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Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta, is leaving the social media platform and will be replaced by Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican known for overseeing the company’s relationships with conservatives.
In a post on Meta’s Facebook on Thursday, Clegg, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats and deputy prime minister in the UK, said he was departing the company after seven years. He added he would spend “a few months handing over the reins” and representing the social network at international gatherings before moving on to “new adventures”.
Kaplan previously served as deputy chief of staff in the White House during the George W Bush administration. As Meta’s vice-president of global public policy, he has been known for handling the company’s relations with Republicans.
The shake-up comes just weeks before Donald Trump is set to return to the White House, and his Republican party is poised to control both chambers of Congress. Tech companies including Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, are bracing for a stark change in leadership in Washington.
Prominent social media platforms have come under pressure from the president-elect and other Republicans, who have repeatedly accused them of censorship and silencing conservative speech.
Trump has in the past targeted Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg specifically, at one point threatening to jail him were he to return to office.
On the other side, some critics argue Meta is listing rightward and reneging on some of its previous moderation efforts as a result.
A flurry of Big Tech executives who previously had cool relations with the Republican leader have taken steps to court the president-elect since the election, Zuckerberg included. He recently dined with Trump at his Florida estate in Mar-a-Lago and congratulated him publicly on his victory.
Clegg joined Meta in 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. During his time at Meta, he has been on the front line of handling the political storms that have periodically rocked the company, while helping it navigate regulatory challenges in the US and the EU and spearheading its elections work.
This has freed up Zuckerberg to focus on Meta’s multibillion-dollar effort to become a world leader in artificial intelligence and develop new products in areas such as augmented reality.
In mid-2022, Clegg partly relocated to London, and he has long been expected to wrap up his tenure at the company, said several people familiar with the matter.
In his Facebook post on Thursday, he described his role as “an adventure of a lifetime” and Zuckerberg as “one of the most consequential innovators and business leaders of our times”.
Kaplan, known as a highly effective lobbyist, has cut a controversial figure at Meta.
In the past, he has intervened in policy decisions on behalf of political allies on the right, in an attempt to stop bad press if they complained publicly about being censored, according to reports and people familiar with the matter. Meta has dismissed claims that staff including Kaplan wielded political influence on its decision-making processes and treatment of politicians.
In late 2018, Meta said its leadership team had made “mistakes” after Kaplan attended the congressional grilling of his friend and then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The move caused uproar among some Meta employees because of allegations that Kavanaugh committed sexual assault as a teenager, which he strenuously denied. He was ultimately confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Semafor first reported on the changes.
