Joel Kaplan, Meta's new chief international affairs officer, took the lead on Tuesday's content moderation announcement.
In an exclusive interview with “Fox & Friends,” Kaplan said the company's previous fact-checking system was too biased and the company wanted to return to its roots of freer speech. He cited Elon Musk's X as a good model, as it has few rules and allows users to moderate each other.
“This is a great opportunity to reset the balance in favor of freedom of expression,” Kaplan said in an interview.
It's a striking debut for Mehta, a longtime Republican lobbyist, who was named top policy official last week. Mr. Kaplan, 55, has close ties to the Trump administration, and his promotion was seen as an effort by the company to best position it for the next president.
Mr Kaplan replaces former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, who has been responsible for global policy and regulatory issues at Meta since 2018.
Mr. Kaplan graduated from Harvard Law School and later clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. He then served as chief of staff to then-President George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009. He joined Meta as vice president of U.S. policy in 2011, when Meta was called Facebook.
At the time, Mr. Zuckerberg was largely uninterested in politics, and the company's popularity was rapidly growing. Mr. Kaplan has grown the firm's Washington lobbying and policy organization, which now consistently ranks among the top spenders lobbying Congress and the White House.
During the first Trump administration, Mr. Kaplan became Mr. Zuckerberg's confidant and encouraged Mr. Zuckerberg to have a dialogue with Mr. Trump, who had accused the company of censorship. Mr. Kaplan also fought to quell the anger of Republican lawmakers who saw Facebook's top leadership as politically biased in favor of Democrats.
Mr. Kaplan's push for greater engagement with Mr. Trump and other Republicans has angered some employees at the company. Many employees criticized Mr. Kaplan's appearance at the 2018 confirmation hearings of his friend, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault.
But Mr. Kaplan's strong ties to the Republican Party are now in the spotlight as Mr. Mehta prepares for President Trump's second term. Last month, Kaplan posted a photo of himself and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance on the New York Stock Exchange.
Kaplan said in an interview with Fox that Zuckerberg was the one who made the decision to end fact-checking. He also criticized President Biden for pressuring American companies to moderate their content.
“One of the things we've seen is that when a president or an administration in the United States pushes for censorship, it opens the door for other governments around the world to do so, which don't even have the protection of the First Amendment. It's about putting real pressure on American companies,” Kaplan said in an interview. “We will work with President Trump to stop that from happening around the world.”
