(NEXSTAR) — Actor Jesse Eisenberg, who once portrayed Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, says he thinks the tech billionaire should focus on improving the world instead of inserting himself into politics.
In a recent episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” the actor, who received an Academy Award nomination for his role as Zuckerberg in 2010’s “The Social Network,” told Maher that he feels this way about Zuckerberg and other “tech bros” who have recently gravitated towards President Donald Trump.
When asked by Maher what he makes of “what’s going on with the tech bros,” Eisenberg, 41, said, “I look at it from a very specific perspective, which is: If you’re so rich and powerful, why are you not just spending your days doing good things for the world? So it’s hard for me to understand the specifics of what they’re doing.”
Maher and Eisenberg’s conversation stemmed from the attendance of Zuckerberg and other tech “bros” like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook at Trump’s inauguration. Zuckerberg has also met with then President-elect at Mar-a-Lago multiple times and approved a $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, as reported by the Washington Post.
There have additionally been right-leaning shifts in Meta’s policies (Meta being the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) since Trump’s electoral win in November. This month, Zuckerberg announced that third-party fact checkers would no longer moderate content on Facebook, Instagram or the company’s X-equivalent, Threads. Instead, content moderation will be up to users, a policy which Tulane University business professor Rob Lalka says “mirrors” the content moderation policies of the right-leaning, Musk-owned X.
Content moderation policies around discussion of certain topics, including immigration and transgender issues, will be less watchful, Lalka writes in business news outlet Quartz. One major change to Meta’s hate speech guidelines also sparked outrage, as Meta now allows users to accuse LGBTQ+ people of being mentally ill for being LGBTQ+.
“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird,’” the Meta Hateful Conduct guidelines now read.
Zuckerberg’s seeming pivot toward the right might surprise many, as the CEO was previously critical of the president. Trump, meanwhile, threatened to jail Zuckerberg for life just months ago. Recently, when asked whether he thinks Zuckerberg’s actions are a response to Trump’s threats, Trump answered: “Probably. Yeah, probably.”
Meanwhile, back on “Real Time,” Maher and Eisenberg continued their discussion. Eisenberg, currently an Oscar nominee for his film “A Real Pain,” added that his wife, actor and activist Anna Strout, spends her days thinking about how she can help people in most need. The juxtaposition between what she does with what she has and the potential change people like Zuckerberg or Musk could affect and don’t confounds him, the actor says.
“So when I watch these incredibly powerful people, I just think, ‘Why are you not spending your day helping people?’ Why are you getting mired into this weird stuff — stuff I don’t really understand — and taking privacy concerns away, hurting people who are already hurting? Marginalized people. I just can’t even understand that, so I’m not exactly thinking about them in politics. I’m just thinking, ‘Why are they not spending every day helping people?’”
