Peter Thiel, the first major investor in Facebook, has announced he will step down from the board of directors for the social media giant (now rebranded as “Meta”) as he focuses on supporting Republican political candidates in 2022.
The billionaire co-founder of PayPal is one of the few outspoken conservatives to come out of Silicon Valley, which he has since abandoned. He was an early supporter of Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid in 2016, and gave an acclaimed speech in support of Trump at that year’s Republican National Convention, at a time when most pollsters and pundits predicted a crushing defeat for the man who eventually won the White House.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Thiel is leaving Facebook’s board to focus his efforts on supporting conservatives running for office in 2022 that are “supporting the agenda of former President Donald Trump.”
While many in Silicon Valley have taken to hiding their conservative beliefs in recent years, Thiel has always been open about them. His book The Diversity Myth, co-authored with fellow PayPal co-founder David Sacks, skewered academia for embracing far-left views.
Thiel also provided funding for wrestler Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media, one of the pioneers of left-wing online “cancel culture,” after the publication outed him as gay in 2007.
Thiel later described his funding of the lawsuit, which bankrupted the far-left website and forced it out of business, as “one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done.”
After achieving success with PayPal, Thiel moved into venture capital, where he swiftly made one of the most lucrative investment decisions of all time. He was the first major investor in Facebook, putting $500,000 into the company in 2004, when it was still a tiny startup called “TheFacebook.” The investment came shortly after he met the founders, Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, then students at Harvard.
Despite Thiel’s personal political leanings, Facebook under Zuckerberg (who still owns a controlling share of the company) acquiesced to the Democrat-led media over the course of Trump’s presidency.
The social media giant implemented a “fact checking” regime, suppressed conservative media, and directly aided the Biden campaign in 2020 by suppressing the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” story.
Nevertheless, conservative media continues to dominate on Facebook, which remains under attack by the activist left for not censoring enough.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.