Why Trump is betting on Meloni. Exclusive interview with Joel Kaplan

What are the new boundaries of freedom when it comes to social media? What are the parameters for separating free speech from hate speech on digital platforms? What transformations has Trumpism induced in the world of technology  – aside from the brawls? And when does a rough confrontation between allies, such as the United States and Europe, shift from being an opportunity for growth to a dangerously deep misunderstanding? We are in Rome, just a stone’s throw from the American embassy, on the first floor of a well-known hotel in the capital. Sitting before us is Joel Kaplan – 56 years old, lean physique, icy gaze, perfect television timing, and an immense amount of power printed on his business card. Joel Kaplan is one of those faces that could easily belong to that special category of the most important people in the world whom you’ve never heard of. He is 56 years old and was a key figure in the staff of former U.S. President George W. Bush, serving as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, succeeding Karl Rove, after having already held an important role as Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Special Assistant for Policy for the same president between 2001 and 2003. Today, since the end of January, Kaplan has been the Chief Global Affairs Officer at Meta, where he has worked since 2011, effectively serving as Mark Zuckerberg’s right-hand man. One of his first missions in this new role has been to visit Italy. Yesterday, Kaplan met with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at Palazzo Chigi, and shortly before that meeting, he agreed to have an in-depth discussion with Il Foglio in what is his first official interview since being appointed Chief Global Affairs Officer at Meta.

“I am here in Italy,” Kaplan tells us, "I'm here for a few policy related meetings, and Italy occupies a very important and potentially quite influential position at this moment in time, with the new commission in Europe and the new Administration in D.C."

We ask Kaplan: on which issues can Meta triangulate with Italy and Europe today?

 "I think the priority for us is to engage with European leaders to ensure that there's an environment in Europe that encourages growth, innovation, and competition. And there's a very live discussion and debate happening in Europe, and a major contributor to that was your own former Prime Minister Draghi and his report on competitiveness. And we think there are some really important lessons in that report for Europe's future direction, and we're supportive of it. Over the last 30 years or so, you've had this situation where the U.S. innovates, China duplicates, and Europe regulates. And we don't think that that's been particularly successful for Europe during that period. And I know you know this probably better than I do, but during that period, you've seen Europe's GDP per capita fall to something in the order of 50 percent of what it is in the United States. In the last 50 years, there hasn't been a single European company created that's worth more than $100 billion, and we've had six created in that time in the U.S that are worth more than a trillion dollars. So the disparity has just continued to grow as Europe and the United States have taken different approaches, and we just think there's a real opportunity for Europe to change direction and change direction with its regulatory environment and really take advantage of the tremendous assets and resources that Europe has with its diversity and deep reservoirs of talent, great developers, entrepreneurs. There's just tremendous opportunity, but there has to be the right regulatory environment to take advantage of it".

Why is Italy so important at this moment for the United States and   for European tech companies?

"Yeah, well, first of all, for us, Italy is incredibly important because we've got some great partnerships here. As you know, we've got a partnership with EssilorLuxottica to develop our Ray-Ban Metas, and that's been tremendously successful so far. We've announced that we're extending and continuing the partnership into the next decade, and so we think we're going to have opportunities to develop multiple generations of leading AI wearables with Luxottica. So it's a great market for us. But also, we just think that Prime Minister Meloni is extremely well respected on both sides of the Atlantic, has already established herself as a leader in Europe, who will have the year of leadership of the new commission, but is also extremely well respected as a leader in the United States and has developed a very strong relationship with President Trump. I think that puts the Prime Minister and Italy in a particularly strong position to play a role in bridging the transatlantic relationship at a critical moment for the partners on both sides of the Atlantic".

We point out to Kaplan that speaking about solid transatlantic relations at this moment is not  simple, especially considering that just two days ago, the U.S. president explicitly stated that Europe wants to “screw” the United States and that, at least from a trade relations perspective, the European Union is an economic enemy to fight against. We  ask Kaplan to what extent, from his perspective, Europe is an enemy for a major American tech company — and to what extent it can instead become an ally.

"I think that over the last period, couple of decades, Europe has measured its regulatory success in the size and number of fines that it levies against US tech companies, certainly over the last decade. And we certainly think that's hasn’t been not good for the tech companies' willingness to invest or ability to invest in Europe. It hasn't been good for the reasons we've talked about already,  for European growth and competitiveness.  It's clearly not working for Europe. And so we want to engage constructively with the European policymakers on a better, more productive direction, but it certainly has been our experience, and I think that of the other US tech companies, that there have been a number of instances in which Europe has targeted US tech companies with discriminatory or unfair taxes or regulatory enforcement or fines, all of which together add up to quite significant non-tariff barriers for US companies. I think that is going to be, if that were to continue, I think that will exacerbate European-US relations with the new administration, and we think that would be unfortunate. So we want to engage with the European Union and the leaders in Europe to find a better, more productive path that's good for Europe, good for European consumers, good for innovation in Europe, and good for the transatlantic relationship". 

What would you say to European policymakers to explain why European regulations are a problem not only for tech companies but also for Europe itself?

"I think we can look at regulations that have affected AI, for instance. This incredibly transformational and revolutionary technology that has the potential to transform economies and society around the world, including in Europe, and if you just look at what's happened with some of the way in which Europe has applied its rules to AI, you've ended up really delaying some of the most interesting and exciting innovations coming out of the U.S. tech companies to the detriment of European users, consumers, and businesses. So take, for instance, these AI glasses, even though these are made not only in Europe, but in Italy", Kaplan says, pulling out a next-generation case.  "You'll appreciate that the Ray-Ban meta-glasses in Italy are much less useful than the same technology, the same pair of glasses in the U.S. and other places around the world, because we're not able to deploy our meta-AI technology in the glasses in Italy, the place that they're designed and developed, because of uncertainty in European interpretations of the GDPR. So you can ask it questions like a regular chatbot in Italy, but you can't engage with the world around you and ask questions about what that piece of art is that I'm looking at, or if I go down the street and see one of the incredible historical monuments here in Rome, I can't ask what I'm looking at or what its significance is, because we haven't been able to deploy our multimodal capability in the glasses for over a year. If you think about that, this is one of the most popular technologies in the world right now, they sold two million units, and you can't use it. You can't use it in the same way in its home country, and that's solely as a result of uncertainty around the interpretation of the rules. It's not just the Ray-Ban Metas for Meta. We have a meta-AI function feature in our apps that's being used by 700 million people around the world, but zero in Europe, because we haven't been able to introduce meta-AI in Europe 16 months after we've introduced it in the rest of the world, or since we first introduced it in the US. You know, Gemini has delayed launches. Apple Intelligence has delayed launches. Microsoft's Copilot has delayed launches. All of these things, with the single most revolutionary technology of decades at least, are being delayed in Europe because the fragmented system of regulation in Europe can't figure out how to apply the rules to the technology. I think that's a huge detriment to people and businesses in Europe, and Europe can't afford to fall behind in AI innovation, and it needn't because Europe's got some of the greatest developers in the world, and we can talk a little bit about where the opportunity is for Europe in AI, but I think that's just a great example of where Europe is being hurt by its own regulatory regime".

Seen from America, is Italy really the most interesting country to invest in within Europe today?

"I think there are tremendous opportunities in Italy, and we're investing and we're excited about it, and I think there will be more opportunities to come, but it is, I think, again, it is contingent on Europe getting the regulatory environment right, and for a whole bunch of reasons, that's important for all the reasons we've talked about for Europe's economy, but it's also really important for the West and how this technology is developed and by whom, and we can talk about it in more depth with AI, but there's a real risk that if Europe doesn't approach these new technologies wisely, the country that's going to benefit the most is China, and we're going to see these technologies developed with Chinese values embedded in them rather than Western values". 

From a technological perspective, in what ways does China pose a danger to Europe, America and the so-called free world when it comes to Artificial Intelligence? 

"I think the most important thing to understand is that China is investing very heavily in AI, including open source AI. So the big, I think, revelation from the DeepSeek announcement a couple of weeks ago was that there are Chinese companies releasing open source AI models that are as good or better than the models that are being released in the West. And that should be, I think, a wake-up call for both the U.S. and Europe that if we don't work together to ensure that U.S. open source models remain available, that China will move in to fill the void. And our view is that there's going to be one global open source standard to emerge. We've seen this with technologies, other technologies in the past. So you can think about Linux and Android. Those are both open source technologies that became a global standard. And I think with we should all be grateful that those were Finnish and American companies that developed the open standard, not Chinese companies. If we don't have a regulatory environment that promotes open source AI, that it's just going to mean that a Chinese open source model becomes the global standard. And with that, that means you'll have Chinese values embedded in the technology. And this is the technology that's going to be the foundational layer for our entire economies, right? So whether it's manufacturing or finance or health or technology, we want the AI open source standard to be one that's based on shared Western values, not Chinese values. So I think that's, to me, that's the biggest risk is that we, by making poor policy choices, we see the field to China, which has demonstrated that it's more than willing to make the investment to win there. They're investing in, I think, a trillion dollars by 2030. So they're serious".

What should scare us about AI and what should not?

"I'm going to answer it by saying I think we've already spent too much time talking about the risks of AI and not enough time talking about the opportunities of AI, and that also goes to the general, I think, the general concerns we have with the regulatory approach in Europe, that it focuses too much on the risks and not enough on the opportunities".

Can you give us concrete examples to understand how AI is changing our lives?

"Yeah, I mean, so we've got great examples for AI wearables, which we think are going to continue to be a really exciting area of development over the next decade with the next generations. We're able to use AI for translation, to make a really seamless translation in conversation and also in what people read. That's another thing that you could do with the glasses in other parts of the world, where you can look at something and have it translated for you. That's a really helpful day-to-day use that people are already finding from AI and will even more in the future. Medical discoveries, we've got one of the places where AI is already being deployed is in chemistry and the ability for scientists and researchers to discover new drugs. People are using our open source AI models for clinical health purposes, to collect and analyze data so that doctors are able to give more accurate diagnoses and prescriptions. So there's just, I think, just innumerable ways in which AI is going to be incorporated in all facets of the economy and society, whether that's manufacturing, obviously engineering, coding. One of the things that we're working on is AI, having an AI engineer, so basically having AI be able to do sort of mid-level coding and that will just provide sort of superpowers to engineers working on AI that they can get assistance from AI to do the coding itself and that's just going to free them up to do many more interesting innovations".

So let's talk about opportunities. "I'd love to talk about the opportunities. And it's not to say, look, we've been developing AI for more than a decade, and so we have a lot of experience in developing it responsibly, and we'll continue to do that, but I do think that really starting to think about what are the opportunities that we can grasp from AI and what are the opportunities we'll miss if we don't have the right environment for it.

If you were to imagine the biggest revolution to come on the topic of AI, in the next few years, what would you think of?

"I'm really focused on the way in which we're able to use AI and I think there's many technologists who will focus on all the different societal uses, so I'm just going to focus on the ways in which Meta is going to be using AI that are particularly exciting. I think relatively soon we're going to have AI agents which are able to perform much more complex and multi-step tasks on our behalf and will also be personalized so they'll have a greater understanding of you and what your interests and needs are and I think that's going to be a really important productivity tool for people in the not very distant future". 

Let's get away from artificial intelligence, go back to the basics, and try to reason about a central issue for those involved in social media. Let's talk about freedom of expression, then, and ask Kaplan what is the line today, from his perspective, between free speech and hate speech. In the season of being free to say anything, but anything at all, is it still possible to find a way to curb hate speech, or is hate speech today also part of free speech, of freedom of expression?

"I think for us what we're focused on is getting back to our roots in free expression and making sure that people have the ability on our platforms to engage in the kind of political discourse that they want to have and over the last number of years I think what we experienced is that our rules got overly restrictive and overly complex and so we made, we announced changes a month and a half or so ago to, allow greater space for that kind of political discourse. So there are things like discussions about immigration or discussions about gender where our rules were restricting too much speech so things that people could talk about on television or on the floor of Congress they weren't able to discuss on our platforms and we wanted to make sure that they could and so we made changes to our policies to ensure that they could do that. We also, one of the things that we've, I think we've experienced and I think other platforms probably have as well is that as we've deployed automated systems that have been even more, become increasingly complex, we've seen them make a lot of mistakes and that has the effect of suppressing speech even where it wasn't anybody's intent to. So that's another part of the changes that we made was to only use our automated systems for the highest severity kind of harms, things like terrorism or child sexual exploitation materials, things like that and rely on user reports for other types of speech all with the idea that we want to reduce the number of mistakes that we're making and reduce the frequency of people's experiences that they think of as censorship. And then the last thing is we made changes, we're replacing our third party fact checking program with a community notes type system which is a crowd sourced approach which we think will be much more scalable and have much fewer concerns about political bias which I think had really infected the third party fact checking program, particularly in the United States".

Let's take it a step further:  in a new world where freedom of speech trumps everything, and where limitations even on hate speech are often seen as a limitation on our freedom, can fake news still be fought, or does the spread of fake news also fall within the perimeter of freedoms to be defended?

"People don't want misinformation, we don't want misinformation, but there are lots of debates about what constitutes misinformation, what's true and what's not true. What we think is going to be the most effective approach is to engage and enlist our community in helping people make sense of what they're seeing and helping them figure out what's true and what's not. And that's I think the real promise of a community based system is you're not saying what people can't see on the platform, you're just providing them with additional information and additional context so that they can assess what they're seeing. And I think that's going to ultimately build more trust in the system than just having us or some other third party, so-called expert third party, decide what's true and what's false and what can be seen and what can't be seen on the platform. We've had, I think collectively as an industry and as a society, we've had a lot of experience with this now in the last decade. And I think that what our experience shows is that relying on the community to provide more information is going to build more trust than some of the other systems like the third party fact checking that have been tried".

Step further: how, from your perspective, has social media changed the way politics is done around the world in recent years?

"I think the most important way is, well two: one is it's given every individual voice that before social media, only great publications like yours were able to reach a large audience and social media has changed that and it's allowed individuals to really be empowered and have a voice in the political discourse of the day. And at the same time, it's given candidates and policy makers a way to speak much more authentically and directly with their citizens. And I think both of those things have had quite a significant impact on the way politics is conducted". 

Can social media really do anything to promote free speech in countries where there is no free speech?

"Yeah: going back to just giving people a voice, the scale of social media is so big that in countries that have typically exercised, tried to exercise more control over public discourse and debate, it's just harder for them to do where individuals can go right onto the platform and express themselves and the volume of discourse is so significant that it makes it harder for governments to control it and I think that's been a really positive impact on social media over the last decade and a half". 

Let's provoke: can social media, in your opinion, influence elections? Pause, then a smile.

"Well, there's no question that allowing more people to speak and to hear from each other, of course that will impact how people think and who they support and what issues are important to them. I think that's a benefit of social media to the extent that companies like ours have also had to build systems to make sure that we're combating foreign interference in elections and that's important to do and I think we've built the best, most sophisticated systems in the industry but overall, I think social media does disrupt established institutions by giving more people a seat at the table and more people a voice and I think that that's been overall a net positive even if progress doesn't go necessarily in a straight line and in a completely linear way. Overall, I think giving more people a voice and allowing greater participation in the democratic process is a good thing".

What do you think when you read the comments in international newspapers about the too close and pathological relationship that might exist between the so-called tech oligarchs and the Trump Administration?

"The Trump administration, President Trump and his administration have been really clear that they want to see American companies and American technology companies succeed and grow and innovate and create jobs and we think that's great and we're excited to have an administration in place that has those ambitions and that understands that having a vibrant technology sector is good for the economy and good for the country. We think that's a real opportunity and we're excited to work with the administration".

Is there something Italy should understand when it comes to Trump? It will not escape you that, viewed from Europe, Trump's agenda does not always present itself harmoniously and is often indeed an eyesore, especially for those who cherish the nonnegotiable values on which the European Union is founded.

"I think it's just understanding that President Trump is going to be unapologetically supportive of US companies and US interests, and that he will respond badly when he feels that they've been treated unfairly or in a discriminatory fashion. I mean, really, he's been very clear, like, his policy is to make America great again, and he thinks about America first, and that means he's going to defend US interests and US companies. The good news is, when it comes to technology, the pro-growth, pro-innovation regulatory environment that I think President Trump is looking for, will also be good for Europe, also contribute to European growth. And so the things that I think he'll be asking for, and is asking for with the memorandum he released on Friday about discriminatory, about directing his administration to evaluate whether there have been discriminatory regulations and tariffs and taxes put on US tech companies by Europe. I think he's been very clear on what he's looking for, which is really just for US companies to be treated fairly".

The time is up, Kaplan's assistants look at us with concern, closing the pens and folders: the agenda is busy, and there are many appointments. We stand up,   and before leaving and say goodbye, we ask Kaplan how, in the future, the relationship between social media and news outlets might evolve, and whether Meta’s agenda includes any interest in investing in a theme that should be of concern to those who claim to defend freedom: make newspapers great again. Kaplan smiles and attempts a response. 

"Look, many publishers have used our platforms as a way to increase their distribution and find new readers of their content, and we love that. We think that's great. I think figuring out ways to make your content as compelling as possible in the social media formats is going to be important for publishers, just like it is for everybody else who wants to get distribution. That's ultimately going to be determined by whether people find it engaging and share it and like it and things like that. So I think   there are distribution channels that allow you to get your material in front of many millions of people around the world, and we're happy to provide that opportunity. Not bad at all, right? Thank you very much".

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• Claudio Cerasa Direttore

• Nasce a Palermo nel 1982, vive a Roma da parecchio tempo, lavora al Foglio dal 2005 e da gennaio 2015 è direttore. Ha scritto qualche libro (“Le catene della destra” e “Le catene della sinistra”, con Rizzoli, “Io non posso tacere”, con Einaudi, “Tra l’asino e il cane. Conversazione sull’Italia”, con Rizzoli, “La Presa di Roma”, con Rizzoli, e "Ho visto l'uomo nero", con Castelvecchi), è su Twitter. E’ interista, ma soprattutto palermitano. Va pazzo per i Green Day, gli Strokes, i Killers, i tortini al cioccolato e le ostriche ghiacciate. Due figli.