Playing defence in politics and in tech: Nick Clegg leaves Meta
Sir Nick Clegg, former UK deputy prime minister, announced his departure from Meta on Thursday, writing on Threads that he is stepping down.
“As a new year begins, I have come to the view that this is the right time for me to move on from my role as president, global affairs, at Meta,” said Clegg. “It truly has been an adventure of a lifetime! I am proud of the work I have been able to do leading and supporting teams across the company to ensure innovation can go hand in hand with increased transparency and accountability, and with new forms of governance.
“My time at the company coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between ‘big tech’ and the societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector. I hope I have played some role in seeking to bridge the very different worlds of tech and politics — worlds that will continue to interact in unpredictable ways across the globe.”
Clegg, who has not revealed his next venture, has previously held other public-facing media positions. As deputy prime minister, he hosted a weekly LBC show in which he interacted with callers (Call Clegg). Later, he hosted a short-lived podcast about increasing vitriol in Western politics (Anger Management with Nick Clegg).
A Republican-friendly replacement
Clegg is replaced by his deputy, Joel Kaplan.
Kaplan, who served in the George W Bush administration, joined Facebook in 2011. During his tenure, he has been described by staff as among the strongest conservative voices in the company.
According to reports, at Meta Kaplan has successfully advocated for the interests of far-right sites such as Breitbart News and The Daily Caller, and prevented Facebook from closing down groups alleged to be circulating far-right misinformation and disinformation.
US senator Elizabeth Warren remarked in a 2019 Twitter post that Facebook spent over $71m on congressional lobbying efforts in the years since Kaplan was appointed, particularly by targeting Republicans.
Kaplan’s experience in such efforts, and an ideological sway that appears friendly to the right, have been floated by commentators as a core reason for his promotion to replace Clegg.
Moderator role
Clegg served as deputy prime minister in the Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition government during 2010-2015.
During that time, Clegg’s support for Conservative-led austerity measures and his U-turn on tuition fee hikes led to a decline in public support for his party.
As an MP, Clegg supported remaining in the European Union. After the Brexit vote, he subsequently favoured a “soft Brexit”, but warned that the Conservatives’ increasingly far-right views could lead to the end of the union of the UK.
He was knighted in 2018 for political and public service.
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As an outsider in Silicon Valley, upon joining Facebook in the wake the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, Clegg cast himself as a moderator between Facebook’s business interests and the increasingly large regulatory interests of governments. Several times, he offered concessions that Facebook had failed in its duty to protect its users from harm.
In a 2019 interview with the BBC, Clegg admitted that Facebook was “rocked to its very foundations” by the Cambridge Analytica revelations and that it “hadn’t done enough” in the past to keep user data safe. He added that he was convinced “the culture is changing” at the company around the need for better data privacy.
Clegg also remarked on social media’s potential negative impact on mental health. After the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, whose suicide was attributed in part to her viewing harmful content on social media including Meta-owned Instagram, as well as a contentious interview featuring Facebook’s then Northern Europe chief Steve Hatch, Clegg again conceded that it was no longer sustainable for tech companies to express misgivings about regulation.
‘Managing’ regulation
In a 2019 speech, Clegg appeared to welcome regulation outright, stating: “It would be a much easier task, as well as a more democratically sound one, if some of the sensitive decisions we have to make were instead taken by people who are democratically accountable to the people at large, rather than by a private company.”
In response, former The Media Leader columnist Dominic Mills argued that Clegg’s “real job” was “to manage […] regulation, shaping it in such a way that it is least harmful to Facebook”.
The following year, Clegg helped create the Facebook Oversight Board, which reported to him. The board is tasked with independently settling challenging content moderation decisions in ways that respect user safety and the right to freedom of expression, although it has been criticised for its slow movement on decisions and lack of real influence.
By 2021, Facebook was embroiled in another crisis following The Wall Street Journal‘s release of The Facebook Files: leaks from whistleblower Frances Haugen that showed the company was aware of the ways in which its platforms harm individuals’ mental health and spread misinformation and disinformation by amplifying inflammatory posts.
In an internal memo, Clegg disputed the report, writing: “Social media has had a big impact on society in recent years and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out. But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarisation.”
In a public statement, he added that the leaks “contained deliberate mischaracterisations of what we are trying to do and conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook’s leadership and employees”.
Clegg was widely criticised as playing the fall guy for Facebook’s alleged offences and failing to steer the company away from harming the public. Facebook changed its name to Meta that year.
Since the release of the whistleblower report, shares of Meta have grown 64% amid a surge in advertising revenue, driven in part by continued user growth and AI tools that have made it easy for small- and medium-sized businesses to advertise across Meta’s platforms.
Writing for The Media Leader in 2019, columnist Raymond Snoddy reflected: “History may yet treat the culmination of Nick Clegg’s political career kindly. Judgments about his current occupation as the multimillionaire global PR man, strategist and apologist for Facebook are unlikely to be as forgiving.”