"Zuckerberg is attempting to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration in order to avoid criminal prosecution," Ryan Hartwig, a Facebook* whistleblower and co-author of “Behind the Mask of Facebook: A Whistleblower’s Shocking Story of Big Tech Bias and Censorship”, tells Sputnik.
Trump has long been critical of Zuckerberg over reportedly restraining him and other conservatives on social media, withholding the Hunter Biden "laptop from hell" story, and orchestrating a “plot” against him in the 2020 election. Nonetheless, the two exchanged pleasantries during the recent encounter, according to the NYT.
"I think there may be some closed-door negotiations, however, given that Meta is a valuable tool for national security and surveillance of foreign countries, we may see a slight decrease in Trump’s rhetoric," the pundit continues.
"Hopefully there are penalties for Meta and Zuckerberg beyond just monetary fines. Influencing other countries’ elections is one thing, but domestic election interference is a very serious matter."
Hartwig expects Trump to proceed with social media regulations under section 230 during his second term in order to "remove Meta’s ability to remove or censor political content."
He also suggests possible changes in Meta's executive leadership and even relocation of the company's headquarters to Texas or another state "that isn’t an echo chamber for certain viewpoints."
"These policy changes would include not removing any political speech and gutting most of its community standards," the pundit highlights.
And "more importantly, taking a stricter stance against minors on the platform and enforcing strict age verification," Hartwig adds in an apparent reference to X owner Elon Musk lambasting Meta for "a massive child exploitation problem."
*banned for extremism in Russia