The owner of Facebook – Meta – appointed three new members to the management board. This group included Dana White, head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The combat sports promoter played a key role in the re-election of his long-time friend, President-elect Donald Trump, CNN reported.
On Monday on Facebook, the head of Meta Mark Zuckerberg announced White's appointment – along with Charlie Songhurst, a technology investor who advises Meta on artificial intelligence, and John Elkann, CEO of Exor, the holding company that owns, among others, several automotive brands.
“We have enormous opportunities ahead of us in terms of artificial intelligence, devices and the future of social media, and our management will help us achieve our vision,” Zuckerberg said in the entry quoted by CNN.
Dana White, head of UFC on Meta's board
The new people increased the social media giant's management board to 13 people, including Zuckerberg.
As CNN pointed out, White's nomination is particularly noteworthy because it comes amid a broader, visible ideological shift to the right at the highest levels of Meta, and Zuckerberg is also trying to improve his relations with Donald Trumpbefore the president-elect takes office later this month.
White supported Trump during the 2024 presidential campaignpraised him at the Republican National Convention and walked alongside him at November's UFC event at Madison Square Garden after the election. The head of the UFC also used his connections to take advantage of Trump's appearances on right-wing podcasts with millions of young listeners, although he emphasized in November in an interview with the New Yorker that he “no longer wants to have anything to do with politics,” the American portal pointed out.
Dana White, UFC president, at a rally in support of Donald Trump (October 2024)SARAH YENESEL/PAP
White is also the head of an organization responsible for organizing one of Zuckerberg's favorite pastimes: combat sports. The Meta boss sparred (training fights) with UFC professionals, and in November 2023, he tore his ACL during one of the training sessions before an MMA fight. Zuckerberg also agreed to a fight in the Octagon with X's owner Elon Musk, although this never took place, CNN pointed out.
“I love social media. And I'm excited to be a small part of the future of artificial intelligence and new technologies,” White said in an Instagram post announcing his appointment to Meta's board, as quoted by the American website.
Meta and Zuckerberg's plans
CNN recalled that last week, Meta's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, announced that he was stepping down and passing the baton to his deputy – Joel Kaplan, one of Meta's most famous Republican leaders. Kaplan, who served in several key roles, including White House deputy chief of staff for policy under President George W. Bush (before joining Meta in 2011), is “clearly the right person in the right job at the right time” – Clegg noted in a statement quoted by CNN.
Meta, however, said that Zuckerberg would like to play an “active role” in talks on technology policy with the incoming Trump administration. Like many other CEOs, Zuckerberg met with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate after the election, and Meta donated $1 million to his inaugural fund, the American website reported.
He added that in recent years, Meta has also withdrawn some of its election-related content moderation activities, such as allowing users to post claims of voter fraud and political ads that question the outcome of the 2020 election – a move that was welcomed by Republicans who accused the company of “censoring” conservative voices.
In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee over the summer, Zuckerberg also claimed that the Biden administration “pressured” Meta to “censor” content during the pandemic, which was quickly used by Trump to again promote the claim that the 2020 election was stolen, CNN wrote .
Main photo source: SARAH YENESEL/PAP