Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer, played a leading role in Tuesday’s content moderation announcement.
In an exclusive interview on “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Kaplan said the company’s previous fact-checking system became too biased and the company wanted to return to its roots of more unfettered speech. He pointed to Elon Musk’s X, which has few rules and allows users to moderate each other, as a good model.
“This is a great opportunity for us to reset the balance in favor of free expression,” Mr. Kaplan said in the interview.
It was a striking debut by the longtime Republican lobbyist for Meta, who was named to the top policy role last week. Mr. Kaplan, 55, has close ties in the Trump administration and his promotion was seen as the company’s attempt to best position itself for the incoming president.
Mr. Kaplan replaced Nick Clegg, a former deputy prime minister of Britain who had handled policy and regulatory issues globally for Meta since 2018.
Mr. Kaplan graduated from Harvard Law School and then clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. He later served as then-President George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff from 2006 to 2009. He joined Meta as vice president of U.S. policy in 2011, when the company was called Facebook.
At the time, Mr. Zuckerberg was largely disinterested in politics and the company was booming in popularity. Mr. Kaplan grew the company’s Washington lobbying and policy organization, which now regularly ranks among the top spenders in lobbying Congress and the White House.
During the first Trump administration, Mr. Kaplan became a confidant of Mr. Zuckerberg’s, pushing the chief executive to engage with Mr. Trump, who had accused the company of censorship. Mr. Kaplan also fought to allay anger by Republican lawmakers who viewed Facebook’s top leaders as politically biased in favor of Democrats.
Mr. Kaplan’s push for more engagement with Mr. Trump and other Republicans angered some of the company’s employees. Many employees blasted Mr. Kaplan’s appearance at the 2018 confirmation hearing of his friend, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault. Mr. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.
But Mr. Kaplan’s strong Republican ties are now viewed as important as Meta prepares for a second Trump term. Last month, Mr. Kaplan posted a photo with Vice- President-elect JD Vance at the New York Stock Exchange.
In the Fox interview, Mr. Kaplan said Mr. Zuckerberg made the decision to end fact-checking. He also criticized President Biden’s pressure on U.S. companies to moderate content.
“One of the things we’ve experienced is that when you have a U.S. president, administration, that is pushing for censorship, it just makes it open season for other governments around the world that don’t even have the protections of the First Amendment to really put pressure on U.S. companies,” Mr. Kaplan said in the interview. “We’re going to work with President Trump to push back on that kind of thing around the world.”
Content Source: www.nytimes.com