Even as he floats alternatives behind the scenes, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has outwardly refused to budge on Facebook’s policy around fact checking political ads, even as some of his competitors make changes to theirs. According to a new report, Facebook’s leadership is deeply divided when it comes to its views on the policy. And one of the key proponents of keeping it in place is Peter Thiel.

Per the Wall Street Journal, Thiel, a conservative libertarian who supports Donald Trump, has been a driving force in maintaining Facebook’s laissez faire approach to political ads, serving as a counterbalance to others who want the social media giant to take a proactive role in weeding out false and misleading information on its platform—and, perhaps, its subsidiaries. While Zuckerberg has faced calls, including from Elizabeth Warren, to police the ads or ban them entirely, as Twitter did, Thiel has reportedly advised Zuck to stay the course, arguing that the company should continue to accept ads without fact checking them as it promised it would earlier this fall. The 52-year-old Facebook board member has also reportedly exerted influence on other political matters facing the platform. He has advised Zuckerberg on the internal dynamics of the Trump administration, and opposed convening an outside advisory board to analyze Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

As he’s come under fire from Warren and other Democrats, Zuckerberg has sought to make headway with conservatives, many of whom also object to his ad policy. (The official Trump campaign Twitter account has accused Facebook of trying to “take important tools away from us for 2020.”) He has hosted dinners and “informal talks” with major players in Trumpworld like Tucker Carlson, and in October he attended a secret White House dinner with Thiel and the big man himself. Neither Facebook nor the White House disclosed the meeting, held during a trip Zuckerberg took to Washington to defend Facebook’s policies in a Georgetown University speech, but the Facebook CEO insisted that the president didn’t lobby him on the ad issue. “I think some of the stuff that people talk about or think gets discussed in these discussions are not really how that works,” he said in a recent interview with Gayle King.

Theil’s presence at the dinner is itself indicative of the role he’s playing at Facebook, as a bridge between Trump’s Washington and one of the most influential tech CEOs in the country. Where he was once rumored to be considering distancing himself from the company, Thiel is now reportedly taking advantage of a board in flux to make his voice heard there. Zuckerberg has seemed to welcome Thiel’s guidance; sources close to the two “described their current relationship as an alliance,” according to the Journal, and they have coordinated “strategy” in their dealings with Trump. “Mark is friends with Peter Thiel and a lot of Republicans,” a former Facebook employee told the Journal. “It’s a reality people aren’t willing to accept.”

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