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Tag: Nick Clegg

  • Meta shakes up public affairs policy team with Trump set to become president

    Meta shakes up public affairs policy team with Trump set to become president

    MUMBAI: Well, well, so, that’s how the cookie crumbles.

    Meta has replaced its Democrat-leaning chief global affairs officer Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan who is known for his Republican leanings and was Clegg’s deputy.  Kaplan   was the deputy chief of staff for policy at the White House during the presidency of George W. Bush between 2006 to 2009.

    Clegg a former British deputy prime minister and  an ex-leader of the country’s liberal democrats,  joined Meta in 2018, playing a key role in developing policies related to content and elections. He was named president in 2022.

    Kaplan joined Meta in 2011 and was once vice-president of US public policy at Meta.

    Kevin Martin, the current head of US public policy at Meta, will step into Kaplan’s former role and will be just below him. Kevin was once appointed to the Federal Communication Commission  by George Bush and is also known to be Republican in his leanings.

    The changes are happening just as the Republican party’s Donald Trump is set to take over as the US president. 

    Mark Zuckerberg and team are doing their best not to take steps that can attract his ire and, if anything inadvertently does, his team should be in a position to get it fixed quick.

    If readers recollect, Facebook had taken extreme steps like banning Trump from the social media network for a while but had reinstated his account a while later. Clearly, Meta and Mark Zuckerberg will have to tread carefully as far as the president is concerned.

  • WhatsApp offers to track ‘dubious’ individuals for Indian govt

    WhatsApp offers to track ‘dubious’ individuals for Indian govt

    MUMBAI: Facebook vice president of global affairs and communications Nick Clegg met home minister Amit Shah, national security adviser Ajit Doval, IT and communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and commerce minister Piyush Goyal regarding the dispute over traceability of messages in WhatApp. However, it remained unresolved.

    According to an ET report, Clegg offered to track WhatsApp communication activities of persons deemed “dubious or suspicious” by government agencies. However, Facebook will only do this for persons identified by the government from now on. The company also does not want to break end-to-end encryption, which is at the core of the traceability issue.

    Clegg also informed that instead of message content, Facebook could help with metadata. His discussion with Shah was around protecting end-to-end encryption as well as sharing different forms of signals in response to legal requests that can be helpful.

    Clegg also commented that data localisation will create "balkanisation" of the internet and make it unlikely that the next Facebook or Google will come from India.

    On Friday, the Supreme Court asked the government for an update on the proposed intermediary guidelines which mandate traceability for social media companies such as Facebook when content is deemed officially to have created law and order problems.