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The rebranding campaign made a warm and fuzzy appeal: Facebook is where you look at pictures of puppies and babies. Its where you can stay connected with loved ones, wherever they may be. But in private, the company was embracing Thiels conservative values.

Much of this has come out via the companys shifting relationship with the media. Last year, Facebook empowered former Republican Senator Jon Kyl to investigate the conservative claim that Facebook, like other Silicon Valley tech companies, was suppressing speech from the right. Like a similar partnership with the Heritage Foundation, the move may have been intended to bolster the companys credibility with conservatives. But it backfired, with Kyl blasting the company for not taking conservatives concerns about speech seriously, even though those concerns had little to no basis.

Then, in October, Facebook launched a partnership with a number of news outlets. Facebook had become synonymous with the fake news problem, and its response was to empower legitimate outlets by launching Facebook News, a tab on its mobile app. But one of Facebooks new partners was Breitbart, the alt-right hub that regularly publishes racist stories. As The Verges Casey Newton noted at the time, Breitbart was included in the tab precisely for ideological reasons. Certainly no one at Facebook seems to be suggesting that Breitbart is a reliable producer of high-quality journalismthe argument seems to be rather that it would be poor form to exclude them just because they once (for example) tagged relevant stories with the label black crime.

Meanwhile, Zuckerbergs public rhetoric has gotten more MAGA. He now makes a nationalistic argument on behalf of Facebook: Empower us, or cede ground to China. Defending the companys digital currency, Libra, before Congress this summer, Zuckerberg said, I believe that if America does not lead innovation in the digital currency and payments area, others will. If we fail to act, we could soon see a digital currency controlled by others whose values are dramatically different.

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Facebook Is a Right-Wing Company, Part One Million - The New Republic