NEW: UFC chief Dana White joins Meta's board of directors

UFC CEO Dana White has joined the board of directors at Meta. Mark Zuckerberg recently met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago and has signaled in recent months his unwillingness to donate to Democrats or be a member of that party anymore. He has switched his political affiliation to independent.

A press release from Meta stated, "Meta today announced that Dana White, John Elkann and Charlie Songhurst have been elected to the company’s board of directors."

“I’ve never been interested in joining a board of directors until I got the offer to join Meta’s board. I am a huge believer that social media and AI are the future,” Dana White said of the role. “I am very excited to join this incredible team and to learn more about this business from the inside. There is nothing I love more than building brands, and I look forward to helping take Meta to the next level.”

The statement said of White that he is "responsible for the overall strategic direction of UFC’s global business, which employs over 600 people across five continents. Under White’s leadership, UFC has become a global sport powerhouse, producing more than 40 live events annually in some of the most prestigious arenas around the world, while broadcasting to over 975 million households across more than 170 countries."

Zuckerberg also announced that he is interested in bringing in more conservative voices at his social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. He was part of the social media suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the presidential election in 2020. The company has admitted that Facebook supressed users' free speech regarding Covid-19. 

The Meta head also wrote in a letter to the House Judiciary that the Biden White House "repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor" content and that the administration "expressed a lot of frustration" with the company when it did not happen.