Thiel’s departure from the board was announced in February. He’s been part of Facebook since its early days.
Thiel spends millions of dollars supporting conservative politicians. He backs J.D. Vance who runs for Senate in Ohio. He also supports Blake Masters who runs for Senate in Arizona.
Thiel has been by far one of the most controversial figures among Meta’s community. Even as conservatives have criticized Facebook for censoring them and liberal users have accused Facebook of being biased toward conservatives, liberals have often charged that Thiel will tip the scales in conservatives’ favors and pressure Facebook to capitulate to former President Donald Trump and his supporters.”
Mark Zuckerberg publicly rejected that idea. He said that if you want to create a company that is committed to diversity, you need to commit to all kinds of diversity. Including ideological diversity. I think the people who say we should not have someone on our board because they’re a republican, I think that’s crazy. Because I think that if you want to make sure that your company is diverse, then you need to make sure that everyone working there is diverse. And that includes having different political opinions.
Thiel’s departure won’t solve the problem of the board of directors being controversial. Andreessen’s firm a16z has a partnership with Elon Musk in his attempt to buy Twitter. This could create a conflict of interest. A group of shareholders tried to remove Andreessen and Peggy Alford from the board because they were deemed too conflicted.
Thiel has been part of Facebook since its early days when he invested $50,000 in the company. He secured a seat on its Board of Directors in 2005. When Mark Zuckerberg left Facebook in 2012, Peter Thiel stepped up and became CEO. He returned the compliment by saying that Mark Zuckerberg’s intelligence, energy, and conscientiousness are tremendous and that his talents will serve the company well as he leads it into a new era.
