Nick Clegg has the power now to right Facebook’s wrongs. This is how he should do it
Last month, Facebook – now renamed Meta – CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the promotion of Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister, to lead Meta on all policy and public relations matters globally.
What will Clegg do with his new position? If history is any guide, he’s likely to continue to be one of Facebook’s fiercest defenders, often using absurd, hypocritical arguments to uphold Meta’s worst actions.
In 2020, Clegg claimed Facebook merely “holds up a mirror to society,” while ignoring that Meta designs its algorithm to reward the most extreme and polarising content. My disclosures to US Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed that political parties across Europe – on the right and on the left – found Facebook algorithm changes in 2018 forced them into more extreme political positions. In democratic societies, one could say Facebook votes before we do. And in war zones and fragile societies with weak law and order, Facebook can get people killed.
Then, in March 2021, Clegg subtly shifted his argument to say users and Facebook’s algorithms coexist in a symbiotic relationship similar to “taking two to tango”. By acknowledging the algorithm’s role in how Facebook operates, Clegg renewed a difficult question for the company: why are those algorithms hidden from the public?
My disclosures validated years of alarms raised by advocates – that the Facebook algorithm harms children, stokes division, and weakens our democracies.
And as we enter the “fog of war” with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we are seeing in real time how Russia is weaponising Facebook to spread its outrageous propaganda.
I’m an optimist by nature. I believe people such as Nick Clegg can choose to right these wrongs. And these five
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