect refusing to rule out military force or economic coercion against allies as he did on Tuesday at a wide-ranging news conference at Mar-a-Lago. It underscores that for markets, a Trump presidency brings plenty of potential black swan events.

A recap: Trump revealed an expansive vision of “America First,” doubling down on calls for the United States to gain control of Greenland and the Panama Canal. And he spoke of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” though it was unclear how serious he was about that.

The Trump effect can be seen in the markets on Wednesday. The S&P 500 looks set to open lower, and sectors like green energy and companies including Tesla slumped after Trump railed on Tuesday about wind turbines and grumbled about electric vehicles.

And the yield on the 10-year Treasury note hit a roughly nine-month high on Tuesday, a worrying sign for house hunters and credit-card holders.

Some market watchers still believe that markets could check the Trump agenda. Bond vigilantes could act as a brake on Trump’s policies if they reignite inflation.

And more broadly, the Trump team cares “about the verdict of financial markets,” Holger Schmieding, an economist at Berenberg, wrote in a research note on Wednesday. “If their actions were to impair the potential for growth and corporate earnings badly enough to trigger a sell-off, they might change tack.”

There are signs that might prove true. Trump acknowledged on Tuesday that it would be “hard” to bring down consumer prices, a major shift from what he told supporters on the campaign trail. His big inflation-fighting idea, expanding oil drilling, hasn’t yet affected the markets, with crude oil prices on a steady rise in recent weeks. (President Biden’s ban on new oil exploration in vast stretches of U.S. waters has contributed to that price surge, and may be hard for Trump to undo.)

That said, the VIX volatility index, known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, has been stable for weeks, a sign that equity investors are still bullish.

Trump’s record-breaking inauguration

Donald Trump’s transition team has already amassed a mega budget to throw an inauguration bash for the ages.

And the president-elect can thank the giants of the tech industry and Wall Street — some of the same figures who’ve met with him recently at Mar-a-Lago — for the record haul of at least $150 million. Few federal rules govern how Trump and his associates can spend the money.

Donors who have gone public include: Amazon, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Meta and Uber. Executives such as Tim Cook of Apple, Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber and Sam Altman of OpenAI have also chipped in.

Contributing to inauguration funds has become a corporate America tradition. “You’re giving money directly to the incoming president with no risk of backing the wrong horse,” Craig Holman, a lobbyist with Public Citizen, a consumer rights watchdog, told DealBook’s Sarah Kessler. Donors who give $1 million to the fund receive tickets to the inauguration plus other events such as a reception with cabinet picks and a pre-inauguration dinner with Trump.

There are only a few restrictions. Foreign nationals are not allowed to donate, and donations over $200 must be disclosed. And anti-bribery laws apply. “Beyond that, it’s pretty much open in terms of who may contribute and how they may spend it,” said Kenneth Gross, a lawyer specializing in campaign finance at Akin Gump.

The inauguration fund pays for the parties, dinners and the parade, while taxpayers foot the bill for security and the swearing-in ceremony.

What will happen to unspent funds? Two people involved in the fund-raising for Trump’s inauguration told The Times that donors expected the remaining money to go to Trump’s presidential library.

The last time, Trump’s team raised $107 million (the previous record). It was later revealed that a nearly $26 million payment went to an event planning firm created by an adviser to the first lady, Melania Trump.

Lawmakers have sought to change things. One bill introduced in 2023 would limit contributions to $50,000. But such efforts have gained little traction.

The big new corporate bet: Bitcoin

Corporate treasury departments are usually bastions of caution, preferring to invest their companies’ money in stable assets like Treasury bonds. But a growing number are choosing to go a different route by investing in crypto.

By one estimate, more than 70 publicly traded companies have invested in Bitcoin, despite some having nothing to do with crypto. At least a few have been inspired by MicroStrategy, a software company that began amassing Bitcoin in 2020 — and now sits on a stockpile worth over $40 billion. MicroStrategy’s stock price is up roughly tenfold over the past 18 months.

But it means that those companies are putting their money in a highly volatile asset that could imperil their finances if things go wrong, The Times’s David Yaffe-Bellany and Joe Rennison write:

The investments are a sharp pivot away from the cautious approach of the traditional corporate treasury department, whose focus is typically safeguarding cash rather than risking it for a higher return. Typical reserve assets include steady, predictable securities like U.S. government bonds and money market funds.

“I cannot understand how a risk-averse board could justify an investment in digital assets, given we know they swing quite significantly,” said Naresh Agarwal, an associate director at the Association of Corporate Treasurers, a trade organization. “It is quite an opaque market.”

Some investors aren’t on board with this new tactic. When Banzai, a publicly traded marketing firm, decided to invest in Bitcoin, some shareholders expressed alarm. Joe Davy, its C.E.O., told The Times: “I got a couple of phone calls from people who were like: ‘What the hell is going on over there? What are you thinking?’”

THE SPEED READ

Deals

Politics and policy

• The Justice Department added six major landlords, including Blackstone’s LivCor, to a price-fixing lawsuit against the real estate software company RealPage. (WSJ)

• Theodore Farnsworth, the former C.E.O. of MoviePass’s parent company, pleaded guilty to fraud over misleading investors about the business’ “unlimited” subscription plan. (NYT)

Best of the rest

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

In November 2016, as Facebook was being blamed for a torrent of fake news and conspiracy theories swirling around the first election of Donald J. Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of the social network, wrote an apologetic post.

In his message, Mr. Zuckerberg announced a series of steps he planned to take to grapple with false and misleading information on Facebook, such as working with fact-checkers.

“The bottom line is: we take misinformation seriously,” he wrote in a personal Facebook post. “There are many respected fact checking organizations,” he added, “and, while we have reached out to some, we plan to learn from many more.”

Eight years later, Mr. Zuckerberg is no longer apologizing. On Tuesday, he announced that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, was ending its fact-checking program and getting back to its roots around free expression. The fact-checking system had led to “too much censorship,” he said.

It was the latest step in a transformation of Mr. Zuckerberg. In recent years, the chief executive, now 40, has stepped away from his mea culpa approach to problems on his social platforms. Fed up with what has seemed at times to be unceasing criticism of his company, he has told executives close to him that he wants to return to his original thinking on free speech, which involves a lighter hand in content moderation.

Mr. Zuckerberg has remolded Meta as he has made the shift. Gone is the CrowdTangle transparency tool, which allowed researchers, academics and journalists to monitor conspiracy theories and misinformation on Facebook. The company’s election integrity team, once trumpeted as a group of experts focused solely on issues around the vote, has been folded into a general integrity team.

Instead, Mr. Zuckerberg has promoted technology efforts at Meta, including its investments in the immersive world of the so-called metaverse and its focus on artificial intelligence.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s change has been visible on his social media. Photos of him uncomfortably clad in a suit and tie and testifying before Congress have been replaced by videos of him with longer hair and in gold chains, competing in extreme sports and sometimes hunting for his own food. Long, heavily lawyered Facebook posts about Meta’s commitment to democracy no longer appear. Instead, he has posted quips on Threads responding to celebrity athletes and videos showing the company’s newest A.I. initiatives.

“This shows how Mark Zuckerberg is feeling that society is more accepting of those libertarian and right-leaning viewpoints that he’s always had,” said Katie Harbath, chief executive of Anchor Change, a tech consulting firm, who previously worked at Facebook. “This is an evolved return to his political origins.”

Mr. Zuckerberg has long been a pragmatist who has gone where the political winds have blown. He has flip-flopped on how much political content should be shown to Facebook and Instagram users, previously saying social networks should be about fun, relatable content from family and friends but then on Tuesday saying Meta would show more personalized political content.

Mr. Zuckerberg has told executives close to him that he is comfortable with the new direction of his company. He sees his most recent steps as a return to his original thinking on free speech and free expression, with Meta limiting its monitoring and controlling of content, said two Meta executives who spoke with Mr. Zuckerberg in the last week.

Mr. Zuckerberg was never comfortable with the involvement of outside fact-checkers, academics or researchers in his company, one of the executives said. He now sees many of the steps taken after the 2016 election as a mistake, the two executives said.

“Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in a video on Tuesday about the end of the fact-checking program, echoing statements made by top Republicans over the years.

Meta declined to comment.

Those who have known Mr. Zuckerberg for decades describe him as a natural libertarian, who enjoyed reading books extolling free expression and the free market system after he dropped out of Harvard to start Facebook in 2004. As his company grew, so did pressure to become more responsive to complaints from world leaders and civil society groups that he was not doing enough to moderate content on his platform.

Crises including a genocide in Myanmar, in which Facebook was blamed for allowing hate speech to spread against the Muslim Rohingya people, forced Mr. Zuckerberg to expand moderation teams and define rules around speech on his social networks.

He was coached by people close to him, including Meta’s former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, to become more involved in politics. After the 2016 election, Mr. Zuckerberg embarked on a public campaign to clear his name and redeem his company. He held regular meetings with civic leaders and invited politicians to visit his company’s headquarters, rolled out transparency tools such as CrowdTangle and brought on fact-checkers.

In 2017, he announced that he was conducting a “listening tour” across the United States to “get a broader perspective” on how Americans used Facebook. The campaign-like photo opportunities with farmers and autoworkers led to speculation that he was running for political office.

Despite his efforts, Mr. Zuckerberg continued to be blamed for the misinformation and falsehoods that spread on Facebook and Instagram.

In October 2019, Mr. Zuckerberg began to push back. In an address at Georgetown University, he said Facebook had been founded to give people a voice.

“I’m here today because I believe we must continue to stand for free expression,” he said.

In 2021, when the Jan. 6 riot broke out at the U.S. Capitol after the presidential election, Meta was again held responsible for hosting speech that fomented the violence. Two weeks later, Mr. Zuckerberg told investors that the company was “considering steps” to reduce political content across Facebook.

His evolution since then has been steady. Executives who pushed Mr. Zuckerberg to involve himself directly in politics, including Ms. Sandberg, have left the company. Those closest to him now cheer his focus on his own interests, which include extreme sports and rapping for his wife, as well as promoting his company’s A.I. initiatives.

In a podcast interview in San Francisco that Mr. Zuckerberg recorded live in front of an audience of 6,000 in September, he spoke for nearly 90 minutes about his love of technology. He said he should have rejected accusations that his company was responsible for societal ills.

“I think that the political miscalculation was a 20-year mistake,” he said. He added that it could take another decade for him to move his company’s brand back to where he wanted it.

“We’ll get through it, and we’ll come out stronger,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.