Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg now considers himself a libertarian, according to a report from The New York Times.
Sources familiar with the matter told the Times that Zuckerberg now views his personal politics as “classical liberalism.” The outlet described this as a “hostility to regulation that restricts business, an embrace of free markets and globalism and an openness to social-justice reforms.”
Zuckerberg has also reportedly hired a Republican strategist in an effort to improve his image with right-wing media.
The report added that Zuckerberg has spoken with former President Donald Trump twice on the phone, conversations that have been described as an “attempt to repair a long-strained relationship between the two men,” the Times wrote.
Reports of the CEO’s political shifts follow the numerous complaints of censorship on Facebook.
Zuckerberg admitted in a letter to Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) that the White House pressured the social media platform to censor Americans.
He wrote that in 2021, “senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.”
Despite acknowledging that the platform faced “pressure” from the Biden administration, Zuckerberg said that it was “ultimately” the platform’s decision to “take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19 related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.”
