Nick Clegg Metas head of policy and communications is getting a fancy new title: hes being upgraded from vice chairman of world affairs to President of world affairs. The transfer appears much less about elevating Cleggs obligations and extra about positioning him (reasonably than CEO Mark Zuckerberg or COO Sheryl Sandberg) entrance and heart for Metas main policy selections and interactions with governments.
For the final three years, Nick has managed among the most complicated points our firm faces together with content material policy, elections, the institution of the Oversight Board, and extra, Zuckerberg wrote in a post announcing the move. Nick will now lead our firm on all our policy issues, together with how we work together with governments as they contemplate adopting new insurance policies and rules, in addition to how we make the case publicly for our merchandise and our work.
Facebook confirmed Cleggs obligations over communications and policy for Meta will stay the identical. His new position will see him collectively report back to Zuckerberg and Sandberg, Metas chief working officer, as a substitute of to only Sandberg alone. Clegg had beforehand labored as a politician within the United Kingdom and served because the Deputy Prime Minister from 2010 to 2015 earlier than becoming a member of Facebook in 2018.
The transfer additionally seems supposed to shift Zuckerbergs focus and duty on main policy selections extra absolutely over to Clegg, who had already been dealing with a lot of that work within the public eye. The purpose, ostensibly, is to offer Zuckerberg extra time to assist construct out Metas metaverse ambitions whereas spending much less time in entrance of congressional committees beneath hearth for the way Facebook does or doesn’t reasonable content material.
As Nick takes on this new management position, it is going to allow me to focus extra of my power on main the corporate as we construct new merchandise for the longer term, and it’ll help Sheryl as she continues to concentrate on the success of our enterprise, Zuckerbergs notice provides.
Meta and its merchandise which embody Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have seen no scarcity of controversy over policy selections, with debates over how the corporate has dealt with issues like COVID-19 misinformation, the psychological well being of youthful Instagram customers, and the contentious choice to bar President Donald Trump from its platforms. Having a higher-level govt like Clegg who can function a public face when addressing these points and who immediately studies to Metas CEO and COO might assist streamline a few of that course of, particularly with Meta heading in the direction of US one other election season this fall.
Correction February sixteenth, 7:10PM ET: An earlier model of this story cited Joel Kaplan as saying Nick Clegg would retain the identical obligations over communications and policy. In reality, Facebook confirmed Clegg will retain these obligations over Kaplan. We remorse the error.
