When Mark Zuckerberg announced his “free speech” overhaul of Meta’s content moderation in January, the unexpected pivot was the pinnacle of a months-long plan with a close-up club driven by one key advisor, Republican lobbyist Joel Kaplan.
According to interviews with multiple current and former META employees, Kaplan has risen to become Zuckerberg’s most trusted political fixer in the past decade, and now has become the public face of the 1.7tn social media platform as Big Tech adapts to the second term under Donald Trump.
The conservative figures were promoted to head of global issues just before Zuckerberg declared that the company would loosen its moderation policy and throw away the facts. He will replace Nick Clegg, a former liberal vice-prime minister of the UK.
Several former staff members argue that over the past decade, Kaplan has interfered with policy decisions, such as whether content should be maintained or down. They said they overridden the company’s typical policy rationale or other senior decision makers to appease right-wing figures.
Kaplan is adept at “a look to what policymakers want without fundamentally changing their brand,” a former senior employee who worked closely with him added: “Until recently.”
“It’s a very sensitive political dance. Joel has been helping Mark navigate,” said Katie Harbus, former policy director who worked with Kaplan on Meta’s election strategy for a decade. “But that’s a complicated situation with some difficult trade-offs.”
In his first weeks in this role, Kaplan attended the White House with Zuckerberg, attended fascinating attacks in Europe, meeting leaders such as Giorgia Meloni from Italy and Grandmother Kielstrater from England. “He has Mark’s ears in a way no one else does,” said one person who worked closely with Kaplan.
For some insiders, Kaplan is what trustworthy power broker Zuckerberg needs to help him plead for the current administration and protect the company’s revenues.
For critics, Kaplan’s focus on optics is at the expense of online safety and risks alienating some employees when fashioning content moderation and artificial intelligence guardrails and ethics policies.
He is also facing a reputable blow, including a revelation over past sexual harassment allegations from former meta executives that appeared this week.
Harvard-educated Kaplan joined Meta in 2011 and later Facebook as secretary of former Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia for White House policy during the George W. Bush administration.
His current and former colleagues have played an important role in increasing the weight of Meta’s lobbying efforts, describing him as a respected legal expert who regularly sought feedback from his counterparts regardless of politics.
“In an age where everyone is polarized, he is impressive with his ability to work with everyone on the whole spectrum,” former meta executive Elliot Schlesi said.
His promotion comes when Zuckerberg attempted to restructure his relationship with Trump and pursued regulatory support for his plans to make Meta a “AI leader.” Trump previously denounced the billionaire for censorship and threatened to throw him into prison on suspicion of election interference.
Kaplan is widely seen as a move to appease Trump, promoting and supporting the change in moderation welcomed by the president.
One Meta Insider said Kaplan felt that rather than sharing political opinions ahead of the US election, it would help ensure that Meta’s large-scale linguistic model llama was neutral.
Kaplan also played a role in implementing Meta’s decision to make the company’s AI model available for use for US military purposes, people said.
His Republican relations have sparked controversy with his left-leaning colleagues. In 2018 he attended the parliamentary grill of his friend and then Suprem Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as a show of support. The move sparked a stir among some meta employees with allegations that Kavanaugh had committed sexual assault as a teenager.
Kaplan dealt with issues with Facebook staff, but then held a party when Kavanaugh won the nomination, causing even more internal upset.
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In another episode, after writing a controversial post in 2020 during a Black Life Matter protest, in which Trump said “when looting begins, the shooting begins,” Kaplan advised Trump’s team on how the presidential post could remain without smashing the platform’s policies on incitement of violence, according to two people with first-hand knowledge of the matter. They argued that this exceeded the typical process.
Following these conversations, Trump added a post saying: It was spoken as a fact, not as a statement. “Trump was suspended from the platform for multiple policy violations in the wake of the January 6 riots.
“There’s written procedures, there’s Joel’s procedures,” said the former senior insider. “Joel would win every time. Nick (Clegg) had a global power… But in the US, he was always Joel. He is the first of equality.” Meta declined to comment on the issue.
Kaplan was scrutinized this week after a new book by former meta-executive Sarah Wynn Williams accused him of sexual harassment, including inappropriate comments. When she filed an internal complaint against Kaplan, she claims she was fired in 2017 in retaliation.
Meta said Wynn-Williams, who is married to the FT editor, was rejected “due to poor performance and toxic behavior,” and Kaplan was cleared after an internal investigation.
On Wednesday, Meta secured a ruling from an emergency arbitrator that temporarily prohibits the author from advertising the book.
Kaplan’s allies consider him an important force for the company. Leaders such as Ancestors and Meloni have productive discussions with him on his tours in Europe, according to political advisers who described the meeting.
He considers Trump advocate for American business, contrary to the wave of regulations coming from the European Union, according to people familiar with his ideas.
“When companies treat them differently in discriminatory ways, that should be emphasized by their company’s home government,” Kaplan told an audience in Munich last month. “So I think we’ll do that with President Trump.”
Meta Insider pointed to a speech by J.D. Vance in Paris last month. There, the Vice President blows up “overregulation” in the AI sector by the EU. “The speech was like a topic of meta,” the person said, adding that they sounded like Kaplan himself said.
Additional reports by Anna Gross of London, Henry Foy of Brussels and Amy Casmin of Rome
