The president of Meta’s Global Affairs team, Nick Clegg, will step down from his position at the company, the executive announced in a tweet on Thursday.
Clegg, Meta’s politically centrist boss since 2018, will be replaced by one of the company’s most prominent Republican executives, Joel Kaplan. Clegg noted in X that Kaplan is “clearly the right person for the right job at the right time.” This high-profile change of leadership is happening just three weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The news was announced earlier by Semafor.
“As the new year begins, I have come to the conclusion that the time is right for me to step down from my role as President, Global Affairs at Meta,” Clegg said in a tweet. “My time at the company coincided with a significant realignment of the relationship between ‘big tech’ and societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector.”
Much of the tech world is scrambling to get in Trump’s good graces ahead of his second term. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated $1 million to the President-elect’s inaugural fund in December and personally dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November. Other tech executives such as Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos are also said to have dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago following his second re-election victory.
By appointing a Republican to lead Meta’s policy team, the company could signal that they are willing to work more closely with conservatives in the next administration. Meta previously faced scrutiny from Republicans, who claimed that Meta’s moderation of content leaned toward center-left politics and silenced right-wing voices. This included the company’s decision to ban Trump’s social media accounts after the January 6 uprising.
In the last year, Meta has made a concerted effort to appease Republicans. Meta lifted all restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts ahead of the 2024 election. In August, Zuckerberg sent a letter to House Republicans in which he apologized for bowing to pressure from the Biden administration to “censor some COVID-19 content”.
Meta did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
