That is why the most consequential announcement involvesJoel Kaplan, Zuckerberg’s tight-lippedpolitical consigliere.
Kaplan is not widely known.
Two distinct stories capture both dimensions of Kaplan’s impact on Meta and on Zuckerberg.
Per Facebook’s rules, which prohibit incitement to violence, Trump’s post possibly merited a takedown.
For Meta, this was a problem from hell.
Not removing Trump’s post would inflame liberal America.
Then something miraculous happened: Trump called Zuckerberg.
Hours later, another miracle followed:Trump wrote a follow-up postto finesse his point, quelling the discord.
The crisis was averted.
This story has been broadly reported.
But stories that involve Kaplan tend to have a carefully hidden trap door.
As it turned out, therewasa problem with this account: It was precisely backward.
“I have a staff problem,” Zuckerberg explained,according to those with knowledge of the call.
WhenTrump rang Zuckerberg’scell later that afternoon, it wasn’t contrition he was showing Zuckerberg it was a favor.
This story, and its turns, illuminates several key things.
Since joining Meta in 2011, Kaplan has helped navigateZuckerberg’s pathand entry into official Washington.
Half of this Zuckerberg achieved himself, by slotting Kaplan into a major role overseeingcontent moderation.
(Meta did not provide new comment for this story.)
This growing authority inside Meta left many idealist staffers convinced of Kaplan’s thralldom to conservative ideology.
“Joel was sort of the captain of that ship.”
Thefact-checking programis a case in point.
Few programs were so vocally targeted and fervently manipulated by conservative critics.
The second problem is that Kaplan’s defenders have fallen under a common misreading of Brandeis.
Duty is a word that generally conveys the foregoing of certain liberties, to achieve a higher purpose.
Yet under Kaplan’s Policy team, content decisions at Meta consistently tackedawayfrom Brandeis' view.
Perhaps no controversy illustrates the point better than a project calledCommon Ground.
Though perhaps idealistic-sounding, Common Ground was not a left-wing chimera.
By “defensible,” Meta staffers intend to invoke the importance of public accountability.
That is perfectly plausible reasoning.
Zuckerberg now says he regrets caving topressure from the Biden administrationduring the COVID pandemic.
Kaplan is there to ensure the message, even if not followed upon, gets through loud and clear.
Putting a chief Washington lobbyist largely in charge of speech policy may be politically savvy.
Critics of Kaplan’s supposed right-leaning bias, then, miss the point.
That sort of tragedy can be laid at the feet only of generations, not individuals.
And that is the deep and common bond that Zuckerberg and Trump share.
Zuckerberg and Kaplan’s announcement is not an embrace of the right, or repudiation of the left.
