Joel Kaplan

Kaplan worked as a policy advisor on George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, during which he was a participant in the Brooks Brothers riot on November 22, 2000.[11]

From 2001 to 2003 he was special assistant to the president for policy within the White House Chief of Staff’s office. Then he served as deputy director of the Office of Management And Budget, serving under Joshua Bolten. While at the OMB, in 2006, Kaplan said the administration would cut the deficit by half by 2009.[12]

In April 2006 he returned to the White House as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for policy, taking over policy planning duties from Karl Rove as part of a staff shake-up by White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. Blake Gottesman was the other Deputy Chief of Staff and focused on operations.[13] He was responsible for the development and implementation of the Administration’s policy agenda.

While in the Bush administration, Kaplan was seen as very close to Bolten.[14]

Prior to joining Facebook, Kaplan was the executive vice president for public policy and external affairs for Energy Future Holdings (EFH), where he oversaw company-wide public affairs and led EFH’s efforts to "publicly demonstrate and communicate its role in the energy industry".[15]

In May 2011 Facebook hired Kaplan as its vice president of U.S. public policy, as part of a Facebook's effort to "strengthen" the company's ties to Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill.[16][17] In October 2014, Kaplan succeeded Marne Levine as Facebook's vice president of global public policy.[18]

Within the company, Kaplan advocated against restrictions on racially incendiary speech.[19] He played an important role in crafting an exception for newsworthy political discourse when deciding on whether content violated the community guidelines.[19] During the 2016 election, Kaplan advocated against closing down Facebook groups which allegedly peddled fake news.[19] Kaplan argued that getting rid of the groups would have disproportionately targeted conservatives.[19][3] During and after the 2016 US presidential election, Kaplan argued against Facebook publicly disclosing the extent of Russian influence operations on the platform.[20]

In 2017, after Facebook had implemented changes to its algorithm to expose users to more content by family and friends and less by publishers who were determined by Facebook to engage in misinformation, Kaplan questioned whether the algorithm disproportionately hurt conservative publishers and successfully advocated for Facebook to change the algorithm again.[19]

He pushed against a proposed Facebook project that was intended to make Facebook users of different political views engage with each other in less hostile ways. Kaplan argued that this feature would lead conservatives to accuse Facebook of bias.[7][5] Kaplan also reportedly advocated on behalf of Breitbart News and the Daily Caller within Facebook.[5][6] Kaplan has helped to place conservatives in key positions in the leadership of Facebook.[3]

In 2018, he advocated strongly for the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.[21] Kaplan sat behind Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearings.[21]

During Donald Trump's presidency, Kaplan was on friendly terms with the administration.[20] At one point, the administration considered nominating him as head of the Office of Management and Budget.[20]