Mark Zuckerberg is giving Meta a MAGA-friendly makeover

New year, new Meta. The tech giant appears to be undergoing a MAGA makeover of sorts as 2025 kicks off.

The Mark Zuckerberg-led conglomerate announced Thursday that its vice president of global policy, Joel Kaplan, would replace Nick Clegg as the company’s chief global affairs officer.

“I have come to the view that this is the right time for me to move on from my role as President, Global Affairs at Meta,” Clegg said in a statement Thursday.

With Kaplan’s elevation, Meta will likely take on a more Republican-friendly approach to global policy as Donald Trump prepares to begin his second presidential term. (Clegg, in contrast, was a former leader of the United Kingdom’s center-left Liberal Democrats.)

During his time at Meta, Kaplan — who sparked controversy in 2018 for attending Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings as a supporter — has worked to shield right-wingers from content moderation efforts meant to discourage misinformation and hate speech. 

When Kaplan was first hired in 2011, the conventional wisdom was that Facebook was making this move to improve its pull with Republicans. In some ways, that was the beginning of Facebook’s — now, Meta’s — rightward shift, which over time has included the elevation of conservatives to top leadership positions, the proliferation of right-wing extremism and misinformation on Meta-owned platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, and even public statements from Zuckerberg himself that were welcomed by the MAGA movement. For example, he called Trump “badass” for his response to the assassination attempt against him in July and he showed contrition for purported censorship of conservative “humor and satire” on his social media networks in 2021.

It’s important to consider the potential motivations Zuckerberg and his company may have for taking a more MAGA-friendly approach. For me, two things in particular come to mind. First, as I wrote in 2022, Zuckerberg is focused on making Meta the leader in virtual reality development through its creation of the “metaverse.” Making a Republican the head of global policy in advance of Trump’s return to the White House can be seen as one way to potentially head off unwanted scrutiny or regulatory action that could hamper that goal. 

The other thing that comes to mind is Trump’s threats toward Zuckerberg, including an ominous remark suggesting the Meta leader could “spend the rest of his life in prison” for “plotting” against Trump. That’s enough to make one wonder whether Meta’s rightward shift is at least partly inspired by its CEO’s desire to avoid Trump’s personal wrath. After all, Zuckerberg was one of several Silicon Valley leaders to visit Mar-a-Lago after Trump’s election victory. And Meta — like other tech giants, including Amazon and OpenAI — has donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. (Meta — known then as Facebook, Inc. — did not donate to Trump’s first inaugural fund nor Biden’s in 2021.)

So Zuckerberg already appeared to be steeling himself and Meta ahead of Trump’s second term. And with Kaplan leading global policy, the company seems poised to take a more lax approach to misinformation and content moderation.