Nick Clegg steps down as Meta's top flack in favor of more Trump-friendly candidate

Runny Clegg scrambles for door

The Right Honourable Sir Nick Clegg (to give him his full title) has stepped down from his job as Meta's president of global affairs.

Clegg announced he was joining Meta, then Facebook, in October 2018 – around 18 months after the liberal-minded politician had been voted out of office in the UK's parliament. He became the public feel-good face of Meta during difficult times but, as the US lurches to the Right, it seems to all concerned that this job should now go to Right-leaning Joel Kaplan, the former deputy chief of staff for George W Bush.

"No one could pick up from where I’ve left off with greater skill and integrity than my deputy, Joel Kaplan," Clegg wrote on his Facebook page, as well as on X.

"Over the years that we have worked together, we have become good friends as well as close colleagues – I have laughed with, as well as learned from, Joel in equal measure. He will be able to build on what we have done together, and improve upon what I failed to get done."

Speaking of Meta...

Over the Christmas break, it was reported that AI-generated accounts are going to flood Instagram and Facebook. It appears the aim is to allow netizens to create AI characters and increase engagement with real users.

Connor Hayes, vice president of product for generative AI at Meta, told the Financial Times: “We expect these AIs to actually exist on our platforms in the same way that [human] accounts do.”

Joining Meta was an odd move for Clegg, particularly in light of previous comments that he found the "messianic Californian new-worldy-touchy-feely culture of the Social Network™ a little grating," but Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg was bent on hiring the UK's failed deputy Prime Minister – sorry, British statesman. It may have had something to do with the social network's then issues with the Cambridge Analytica scandal as well as claims the platform was abused during the 2016 US election.

Back then, those at Facebook, which boasts billions of denizens, felt the corporation needed to act more like a sovereign government in the way it interacted with and handled actual governments and their regulators, including the EU, and Clegg would help steer the biz in that direction.

"I'm grateful for everything you've done for Meta and the world these past seven years. I've learned so much working with you and our whole team is better for having this opportunity," Zuckerberg enthused in Clegg's comments section.

"You've made an important impact advancing Meta's voice and values around the world, as well as our vision for AI and the metaverse. You've also built a strong team to carry this work forward."

Clegg began his serious political career as a member of the European Parliament, elected in 1999 before leaving to work as a lobbyist. In 2005 he was elected to the British parliament as the Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam and barely three years later was leader of his party.

In the 2010 UK general election his popularity soared as "Cleggmania" gripped the land after some strong debate performances and the LibDems won one of its largest shares of the popular vote. With no clear election winner he formed a coalition with the Conservative party and became deputy Prime Minister. It didn't go well.

A key pledge by the LibDems was that there would be no more increases in university tuition fees, but Clegg agreed to give that up - although as a sop he promised to abstain on any vote to raise fees. That, and a series of other gaffes - such as losing a referendum on changing the country's voting systems and abandoning reform of the House of Lords – saw him lead his party from 57 seats in the last election, to just eight in the 2015 vote.

Clegg was one of them and started campaigning against Brexit in the forthcoming referendum - even penning a book called How to Stop Brexit (And Make Britain Great Again). A year after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Clegg's constituents voted to make sure he left them too.

Here comes California!

After kicking his heels around for a while, Zuckerberg became interested in working with him, and so did Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg, who was frantically trying to spin the company out of trouble in the UK, US, and Europe.

Thanks to months of lobbying, Facebook largely escaped serious trouble for playing fast and loose with user's privacy when in 2018, details came to light about its relationship with political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which had harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters. In the US the FTC and SEC fined Facebook a little over $5 billion, or about two month's profit for the year and another $725 million over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

"For the past 7 years, Nick contributed so much to Meta," Sandberg enthused on Thursday.

"His unique combination of strategic insight, deep political experience both in Europe and globally, and willingness to roll up his sleeves and do real work made him the best leader we could have had for our global policy team. I feel so lucky to have had the chance to work with him and learn from him. Nick, thank you for joining us, for all you contributed, and for becoming a friend that I cherish."

Clegg was clearly valued at Facebook/Meta, with a reported salary of £2.7 million ($3.4 million), copious share options, and in 2022 he was promoted to president of global affairs. In 2018, the former UK deputy PM bought a mansion for $6.7 million in Atherton, the California hangout of the Silicon Valley aristocracy, but he sold it four years later (for a reported $3.6 million profit) so he could move back to the UK.

One of Clegg's proudest achievements was the creation of the Facebook Oversight Board in 2020, a nominally independent body within the biz set up to make the difficult moderation decisions that management didn't want to make. The board banned Donald Trump from Facebook after the invasion of the Capitol in January 2020.

"Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr Trump's suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols," Clegg wrote. "We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year."

Meet the new boss

That can't have pleased Clegg's replacement, Joe Kaplan, who was former deputy chief of staff to George W Bush between 2000 and 2008, let alone Trump himself who is returning as US President this month. With the Donald on his way back to power, the Cleggxit this week is not too surprising nor the switch to Kaplan.

Kaplan has developed a reputation for pushing conservative arguments within Meta – which should suit the incoming Republican US President – and apparently favors hiring staff with the same political views, something many on the Left have been known to do as well. After leaving political life, Kaplan was a lobbyist for energy companies until joining what was then Facebook in 2011 as vice president for US Public Policy. By 2014 he was veep of global public policy, and he now has Clegg's job.

"I'm immensely grateful for your leadership and friendship over the past 6+ years. You have been extraordinary in the role," Kaplan said of Clegg, calling it "bittersweet news."

"You have a rare ability to go deep on issues, bring people together, and explain complex issues to people, press, and policymakers in a way that resonates, with real warmth and authenticity. You are an exceptional leader and I've learned an incredible amount from you. Your experience and perspective as a leader in the realms of both politics and tech is completely unique, and I can't wait to see what the next chapter holds."

Kaplan, too, has a reputation for being a lobbyist who has smoothed Meta's way through various government problems, and he's a well-regarded Washington insider in many circles. He did cause controversy when he appeared in support of his friend Brett Kavanaugh during the particularly contentious hearings into the latter's admission to the US Supreme Court.

It's certain Kaplan will be popular with the new administration, or at least more popular than Clegg would be, and perhaps help keep Trump from putting a wrecking ball through the internet goliath. We can see Kaplan being a bridge between Meta and America's next commander-in-chief.

Additionally: In an interview last year Clegg described X aka Twitter, now run by Trump's right-hand man Elon Musk, as a "one-man, hyper-partisan, ideological hobbyhorse," in a less than complimentary series of comments.

"I think Elon Musk is obviously now playing an outsized role in both the election and now the formation of the new US administration," Clegg told the BBC.

"And I think it will see he has a choice - he can be either an avid and well-heeled supporter... Or he can try and become a sort of political … puppet master, going well beyond Trump, deciding who the next Republican candidate should be and the one after that, and so on, so forth."

With Musk and Trump so renowned for taking criticism calmly, maybe this is a good move for Clegg. After all, with a reported net worth of more than $30 million, he'll have time for another prescient book along the lines of "How I saved Western democracy by reining in social media." ®