A leaked all-hands meeting recording from Meta has unveiled the company’s internal challenges, revealing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s concerns about the rapid rise of competitors like DeepSeek, his worries regarding the company’s new content policies, and his anxiety regarding TikTok’s future.
The recording, which captures Zuckerberg’s internal communication with employees, provides a rare glimpse into the turmoil that has engulfed the tech giant.
Zuckerberg’s Concerns Revealed in Leaked Recording
The leaked recording, obtained by Business Insider, begins with Zuckerberg setting a serious tone, emphasizing a sense of urgency for the year ahead.
He tells his staff to “buckle up” for an “intense” year. He also shares his expectations to get a clearer sense of the company’s trajectory by the end of 2025, and he makes it clear that AI is a top priority.
He adds that “honestly, this year feels a little more like a sprint to me.” Zuckerberg also predicts that 2025 would be the year a “highly intelligent and personalized” digital assistant reaches 1 billion users.
He makes it clear that whoever gets there first “is going to have a long-term, durable advantage towards building one of the most important products in history,” expressing his fear that Meta might not be able to reach the goal first. He also says in the recording that, “If we can’t build Facebook and the next platform at the same time, then, like, eventually game over,” revealing the stress that his company is under.
Meta’s Content Policy Changes
The leaked recording also sheds light on internal discussions regarding Meta’s controversial content moderation policies change to replace its third-party fact-checking program with Community Notes.
Although the recording doesn’t delve into specifics, Zuckerberg addresses recent policy changes about fact-checking, explaining the move away from third-party fact-checkers to a community-notes system similar to that of X. Zuckerberg tells his staff to “wait and see how the new system would be implemented,” adding that “I’m actually quite optimistic that this is going to end up being a better system.”
While Zuckerberg expressed optimism that the new system will be an improvement, many critics and previous reporting show that the system might lack the oversight necessary to prevent the spread of harmful content.
The leaked recording also reveals that Zuckerberg mentioned that Meta will try a “resetting” of Meta’s relationship with governments around the world, adding that Meta will try and have a “productive partnership with the United States government” in ways that didn’t compromise the company’s “principles or values,” a decision that coincides with Meta’s move to relocate its trust and safety teams from California to Texas, which many have interpreted as a move to please the Trump administration.
Zuckerberg at the meeting also confirmed Meta’s plans to restructure and move away from specific DEI programs, saying that it is because of a “pretty rapidly changing policy and regulatory landscape that increasingly views any policy that might advantage any one group of people over another as something that is unlawful.”
You can read more about Meta’s LGBTQ+ policy changes here.
Discussion of TikTok and Future Competitors
In the all-hands recording, Zuckerberg also addressed TikTok and the uncertain nature of its future in the US. He mentions how Meta initially misread TikTok’s appeal because they didn’t see it as a social platform.
According to Business Insider, Zuckerberg said “When I look back on TikTok, I think part of the reason why we were slow to it is because we didn’t think TikTok was social. We looked at it and we thought, ‘Oh, this is like, a little more like YouTube.'”
He added, that because Meta were too dismissive upfront they didn’t see that people were sharing TikTok videos in message threads.
This comes at a time when the future of TikTok in the US remains uncertain, as Oracle and US investors negotiate control of its global operations, after the company was ordered to divest by the US government, citing security issues, but a deadline extension was given by Trump.
Zuckerberg also addressed the fact that the company has “a lot of competitors,” adding that TikTok is an important one, so the question of “who’s gonna own Tiktok at the end of the year?” is something that’s a “pretty big deal” for the company.
The all-hands meeting also showed that Meta is conscious of the growing competition in the short-form video market, specially after X (formerly Twitter) recently launched a vertical video tab.
With TikTok’s future uncertain, Meta has launched its video editing app, “Edits,” and other competitors such as Bluesky are also joining the competition with customizable video feeds.

The statements made by Zuckerberg reflect his worries regarding all the legal and political pressure surrounding TikTok, and the way these might create an opportunity for new players in the market.
Shou Chew, TikTok’s CEO, said that “Over 7 million American enterprises rely on TikTok to engage with customers and grow their brands,” highlighting how much the market is in play right now. (more about the legal process surrounding TikTok here and its parent company here)
Meta’s AI Strategy and DeepSeek’s Threat
The all-hands recording also touched upon Meta’s AI strategy, and their belief that this year AI agents would start doing work including writing software. Zuckerberg told his staff that “the nature of what engineering is in the future will be different than it is today,” hinting at major changes in Meta’s approach.
However, Zuckerberg did not directly address DeepSeek’s R1 model in the meeting. This is relevant because the model has caused a huge stir inside Meta, and in the tech world, by showing that high-performing AI is achievable with a reduced budget and using open-source strategies, instead of using big and expensive resources.
DeepSeek, with a modest budget of allegedly under $6 million, released a model that performed significantly well, with a 97.3% score on MATH-500 and a 79.8% score on AIME 2024, and partially outperformed OpenAI’s o1. (More information about DeepSeek can be found here)