With the incoming Trump administration, Big Tech is swinging hard to the right, marking a significant culture shift for the sector that has, until recently, largely championed progressive politics.
The new alliances will be on display at today’s inauguration. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is reportedly attending Donald Trump’s inauguration today, after TikTok restored service in the US after the app was blocked on Saturday ahead of the 19 January deadline. The company said it would come back online after Trump provided the necessary assurances to its service providers. “As a result of president Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the US,” TikTok said in a message to users.
Chew will join tech’s biggest billionaires at the ceremony: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who is reportedly also hosting a reception), X owner and Trump right hand Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook have all confirmed attendance.
“The alliance between the tech industry and the Democratic Party has always seemed like a solid fact of American politics,” political analyst Ross Douthat said in a 17 January “Matter of Opinion” podcast episode. “I could see the leaders of the tech industry souring on certain aspects of progressive politics, especially the parts that cast them as special villains. But I didn’t expect so many figures in Silicon Valley, starting with Elon Musk, to throw their support, money and social media clout behind Donald Trump in 2024.”
Zuckerberg, in particular, has pivoted hard toward conservative talking points and policy in recent months. On 8 January, Meta said it will end professional fact-checking on Instagram and Facebook – replaced by community notes, also used by X – in a seeming embrace of the incoming administration’s ethos. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Zuckerberg has also renounced corporate diversity efforts, and said that companies need more “masculine energy”.
Experts believe it’s a reaction to increasingly tough tech regulation under the Biden administration. In 2022, it released a framework for what crypto regulation should look like. In 2023, an executive order set the tone for what AI regulation should be. “They just ran this incredible terror campaign to try to kill crypto. Then they were ramping up a similar campaign to try to kill AI,” venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, a longtime Democrat who supported Trump in the 2024 election, told Douthat on the podcast. “That’s when we knew that we had to really get involved in politics.”
Trump, meanwhile, has made it clear that he doesn’t intend to regulate the tech industry in the manner the Biden administration did. The Republican Party’s election platform promised to repeal the AI executive order. Trump has switched his stance from wanting to ban TikTok to pushing to save the app. On 19 January, Trump said he would issue an executive order on the day of his inauguration to delay the timeline for the law to take effect.
Policy is just one piece of it. Much of what’s happened in the tech world has been brands and tech firms responding to changes in consumer sentiment, says Chris Beer, data journalist at consumer reach firm GWI. “Some commentators have labelled this ‘the vibe shift’ – a sense of conservative ideas becoming more popular and socially acceptable,” he says.
This shift is manifesting in online discourse, made feasible by social media’s increasingly wild west landscape. “The online realm now feels like a digital medieval town square to throw rotten fruit at anyone who doesn t agree with an opinion or fit into societal beauty and body standards,” EDITED senior analyst Kayla Marci wrote in a recent newsletter. “Meanwhile, keyboard warriors using free speech as a free pass to peddle gross bullshit can waltz by unregulated and unscathed.”
As platform availability and regulation chops and changes, brands are feeling the disruption. “It’s overall a nightmare,” says Sahar Rohani, co-founder of refillable beauty brand Soshe Beauty, who is currently exploring alternatives to TikTok. London-based clothing brand Odd Muse founder Aimee Smale says she has been “actively exploring and testing new platforms beyond the traditional giants” as the company aims to grow in the US.
Other founders are less fazed, and plan to operate business as usual. “My strategy for navigating a dead internet with compromised principles is the same as it was a decade ago when I started using social media to market and drive sales for my first business: deliver consistent, authentic content focused around building a genuine community,” says Luke Fracher, owner of resale boutique Luke’s.
Meta’s mega grip
Despite Meta’s whims, brands remain tied to the company’s platforms. “Meta’s platforms remain indispensable in the social media ecosystem, not only due to their size but also their ongoing relevance,” says Thomas Rankin, co-founder and CEO of social media management platform Dash Social.
On the decision to end its fact-checking programme, Meta pointed Vogue Business to its latest blog post. In it, CMO and VP of analytics Alex Schultz said: “We’re actually in this position where we’re moving to a better, more legitimate form of managing misinformation. These Community Notes are actually bipartisan. We found with fact checkers that it’s hard to not end up with a partisan skew.” He also noted that brand safety tools remain.
Though the policy shifts may put some ad dollars at risk, they won’t drive brands away to the same degree as Musk’s X, says Forrester analyst Kelsey Chickering. “While it was fairly easy for many advertisers to take a stand and say goodbye to X, the same won’t be true for Meta,” she says. “Meta’s apps are — and will remain — a core part of most companies’ media mixes. And Meta’s position is only strengthened by the uncertainty around TikTok’s future.”
Accessories brand Heaven Mayhem, for one, will never leave Meta’s platforms, says founder Pia Mance. It’s about brand presence, she says. Plus, alternative platforms don’t match Instagram’s visual capabilities. “As the landscape changes, we may seek out other avenues to speaking to our community but we will always uphold our brand identity and aesthetic across Meta, as we deeply value our commitment to visual content and brand aesthetic,” Mance says.
Fracher will continue to prioritise Instagram. “For better or worse, it is the platform I have built the biggest personal community with – which has generally translated well into the businesses I start – and the one with which I am the most familiar,” he says.
Phway Su Aye, founder of perfume brand Gabar, shifted attention from Meta to TikTok in 2024, where she saw major growth thanks to the #perfumetok community. Now, she’s reluctant to return focus back to Meta – but also not game to exit completely. “We are hesitant to come back to Meta as the algorithms don’t afford more organic and casual content to shine but will also be testing on there to see,” she says. While she’d love to one day be a brand with no Meta presence, this isn’t possible yet because Instagram is where Gabar’s target audience – 20- to 40-year-old Gen Zs and millennials – are spending time.
Indeed, Meta platforms boast some of the highest figures for users who log on to find information about products and brands, according to GWI (46 per cent for Instagram; 39 per cent for Facebook – beat only by TikTok at 47 per cent). “Consumers are using these platforms as a discovery tool to find brands, which is a trend we’ve seen increase over the last few years,” Beer says.
Like it or not, founders know they are reliant on these Big Tech platforms. “I myself also grow tired of Big Tech and would love to leave all social media but until I retire, or decide to go find a real life job, I am inextricably tied to social media and am forced to use it,” Fracher says.
Alternative channels
Brands may be tied to Meta, but the key is to prioritise multi-channel strategies, Rankin says. He flags YouTube Shorts (owned by Google) as a promising alternative, noting that views increased 153 per cent in the first half of 2024. It also has a 67 per cent video completion rate, compared to TikTok’s 2 to 30 per cent.
Soshe Beauty is exploring YouTube Shorts. “It could have a comeback especially for long form beauty content that dominated pre-Instagram and TikTok,” Rohani says. “I’m also hearing that conversion is high on Shorts – I’ll report back if we dive deep into it.”
Gabar’s Su Aye is eyeing Substack and Reddit. A host of brands are already reaping the benefits of Substack, who like the newsletter platform for the direct line it gives designers to their consumers.
GWI’s Beer notes Reddit’s userbase has increased 64 per cent since 2020, and says it stands out for its highly engaged fandoms and communities, which offer opportunities for brands looking to build deeper relationships. For example, Reddit is known for having a large, dedicated perfume community, not unlike TikTok’s #perfumetok community. “We’d been wanting to engage with them in a way that makes sense but hadn’t been pushed to do so until this imminent TikTok ban,” says Su Aye, who has just gotten off the phone with a Reddit account manager. Building a brand presence will be harder, but she’s keen to figure out ways to engage.
Odd Muse’s Smale says she’s exploring the potential of decentralised platforms “that prioritise community and authentic engagement”. She may be in luck: Bluesky is launching Flashes, a photo and video-sharing app that reads as its response to TikTok that will be powered by the same decentralised network (AT Protocol) as the X alternative.
Many brands say they’re looking offline altogether, exploring more out of home advertising on billboards and owned storefronts. “As the landscape is changing, we’re also leaning into more ‘offline’ or ‘off-socials’,” says Mance, who is considering starting a Whatsapp group for loyal community members to coordinate in-person community activations. For Su Aye, any straying from Big Tech platforms would necessitate more of a physical presence.
Many brand founders are watching for alternative social platforms to trial – but are wary of jumping on before these are a sure bet. “I do not plan on getting on Red Note or any other Chinese-owned social media companies in the short term,” Fracher says. “Although anything could change; you don’t want to get left behind if a new platform truly takes off.”
The vibe may be shifting on social media in 2025, but this doesn’t mean brands are following suit. Founders are focused on cultivating followings and communities based on their own values, whether or not these align with those in control of the platforms on which they’re operating. As yet, there’s nothing to suggest this will become untenable in the year to come.
Fracher, for one, will be sticking to his guns. “Our social strategy for the year remains unchanged,” he says. “Stay the course, stay consistent, stay authentic, hope for the best.”
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