Joel Kaplan is leaving Meta. The longtime Republican policy chief, who shaped the company's political posture for over a decade, is out. No successor has been named.
Kaplan was not a background operator. He drove Meta's rightward shift on content moderation, pushed back internally against policies seen as hostile to conservative speech, and was a visible symbol of the company's alignment with Republican power, most notably appearing at Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 2018. His exit removes the most influential GOP-aligned voice from Meta's policy infrastructure.
The Platformer piece is worth reading in full because it maps the internal dynamics Kaplan controlled, who opposed him, and what his departure signals about where Meta's policy shop goes next. The power structure inside the company just changed. The question is in which direction.
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