Nick Clegg, Britain’s former deputy prime minister and current president of global affairs at Meta, is leaving the company after six years.
“It truly has been the adventure of a lifetime!” Clegg said in a mail On Facebook. “I am proud of the work I have been able to do leading and supporting teams across the company to ensure that innovation can go hand-in-hand with greater transparency and accountability, and new forms of governance.”
Clegg joined Facebook’s parent company in 2018 as the social media platform’s vice president of communications and global affairs. At the time, the company faced intense scrutiny over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and its role in the 2016 US presidential election. He was promoted to the position of chief policy officer in 2022 after helping establish the Oversight Board of Facebook, an independent board that makes decisions about the social network’s moderation policies.
“My time at the company coincided with a significant reset of the relationship between ‘big tech’ and social pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and regulations affecting the sector,” Clegg wrote. “I hope to have played some role in the quest to bring together the very different worlds of technology and politics, worlds that will continue to interact in unpredictable ways around the world.”
Clegg will be replaced by his deputy, Joel Kaplan, who, Clegg wrote, “is clearly the right person for the right job at the right time.” Kaplan previously served as deputy chief of staff for policy under former President George W. Bush. He is known for being the company’s most prominent conservative voice who rose to the top at a time when Facebook was facing liberal bias claims.
During his tenure, Kaplan pushed to partner with the fact-checking division of the right-wing news site Daily Caller in response to Republican concerns about the company’s association with major news organizations. More recently, Kaplan was in the photo at the New York Stock Exchange alongside Vice President-elect JD Vance during the Time Person of the Year ceremony.
The restructuring of the political team comes just weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. As Trump has come and gone from power, tech companies, including Meta, have vacillated between enforcing their moderation rules against Trump, including banning his accounts, or reversing those decisions. Days after Trump’s election, Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, dined with him at Mar-a-Lago. This comes after Trump threatened to punish Zuckerberg if his platform influenced the election.
In response to Clegg’s Facebook post, Zuckerberg thanked the executive and said he was excited to have Kaplan take the role “given his deep experience and knowledge leading our policy work for many years.”
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“You have had a significant impact in promoting Meta’s voice and values around the world, as well as our vision for AI and the metaverse,” Zuckerberg wrote in response to Clegg’s post. “He has also built a strong team to carry out this work.”