Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister turned Meta boss, is leaving after seven years at the social media company. Clegg announced his resignation on X and Threads, stating that “now is the right time for me to step down as President of Global Affairs at Meta.”
Clegg will be replaced by Joel Kaplan, a longtime political operative and former George W. Bush White House aide known for his deep connections Republican circles in Washington. As director of international relations, Kaplan—how Traffic lights — will be well positioned to intervene in Meta's affairs once Donald Trump takes control of the White House.
Clegg joined Meta in 2018a year after the British public deemed the former Lib Dem leader unelectable. The company, then known as Facebook, had sought to improve its political relations in the wake of Cambridge Analytica and other scandals. In 2022 he was to President of Global Affairs, a position that reported directly to Mark Zuckerberg (his previous position was overseen by then-Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg).
The former politician played a key role in some of Meta's most important and controversial decisions. He publicly defended the company's decision not to enforce its politicians and is the author of public statements about And Donald Trump's Facebook account. More recently, Clegg criticized the European Union's approach to technology regulation, arguing that the bloc advances in AI.
“My time at the company coincided with a significant reset in the relationship between Big Tech and social pressures, manifested in new laws, institutions and regulations affecting the sector,” Clegg wrote in on threads. “I hope I have played some role in the effort to bridge the very different worlds of technology and politics—worlds that will continue to interact in unpredictable ways around the world.”
Clegg said in that he would spend the next “several months” working with Kaplan and “representing the company at a number of international meetings in the first quarter of this year” before officially leaving the company. He did not specify what he might do next.