Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has announced the appointment of Joel Kaplanat the time the main advisor to the former US president George W. Bush and known for his ties to the Republican Party, as its new head of global policies. Succeeds in office Nick Cleggwho was deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom before joining the technology company’s board in 2018.
The move comes just days before donald trump once again becomes president of the United States, and seems to be destined, to a large extent, to serve Meta’s interest in strengthening ties with the new administration. Clegg, who announced his departure from office through a Facebook postnoted that “Joel (Kaplan) is clearly the right person for the right job at the right time.” He also noted that his successor “is ideally positioned to shape the company’s strategy as social and political expectations around technology continue to evolve.”
Clegg also noted that, at least for “the coming months,” he will continue to “represent the company at a number of international meetings.” Once this is done, your time as a Meta worker will come to an end, something that will probably happen, at the end of the first quarter of this 2025.
Before taking on his new role as chief policy officer, Kaplan worked for Meta as vice president of public policy. The position will now fall to Kevin Martin, who has been working within the company for seven years and who previously held the position of chairman at the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
A complicated relationship
In recent weeks, Meta, like TikTok, Apple, Amazon and OpenAI, has been working hard to try to strengthen ties with the new administration. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the company, had dinner with the elected leader at his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. The owner of Facebook also donated a million dollars to finance part of the inauguration ceremony in Washington DC
The role of Meta’s head of global policies largely involves holding meetings with regulators and defending the policies established by the emporium’s social networks. In the current situation, it makes perfect sense for Zuckerberg to delegate this task to someone close to the American Republican Party.
It should be remembered that traditionally the relationship between Meta and Trump has been at least improvable. During the presidential campaign, the politician and tycoon threatened Zuckerberg with imprisoning him “for life” if he conspired against his candidacy through his social networks. Likewise, he was opposed to the blocking of TikTok in the United States, using as an argument that with the disappearance of the Chinese ‘app’ Facebook and Instagram would have too much power in the country.
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