Meta Appoints Joel Kaplan to Lead Global Policy, Replacing Nick Clegg

Meta on Thursday appointed Joel Kaplan, a longtime executive who was a former senior adviser to George W. Bush and is known for his Republican ties, to be its new head of global policy, as the social media giant seeks to strengthen its links to the incoming Trump administration.

Mr. Kaplan, 55, replaces Nick Clegg, a former deputy prime minister of Britain who had handled policy and regulatory issues globally for Meta since 2018. In a post to his personal Facebook page, Mr. Clegg, 57, said Mr. Kaplan was “quite clearly the right person for the right job at the right time, ideally placed to shape the company’s strategy as societal and political expectations around technology continue to evolve.”

Kevin Martin, who has worked at Meta on policy issues for years, will take over Mr. Kaplan’s previous role as vice president of public policy.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, thanked Mr. Clegg in a comment on his Facebook post for making an “important impact advancing Meta’s voice and values around the world.”

Mr. Zuckerberg and Meta are among many in the tech industry who have increasingly worked to forge direct relationships with President-elect Donald J. Trump. Before November’s election, Mr. Zuckerberg, Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, and Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, started reaching out to Mr. Trump as they aimed to put themselves in a position to potentially benefit their businesses.

Last month, Meta donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund, just weeks after Mr. Zuckerberg met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Mr. Zuckerberg has aimed to unload politicking to subordinates in recent years, after spending much of the 2010s making trips to Washington to appease Congress, which questioned the role of his social media apps in spreading misinformation during the 2016 election. Mr. Zuckerberg dispatched Mr. Clegg to act as a kind of head of state for Meta, handling meetings with regulators globally and defending the company’s policy positions against increasingly hawkish government agencies.

Even so, Mr. Zuckerberg recently made the trip to Mar-a-Lago to see Mr. Trump in person and to repair a long-strained relationship. Mr. Trump had previously criticized Meta and Mr. Zuckerberg for trying to censor conservative voices.

Mr. Kaplan has many roots with conservatives and the Republican Party. After attending Harvard Law School, he clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court and later served as President Bush’s deputy chief of staff from 2006 to 2009. He joined Facebook in 2011 at the urging of Sheryl Sandberg, its former chief operating officer and a friend of Mr. Kaplan’s.

Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas who worked with Mr. Kaplan during the Bush administration, congratulated Mr. Kaplan and Mr. Martin in a statement on Thursday, and said he was “hopeful that their promotion signals a renewed commitment to free speech online.” Mr. Cruz added that he hoped Meta would join X, the social media app owned by Elon Musk, “in fighting to protect free speech for everyone.”

Mr. Kaplan has occasionally been a polarizing figure inside Meta. In 2018, he appeared in support of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a longtime friend, during Judge Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. That caused a rift among employees, many of whom voiced their anger on internal message boards at Mr. Kaplan for tacitly endorsing Judge Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexually assaulting a high school classmate. Judge Kavanaugh denied the allegations.

Mr. Kaplan later apologized to Meta employees who were upset by his actions.

In a comment on Mr. Clegg’s Facebook post on Thursday, Mr. Kaplan called the change “bittersweet” and said he was “honored” to follow in Mr. Clegg’s footsteps.

Mr. Clegg spent much of his time at Meta pushing its agenda on open-source artificial intelligence, campaigning for the company in the European Union and repairing relationships in Washington.

“I am proud of the work I have been able to do leading and supporting teams across the company to ensure innovation can go hand in hand with increased transparency and accountability, and with new forms of governance,” Mr. Clegg said on Thursday. He said he planned to remain at Meta for a few months, representing the company in international events before departing.