Former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg is to step down from his current job as president of global affairs at social media giant Meta. In a post on Meta's Facebook on Thursday, Sir Nick, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said he was departing the company after nearly seven years. He will be replaced by his current deputy and Republican Joel Kaplan, who previously served as deputy chief of staff in the White House during President George W Bush's administration, and is known for handling the company's relations with Republicans. He added that he would spend "a few months handing over the reins" and representing Facebook at international gatherings before moving on to "new adventures". Sir Nick's resignation comes just weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House. The president-elect has repeatedly accused Meta and other platforms of censorship and silencing conservative speech. His relations with Zuckerberg have been particularly strained, after Facebook and Instagram suspended the former president's accounts for two years in 2021, after they said he praised those engaged in violence at the Capitol on 6 January. More recently, Trump threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if he interfered in the 2024 election, and even called Facebook an "enemy of the people" in March. However tensions appear to be thawing between the two, with the pair dining at Trump's Florida estate in Mar-a-Lago since the US election. Zuckerberg also congratulated him on his victory and donated $1m (£786,000) to an inauguration fund. Sir Nick's departure is seen by some analysts as a nod to the changing of the guard in Washington. He joined Facebook in 2018, after losing his seat as an MP in 2017. He was later promoted to president of global affairs, a prominent position at Meta. In a statement announcing he would step down, Sir Nick said his successor Joel Kaplan is "quite clearly the right person for the right job at the right time". Trump was photographed with Kaplan at the New York Stock Exchange last month. Social media industry analyst Jasmine Enberg said Kaplan was "likely the right person for the job in this political moment". "Meta, like other tech companies, has been rushing to curry favour with the incoming Trump administration," she told the BBC. Sir Nick leaving Meta, and increased political polarisation on social platforms, suggests the company may shift how it moderates political speech, she added. During his time at Meta, Sir Nick established himself not only as a spokesperson but also a bridge between governments, regulators and the tech firm. As new regulation and legislation began to force social media companies to take more responsibility for the content on their platforms and the consequences of it, that role became crucial. He oversaw the creation of the Oversight Board, an independent body set up to oversee Meta's content moderation decisions. He said recently, however, that the firm's actions had resulted in some people being "unfairly penalised" on its platforms too often. Sir Nick has also been open about his views on Trump's close ally, Elon Musk, describing him as a political puppet master, claiming he has turned X, formerly Twitter, into a "one-man hyper-partisan hobby horse". The former Liberal Democrat leader moved to Silicon Valley initially but returned to London in 2022. He said he was moving on to "new adventures" with "immense gratitude and pride" at what he had been part of. "My time at the company coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between 'big tech' and the societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector," he said. "I hope I have played some role in seeking to bridge the very different worlds of tech and politics – worlds that will continue to interact in unpredictable ways across the globe." — BBC
