Meta announced on Monday three new additions to its board, including UFC president and CEO Dana White.
The move comes as Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has sought to ingratiate himself with the incoming Trump administration, as the tech company looks to offset regulatory risks.
Dana White: Meta’s Envoy to the Trump World
Having built the UFC brand into a multi-billion-dollar company, White adds strategic value to the Meta board. But for Meta, his primary contribution is political.
White has long been a friend and political backer of President-elect Donald Trump. He endorsed Trump’s 2016 presidential bid, partly out of gratitude for the soon-to-be two-time president’s early support for UFC.
The UFC CEO has given multiple keynote speeches at Republican National Conventions — including this past summer, when he hailed Trump as “a fighter” and the “most resilient human being that I’ve ever met in my life.”
White has also been a prolific donor to Trump’s political campaigns.
However, after Trump won his second and final term in November, White said he was done with politics, calling it “gross” and “disgusting.”
Meta Pivots Right
Nonetheless, Meta likely sees White as a bridge to the Trump world. White’s appointment to the Meta board comes amid a flurry of moves by the social media giant to get in the good graces of the Trump administration.
In December, Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund — just weeks after Zuckerberg met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
On Tuesday, Meta announced that it would be ending its third-party fact-checking program and instead adopt a user-generated approach similar to X’s “Community Notes” feature.
In a statement, Meta said, “We’ve seen this approach work on X,” which is owned by Elon Musk — who donated more than $1 billion to Trump’s 2024 re-election effort and has accompanied the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago since election night.
Meta also announced that it would remove restrictions on posts related to political and social topics like immigration and gender identity — an attempt to counter accusations of censorship.
Why Meta is ‘Kissing the Ring’
Meta is moving fast because it has to. It faces significant regulatory challenges, including an antitrust trial in April after the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit alleging that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were anticompetitive moves aimed at maintaining its social networking monopoly.
While Meta may breathe a sigh of relief with the impending departure of FTC chair Lina Khan, CEO Zuckerberg faces a uniquely personal challenge from Trump.
Trump has in the past accused Zuckerberg of political bias and warned this summer that the Meta founder could “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he interfered with the 2024 presidential elections.
So, by appointing White, Zuckerberg is, as they say, “kissing the ring.”
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