Politics is becoming more important for top management. This is especially true for the Silicon Valley software companies. In 1996, Yahoo and its likes received legal protection from being sued. The US law stated that the companies could not be held responsible for any uploaded content. This might have been a good idea during the early commercialization of the Internet, but the companies have since grown to be dominant. Clearly, they do not deserve infant industry protection anymore. New technology Facebook is worth 500B in the stock market and old technology New York Times 5B.
Enter Elizabeth Warren, who wants stricter regulation to avoid monopoly power abuse. US antitrust policy has been severely relaxed during the last forty years. Warren wants to give the regulator more teeth. Mark Zuckerberg dislikes any regulation that would curtail Facebook's profits and the same is true for Google. In the 1960s and 1970s, Facebook would not have been allowed to buy Instagram. The left-wing democrats (i.e. Sanders, Warren, Harris and a few other) are likely to unite under Warren in the Spring. If she wins the presidency, she is likely to try to curtail the power of leading internet companies.
Companies try to get rid of troublesome politicians. This is generally difficult, so companies often resort to supporting other politicians that also want get rid of the troublesome politician. Facebook is powerful so they are now trying the first approach. Facebook announced a week ago that it would not fact-check political ads. It would be up to the politicians themselves to express themselves honestly. An honest political ad is an oxymoron, but Facebook's announcement is only following the practice in other media outlets. Newspapers and television stations do not have to fact-check political ads before they are published. The left-wing Democrats are outraged because they see the potential for several dishonest, hard-hitting Trump ads next year. A fact-checking policy would hit Trump harder than the left-wing Democrats, their thinking goes.
Enter Twitter. CEO Jack Dorsey just announced that it would ban all political advertising. Twitter only has a tenth of Facebook's revenue so it is clearly in its interest to try to curtail Facebook's power. Facebook would be denied revenue and some users might switch to the more "ethical" Twitter. Dorsey wants traffic. Had Facebook banned political ads, Dorsey would have allowed them. Dorsey just wants traffic. When Google states their policy, expect them to follow Facebook's lead. Google has a large market share in online advertising to defend.
I suspect Zuckerberg is hoping for a Trump victory in 2020. He might like Trump for political or pragmatic reasons, but the effect is the same. By relying on policy, Zuckerberg does not have to overtly alienate his customers or employees by coming out as a Trump supporter. In fact, both Facebook and Twitter can clam to take a moral high-ground. Respectively, allowing free speech or not allowing any political ads.
I expect there to be resistance among woke Facebook employees, but Republicans are going to applaud. Facebook will probably ban some right-wing demagogues to appease the Democrats. If they limit speech on some inclusion or civil rights ground in the coming six months, that is strong evidence Zuckerberg is trying to appease his employees. If the overall strategy fails and Elizabeth Warren becomes president, expect Zuckerberg to fully court woke Democratic lawmakers so they become allies in defending Facebook's (and Google's) oligopolistic advertising profits. Sadly, Warren will get nowhere in her attempts to sharpen antitrust regulation. Just like Obama failed to sharpen gun regulation early in his tenure.