Nick Clegg at a conference in Munich early 2020
If something went wrong at Facebook in recent years, the same person always had to show up: founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Whether it was about privacy scandals, fake news or hate speech, Zuckerberg was held accountable. Logical, because he has the last word and can only fire himself.
It forced Zuckerberg into a position he doesn’t want at all: having to defend Facebook again and again. He is now moving that role to Nick Clegg. On Wednesday it was announced that the British former politician – he was deputy prime minister under David Cameron – is being promoted. Clegg has been with Facebook since 2018 as head of communications and public policy.
Within Facebook’s parent company Meta, Clegg is on a par with the duo Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, who together made the platform great. The Brit gets the title President Global Affairs and will now report to both Zuckerberg and Sandberg.
Big change
That announcement of less than 300 words implies a considerable change. Clegg will be in charge of all policy matters – including the upcoming regulation and explaining Meta’s policies. For example, Zuckerberg and Sandberg can take their hands off complicated files.
Zuckerberg wants to put his energy into new products. He has big ambitions with the metaverse. For the time being, this is no more than an idea where the digital and physical worlds will be more intertwined. Virtual and augmented reality will play a major role in this. Sandberg will mainly focus on the business side; Meta has plenty of challenges in that area.
Clegg spent years in British politics and was Deputy Prime Minister under David Cameron between 2010 and 2015.
Nick Clegg (right) with David Cameron in 2015. Clegg served as Deputy Prime Minister in Cameron’s cabinet between 2010 and 2015.
Facebook has pushed Clegg forward more than once. For example, he defended the tech company when whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed all kinds of problems at Facebook and Instagram last fall.
Clegg will henceforth take the blows as standard for Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg also no doubt hopes to get out of complicated hearings thanks to Clegg. Something that the Facebook CEO has unwittingly gained the necessary experience with in recent years.
Back in political center
According to friends, Clegg doubted whether he should take up Facebook’s offer in 2018, The New York Times wrote last year. The fact that his new prominent position allowed him to return to the center of political debate convinced him. In a memo, he stated that it is undesirable for Facebook to have so much power – especially in light of freedom of expression.
He acted accordingly in what is considered his most important achievement at Meta to date: the creation of the Oversight Board. This watchdog was conceived by the company itself, but consists of people from outside Facebook. The chairman is the Danish former Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who according to The New York Times is friends with Clegg. The rest of the council includes lawyers and human rights experts. They are now judging the toughest moderation issues.
An analysis by the NOS found that the Oversight Board ruled in 20 cases in its first year of oversight, with the tech company being called back in the majority of the cases examined. The Oversight Board turns out to be really critical – possibly more critical than what Meta was counting on.
This resulted in the first year of Facebook’s supervisory board:
Yield of 1 year of Facebook Supervisory Board
Whether Clegg will also be responsible for the 15,000 external moderators is not entirely clear. They are the ‘digital sewer cleaners’ and have to judge the sometimes shocking things that pass by on the platform – up to rape or even murder. Time revealed this week that at an office in Kenya, about two hundred employees – focused on content for sub-Saharan Africa – do this ‘cleaning job’ under poor working conditions for sometimes as little as $1.30 an hour.
Solid approach from the EU and US
As the person ultimately responsible for policy and regulation, Clegg will be in frequent contact with governments. Both in the US and in Europe, there are many ideas to take a firmer approach to Facebook.
Brussels is the furthest with this. Two major legislative packages, if passed, could collectively have far-reaching implications for how Facebook makes money, uses its algorithms and oversees moderation policies. The fact that Clegg speaks five languages can be very useful in the EU.
In the US, the regulator FTC has Facebook in its sights in particular. The FTC, which must, among other things, prevent unfair competition, finds the group too powerful and wants to split off Instagram and WhatsApp. That case is expected to take years.
