“In 2019, while on a trip to Washington to answer questions from Congress about his digital currency, [Peter] Thiel joined [Mark] Zuckerberg, Jared Kushner, Trump, and their spouses at the White House. The specifics of the discussion were secret – but, as I report in my book, Thiel later told a confidant that Zuckerberg came to an understanding with Kushner during the meal. Facebook, he promised, would avoid fact-checking political speech – thus allowing the Trump campaign to claim whatever it wanted. In return the Trump administration would lay off on any heavy-handed regulations. Facebook had long seen itself as a government unto itself; now, thanks to the understanding brokered by Thiel, the site would push what the Thiel confidant called ‘state-sanctioned conservatism'” – Excerpt from Max Chafkin’s new book The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power, published in New York Magazine.