Republican exec Joel Kaplan replacing Meta’s global affairs honcho Nick Clegg

A few weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in for his second term, Meta is it shake up his global business team – a crucial body that oversees things like content policy, elections, and its independent supervisory board.

Nick Clegg, former deputy prime minister of Great Britain and head of Global Affairs since 2018, announced that he would leave the company in the new year, replaced by fellow exec Joel Kaplan as president of Meta’s Global Affairs team. Before joining Facebook in 2011, Kaplan worked in Republican politics, most notably in the office of US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and as deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush.

In a post on his personal Facebook account and then X, Clegg wrote: “My time at the company has coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between “big tech” and social pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector,” he wrote. “I am simply thrilled that my deputy, Joel Kaplan, will now become Meta’s Head of Global Affairs… He is clearly the right person for the right job at the right time!”

During his time as Vice President of US Public Policy and then Global Public Policy at Facebook, Kaplan was accused of not being politically neutral and appease Republican figures with lax content regulations, which the company has denied. Kaplan also controversially attended the Senate hearing on allegations of sexual assault against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Tweet may have been deleted

Top Big Tech figures have courted Trump’s favor over the past year and in the wake of his presidential campaign victory, signaling a desire to get in the good graces of the leader (and his tech-connected allies). despite previous conflicts. In particular, Trump insulted Meta for its disputed moderation policies and accused the platform, among others, of engaging in a systematic campaign to silence himself and his supporters and distort the election results.

In 2021, Trump was suspended from Meta platforms for two years, after his incitement of the Capitol uprising of January 6. The company reported its account in 2023 on a limited basis, provisionally and then he completely restored his profiles in July 2024, ahead of the US presidential race. Since then, the CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg has appeared to Trump, including a Donation of $1 million at Trump’s inauguration fund after he was spotted at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Other tech CEOs have said his support for the Trump administration, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple and Sam Altman of OpenAI. Meanwhile, Trump has pledged some of his biggest tech allies, including Elon Muskpolitical access.