Overlords of Overwhelm: How Tech and Trump Are Shaping Our Chaotic Future

What Meta’s latest moves signal about the future of tech and politics.

Last week, during my keynote at the Public Affairs Council Institute, I spoke about how we’re drowning in information overload. But whenever I tried to say “overload,” it came out as “overlord.” The audience chuckled, and some encouraged me to lean into the Freudian slip.

The timing was uncanny. Over the following days, Meta unleashed a flood of announcements: ending their DEI programs, shifting content moderation policies, and Mark Zuckerberg appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast to lament the lack of masculinity in corporate culture. The sheer volume of updates made it nearly impossible to keep up—a tactic often used by political figures like Trump and tech leaders like Elon Musk. These tactics overwhelm, distract, and reshape the narrative faster than anyone can process.

Meta’s Flood of Announcements

Meta’s announcements last week were overwhelming in scope and significance. Here are the highlights:

• Community Ratings System: A new system will replace fact-checking in the U.S., emphasizing user feedback.

• Content Moderation Policy Changes: While hateful conduct policies and misinformation moderation remain, the focus has shifted to high-severity violations like terrorism, child exploitation, and fraud.

• Ending DEI Programs: Meta announced it would dismantle its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.

• Mark’s Comments on Corporate Masculinity: Zuckerberg’s remarks on Joe Rogan’s podcast about the need for more masculinity in corporate culture added fuel to the fire.

These announcements reflect a pattern: announce sweeping changes, figure out the details later, and rely on the media and others’ fractured attention span to avoid scrutiny. According to the New York Times, Zuckerberg kept the circle of decision-makers small to prevent leaks, which allows them to move fast but doesn’t allow for much debate, the opportunity for other solutions to be presented, nor many of the details about how any of this will work in practice to be worked out yet.

The Tactics of Tech Titans

Flooding the zone with announcements is not new. We saw this a lot by Musk when he first took over Twitter. Trump’s team is planning a shock and awe campaign on his first day in office by signing over 100 executive orders. By releasing a barrage of information, they make it nearly impossible for anyone to keep up or dig into the details. This tactic is remarkably effective in an era of fractured media and information overload.

The impact goes beyond frustration. It creates a sense of helplessness and exhaustion, making it harder to hold these figures accountable. For those in journalism, advocacy, and public affairs, the challenge is clear: adapt to this new reality and move faster than ever.

Don’t Miss the Forest for the Trees

Another component of these tactics is to focus people on one particular issue that they can understand, while more meaningful changes that are harder to understand receive less scrutiny. In the case of Meta, much of the focus is on eliminating the fact-checking program in the United States instead of changing the policies and proactively looking for potentially violating content.

My friends and former Facebook co-workers, Samidh Chakrabarti and Dave Wilner, have fantastic threads on Bluesky talking about these. Samidh discusses alternative ways to accomplish what Mark wants without removing the proactive work. Dave makes the excellent point that these changes were “very clearly designed to avoid having to penalize people like Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the increasingly dehumanizing language they use against these specific groups.”

AI’s Role in the Information Environment

As we grapple with these changes, we must also look at them through the lens of artificial intelligence, which will play an increasingly critical role. AI tools are already used to manage information overload, summarize content, and generate news. They are being updated and released at a dizzying pace. Last week, in San Francisco, I heard from people in the industry that they keep having breakthroughs that have changed where they thought things were going three months ago. She says our world will look dramatically different in three years than it does today. As AI continues to be implemented in more and more places, how do policy changes like these affect what AI generates for us? As we work to influence how companies train their models and what guardrails they put into place, we will need to develop policies and red team or pressure test these models on how they handle issues of immigration and gender, amongst many others much faster.

The Loss of Humanity in Leadership

Lastly, Meta’s announcements last week felt unnecessarily cruel. Zuckerberg’s comments about masculinity in corporate culture, combined with the dismantling of DEI programs, send a clear message: inclusivity and balance are no longer priorities.

As someone who has navigated male-dominated spaces, I understand the value of being more aggressive, but how to balance that with a softer approach. I can now see even more clearly the importance of senior female leaders like Sheryl Sandberg, who brought a balance to Zuckerberg’s leadership. The rapid disappearance of female tech leaders, coupled with the treatment of immigrants, LGBTQ, and transgender individuals, is disheartening. I think some of the topics Mark changed did need to be recalibrated and rethought. But we can do that without losing sight of our shared humanity.

What Comes Next

The reaction to Meta’s announcements isn’t just about Facebook. It reflects a broader reckoning with how tech giants shape our world and what we’re willing to accept. Moreover, as Trump prepares to take office, we’ll see these tactics of overwhelming play out nationally and globally.

We must adapt, dig into the nuance, and stay focused despite the chaos. As always, my mantra remains: panic responsibly. We can navigate these changes and work toward a better future by staying diligent, informed, and empathetic.

NOTE: I wrote the first draft and then used Grammarly and Chat GPT to help edit and refine it. I also used ChatGPT to generate the image at the top.