Nick Clegg out, Joel Kaplan in. A string of social media posts from Clegg on Thursday certainly put an upbeat gloss on both his departure from Meta after just over six years and his replacement by Kaplan in the role of global affairs chief.
The former Liberal Democrat leader turned top Meta lobbyist-apologist claimed he was “simply thrilled” that Kaplan, “my deputy”, would become the Facebook and Instagram owner’s chief global affairs officer.
But it was a later, shriller line in his statement that was the pertinent one: “He is quite clearly the right person for the right job at the right time!”
This modishly punctuated sentence speaks volumes. No need to say “it’s because of Trump” when the politics of this move by Meta are so plain.
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Kaplan is a prominent republican who served as deputy chief of staff in the White House during the George W Bush administration. He is known for smoothing over relationships between Meta and republicans after Donald Trump, in his first term, started accusing the company and other platforms of censoring right-wing content – a not insignificant portion of which happened to be indistinguishable from fake news.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been frantically courting the president-elect of late, hotfooting it to Florida to dine with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate soon after the election. In a spectrum of tech-sector appeasement strategies that ranges from anticipatory obedience to full-on Trumpist cheerleading, Meta has been somewhere in the middle. Kaplan may be the man to help the company roll over that little bit faster come January 20th.
The Meta executive has done a promotion-worthy job in the past standing in for Zuckerberg on some of the grovelling stops on his post-Cambridge Analytica apology tours. Former members of the Oireachtas communications committee may remember his 2018 appearance, during which he said the company was “deeply sorry” for failing in its responsibilities to protect users’ data.
Zuckerberg recently intimated that he is done apologising. It remains to be seen whether that assertive stance also applies to his dealings with Trump or if he will be sending him a constant stream of kiss-blowing emojis just in case.
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