Meta Appoints New Public Policy Team to Align with Trump Administration

Meta will begin Trump’s new term with a Republican head of global affairs as the company seeks to better align its operations with the new US administration.

Today, Meta’s current head of global affairs Nick Clegg has announced that he is leaving the company, and will be replaced by his deputy, Joel Kaplan.

Clegg, who was once UK Deputy Prime Minister, has played a key role in Meta’s government relations and negotiations over the past seven years, during a critical period in which the company has come under intense political and regulatory pressure.

But now, Clegg is exploring new possibilities.

According to Clegg:

“I will be forever grateful to Mark and Sheryl Sandberg for taking me on in the first place – and to the many colleagues and teams I have been fortunate to work with since then. It was truly an adventure of a lifetime. Having worked in European and British politics for almost two decades before that, it was an extraordinary privilege for me to get a first-hand insight into what makes Silicon Valley such an enduring center of world-leading innovation. The speed and scale of change was as dizzying as it was ambitious.“

Kaplan, who will take on the role, is a former chairman of the FCC, and also served as Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House under George W. Bush.

He has also reportedly long urged the Met to remove access to political speech in its applications.

According to Traffic lights:

“[Kaplan] was one of the strongest voices within Meta against restrictions on political speech, arguing internally that such a policy would disproportionately silence conservative voices.”

The Scoreboard further notes that the Met also recently appointed another Republican, Kevin Martin, to the role vice president of global public policy, while the general counsel, Jennifer Newstead, was the chief legal counsel of Trump’s State Department back in 2017.

The realignment will put Meta in a better position to work with the incoming Trump team as it seeks to minimize disruption to its various operations and increase capabilities through its evolving projects, including AI, VR and more.

With this in mind, it’s a smart move for Meta to better align with the incoming government, although the appointments will raise some eyebrows among Silicon Valley pundits. This is especially true given that Meta is newer to completely move away from the political contentand it will be interesting to see if this new team seeks to force a rethink on that approach.

But it may also help keep Meta from facing the wrath of Trump, who once was threatened Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with prison because what he saw has political interference.

Add to this the fact that Elon Musk is also set to play a key advisory role to Trump’s team, and there appears to be some risk that Meta could lose, on various fronts, as Musk seeks to curry favor with his own competing AI and social media projects.

And Musk is also no fan of Zuckerberg, even challenging the Meta founder to a physical confrontation to resolve their differences.

With these pre-existing tensions and Meta’s need to work with the government, it seems inevitable that we’ll see a shift in the company’s political approach around political speech, and that Kaplan will now be the one leading the way in an attempt to appease Trump and Co.

Which could see this as a key defining role for many future projects.