(Bloomberg) — Mark Zuckerberg lamented the rise of “culturally neutral” companies that have sought to distance themselves from “masculine energy,” adding that it’s good to “celebrate aggression a little more.”
“I think masculine energy is good, and obviously society has a lot of that. But I think corporate culture was really trying to move away from that,” Zuckerberg said during a nearly three-hour conversation with podcaster Joe Rogan published Friday.
“It’s like, you want feminine energy, you want masculine energy,” Zuckerberg said during “The Joe Rogan Experience” episode. “I think this is all good. But I think corporate culture has kind of leaned toward being a little more neutral, he added, before discussing his passions for mixed martial arts and hunting invasive pigs in Hawaii.
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Zuckerberg, who launched his career rating the attractiveness of women at Harvard University, added that he grew up with three sisters and has three daughters, and wants women to succeed in business.
“If you’re a woman coming into a company, you probably feel like it’s a very masculine environment. And it can be an energy that you might not have naturally,” he told Rogan. “You want women to be able to succeed and have companies that can unlock the full value of having great people, regardless of their background or gender.”
The podcast episode was released just days after Meta loosened its content moderation policies for Instagram and Facebook to allow more leniency for users who criticize immigrants, transgender and non-binary people, or make exclusionary statements based on someone’s sex or gender. .
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On Tuesday, Meta also announced the end of third-party fact-checking in the U.S., and on Friday, the company said it was pausing many of its training and hiring efforts to make its workforce more diverse.
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Friday’s episode marked Zuckerberg’s second appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan, who is considered the most popular podcaster in the world, has 19 million subscribers on Google’s YouTube and more than 15 million on Spotify.
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In the interview, Zuckerberg expressed discomfort in engaging with traditional press, adding that podcasts are helping to fuel a “sea change in terms of which voices matter.”
Then-president-elect Donald Trump joined Rogan’s podcast as Election Day approached last year, fueling what came to be dubbed the “podcast election” as campaigns turned to them rather than the traditional media, to spread your message.
Zuckerberg has been repositioning his company to be more Trump-friendly in recent months and had dinner with the then-president-elect at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida club. Zuckerberg also planned to attend Trump’s inauguration.
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Zuckerberg critica Biden
Since the US election, Zuckerberg has sought to align himself with the incoming administration – publicly praising Trump, donating to his inaugural fund, appointing a key supporter to Meta’s board and, most recently, changing his platforms’ content policies.
Zuckerberg criticized the Biden administration during Rogan’s interview, alleging that White House officials were “shouting” and “swearing” at Meta employees amid discussions about how to moderate Covid-19-related content during the pandemic.
“It was brutal,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the administration went overboard in its requests to remove posts about the pandemic, including satire, sowing distrust among the electorate. He had written about these complaints in a letter to Congress in August.
“The US government should be defending your companies, not being at the tip of the spear attacking your companies,” Zuckerberg said. On the other hand, the Facebook founder said he is “optimistic” about Trump’s return to the White House.
“I think he just wants America to win,” Zuckerberg said.
President Joe Biden, in a rare White House press conference Friday night, expressed dismay at Meta’s decision.
“It’s completely contrary to everything America stands for. We want to tell the truth. We haven’t always done this as a nation. We want to tell the truth,” said the president. “And you know, when you have millions of people reading this online, this stuff, it’s — anyway, I think it’s really shameful.”
