Does Mark Zuckerberg really believe the weird stuff he said on Joe Rogan’s podcast about corporate culture lacking “masculine energy”? There have been many essays, tweets and video thinkpieces about what this conversation means alongside Meta’s decision to stop its fact-checking programs, lower content moderation standards and end its internal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
But a piece of vital context has been missing from the discourse: the impending ban of TikTok in the US, currently being challenged in the Supreme Court. At the time of writing, the ban is set for January 19.
One-third of US adults use TikTok. And judging by the ones on my FYP (For You Page), they know Zuckerberg and Meta have aggressively lobbied the government to ban the Chinese-owned app to eliminate the competition (or perhaps so Meta could attempt to buy it, as it did with Instagram and Whats App). These users know and they’re pissed off: it’s anti-choice, it’s anti-free speech… it’s downright anti-American.
Which is why, with the rousing defiance of Mel Gibson’s performance as William Wallace in Braveheart, American TikTok users and creators are refusing to migrate their content and audience to Instagram or Facebook after the ban, instead flocking to Chinese app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote or “little red book”. They’d rather learn Mandarin than reward Meta for playing political games with their freedom of choice; in just one week, Xiaohongshu became the most downloaded app on Apple’s App Store in the US.
This is the backdrop for Zuckerberg’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. Not only is it one of America’s biggest podcasts, but Rogan is also arguably the most famous libertarian. His audience of 14.5 million listeners is full of likeminded libertarian bros, who believe they value free speech and free will above all else. Rogan clips go crazy on TikTok, too.
It’s a good spot to start a PR tour convincing Americans to return to your apps. And the best way to convince people? Tell ’em what they want to hear. This is marketing, baby!
With Rogan, that means talking about how cool martial arts are and why censorship stifles healthy discussion and doing cattle ranching with your kids and why corporate culture is too sensitive these days. He’s practically begging them: “Please, keep using my apps!”
If Zuckerberg were to go on Call Her Daddy (don’t rule it out!), he’d talk to Alex Cooper about what he learned growing up with only sisters and the firm line on gendered hate speech that Meta will uphold and how Sheryl Sandberg was one of the most influential people in his life and how young women are making money in Instagram’s paid creator programs. He’d go on 60 Minutes to talk about how to keep kids safe online or on Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast, New Heights, to talk about the former footballers who are getting social media right. He’d go on Hasan Piker’s Twitch stream and… well, actually, he wouldn’t go on Hasan’s Twitch stream. The juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze.
The full quote that launched a thousand thinkpieces, including this one, came after a portion of the conversation talking about jiu-jitsu:
I think a lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered, and I just think having… I grew up having three sisters, no brothers. I have three daughters, no sons. So I’m like surrounded by girls and women my whole life, so I think… I don’t know. Masculine energy, I think, is good. Obviously society has plenty of that. But I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it and I do think that there is just something… you know, all these forms of energy are good and I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive. And that [jiu-jitsu] has been kind of a positive experience for me.”
He then clarifies: “It’s one thing to say we want to be kind of, like, welcoming and make a good environment for everyone, and I think it’s another to basically say that ‘masculinity is bad’. And I think culturally we kind of swung to that part of the spectrum, where it’s all like ‘masculinity is toxic we have to get rid of it completely’. It’s like, no, both of these things are good, right?”
Taken alongside the announcement that Meta is ending its DEI programs, the interpretation of the rightward, anti-woke shift of the company and Zuckerberg himself is understandable. But on a closer read, the changes to Meta’s corporate culture are not quite as damning. The full memo, published by Axios, focuses heavily on the perception of terms like DEI and representation targets, making changes that remain committed to the same end goals… just using different language.
For example, Maxine Williams will no longer be the chief diversity officer at Meta. She is now the vice president of accessibility and engagement, overseeing a whole team dedicated to the same. Putting the wankery of tech job titles aside, accessibility (making sure all people can use your platforms) and engagement (making sure all people have something to enjoy on your platforms) sounds an awful lot like DEI by another name.
You might think I’m giving too much grace to Zuckerberg and Meta, but I have a hunch that profits are more important to Zuck than his personal beliefs. At the end of the day, to increase Meta’s value and make more money, he needs more users. In this way, diversity and inclusion — making a space welcoming enough so that the widest possible range of people want to be in it — have always been and will continue to be essential to Meta’s success.
While this new era of unmoderated and non-fact-checked Meta definitely won’t be an improvement, I have a sneaking suspicion the user experience won’t be drastically different. After all, Meta’s period of an apparently feminised and diversity-focused corporate culture hasn’t exactly done a great job of protecting users, preventing misinformation or stopping the rise of the destructive MAGA right. But a spiralling descent to the levels of Elon Musk’s X is probably not on the cards — Musk has proven platforms openly hostile to women, queer people, marginalised races and disabled people don’t make money; they lose it.
What we’re seeing is Zuckerberg’s attempts to try to please everyone in America’s even more polarised culture. The “new right” hates the concept of DEI, so you announce the end of your DEI team. The left gets enraged about the abandonment of marginalised groups, so you create a new A&E team that will carry on the DEI team’s work. In five years, the A&E concept will become so demonised you’ll start the entire cycle again. But the goal will always be the same: get more users.
To get them, Zuckerberg will say whatever he thinks the person in front of him wants to hear. Will the pandering work? Even Donald Trump knows the recent changes are pandering, rather than a change in beliefs. People will choose to leave, stay or return based on whichever part of the message hits their ears best.
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