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Mosseri Threads the Needle

The reality at Meta is that if Mark Zuckerberg chooses to bend the knee, everyone else must fall in line, no matter how awkward it may be.

Adam Mosseri. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In late-January, on a cold New York evening, Adam Mosseri slinked into the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel and made his way into a private dining room. The Instagram and Threads boss had traveled to the swanky spot for an off-the-record dinner he was hosting with some of the city's top technology journalists, as part of a semi-regular in-person outreach he makes to reporters. It's no secret that the company has a contentious relationship with the news community and off-the-record confabs can help clear the air, mend some contusions, and establish a little trust.

As circumstances would have it, this particular gathering took place while Mark Zuckerberg was very publicly performing a set of lamentable bows before Donald Trump. Zuckerberg had just attended Trump's inauguration, drawing the consternation of many of his employees and the public at large. It wasn't a one-off, either. The Meta boss, in service of his MAGA overlord, had over the prior weeks visited Mar-a-Lago, elevated a top Republican to oversee policy, portrayed Joe Biden as anti-free speech, reversed the decision to limit the spread of political content across platforms, loosened restrictions on hate speech pertaining to the LGBTQ and immigrant communities, and eliminated a formal arrangement with third-party fact checkers. Which is all to say, Zuckerberg has been doing everything in his power to get in Trump's good graces.

Some of Zuckerberg's decisions didn't relate much to Mosseri. The seismic shifts in the areas regarding content policy, however, crossed over into his lane. And they've created an awkward dynamic in which Mosseri, the Meta executive who serves as the public face of Instagram and Threads, has had to publicly back updates to platform policy that he had previously argued against. For example, since the launch of Threads, Mosseri has vehemently opposed promoting political content via the platform's all-powerful algorithm. But, as part of the changes Zuckerberg announced, that content will now be algorithmically boosted and Mosseri has had to defend the shift to the masses. Suffice to say, it's all been a little awkward for him.

Over the course of two hours, while sharing Spanish tapas with the assembled journalists and a small infantry of public relations pros supervising the whole affair, the awkward dance Mosseri has had to perform in public was on full display for everyone in the ornate room. I'm told that, while speaking to the journalists, Mosseri…

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