Nick Clegg, president of Meta’s world affairs workforce, is stepping down from his place on the firm, the manager introduced in a tweet Thursday.
Clegg, Meta’s politically centrist coverage chief since 2018, will exchange Joel Kaplan, one of many firm’s most outstanding Republican executives. Clegg famous on X that Kaplan was “clearly the best individual for the best job on the proper time.” This high-level management change comes simply three weeks earlier than President-elect Donald Trump takes workplace. This information was first reported by Semaphore.
“As a brand new 12 months begins, I felt the time was proper for me to step up from my function as President, World Affairs at META,” Clegg stated in a tweet. “My time on the firm coincided with a major resetting of the connection between ‘huge tech’ and the social pressures mirrored in new legal guidelines, establishments and norms affecting the sector.”
A lot of the tech world is scrambling to get into Trump’s good graces forward of a second time period. 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. Different tech executives, comparable to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, additionally reportedly dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago after his re-election victory. is
By appointing a Republican to guide Meta’s coverage workforce, the corporate may sign that it’s prepared to work extra carefully with conservatives within the incoming administration. Metta beforehand confronted scrutiny from Republicans who charged that the moderation of Metta’s content material skewed towards center-left politics, and silenced right-wing voices. This included the corporate’s resolution to ban Trump’s social media accounts after the January 6 coup.
Over the previous 12 months, Metta has made a concerted effort to appease Republicans. Metta eliminated all restrictions on Trump’s Fb and Instagram accounts forward of the 2024 election. In August, Zuckerberg despatched a letter to Home Republicans during which he apologized for bowing to strain from the Biden administration to “censor sure COVID-19 content material.”
Meta didn’t instantly reply to TechCrunch’s request for remark.