You’ve had a bad year. Actually, a year where the default corporate setting has been ‘acute crisis’. You’ve been implicated in undermining democracy, the founders of one of your most successful divisions have quit the company, your messaging service has been linked to incitement of violence, you’ve demonstrated that the core element of your business model – private data – is not safe in your hands, your products have been used as a tool for bad actors and criminals, research has suggested that your products have a negative influence on users’ well-being, your founder has been summoned to appear in front of a Senate committee and lawmakers across the globe are engaged in examining your excessive influence and questionable tax arrangements.
So, what do you do? Who do you turn to? Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? Nick Clegg.
Clegg knows about bad years, of course. He promised to hold the Conservative party to account during the coalition government of 2010 to 2015, but will be remembered principally for his U-turn in 2010 on his promise to eradicate tuition fees, a change of heart that, along with the Lib Dems being consigned to a marginal role in the coalition, led to a devastating rout of the party at the 2015 general election in which it lost 49 seats, leaving it with only eight MPs.
Two years later, during the snap election of 2017, Clegg lost his own seat, Sheffield Hallam, after an increased number of first-time voters ensured that there would be no forgiveness for the tuition fee betrayal. That night #Cleggsit trended on Twitter.
Since then, Clegg has been an advocate for another referendum on Brexit and has founded a think tank, Open Reason, to promote liberalism. On the organisation’s website, the section devoted to Clegg’s pro-Europeanism nestles next to another of his interests: technology, particularly artificial intelligence. Here is where we get to the crux of why his appointment to head Facebook’s global affairs and communications team should not come as a shock.
The main challenge to Facebook is coming from the European Union (EU), and Clegg – who was an MEP from 1999 to 2004 – knows his way around Brussels. As the EU Commission begins to discuss the possibility of regulating Facebook like a teleco, or Margrethe Vestager – the competition commissioner whose term ends in 2019 and has been a formidable force in reining in the power of American technology companies – examines Facebook’s tax arrangements, who better than a former MEP to lobby and navigate the Byzantine interests and structures of Brussels?
In a Facebook post published the day of his appointment, Clegg offered a sense of what his brief will be by emphasising that his role will be more than deal-making with legislators – it will involve shifting corporate culture at a company whose founder announced earlier this year he would “fix” it. The sensibility of a politician who believes in consensus, rather than that of an engineer seeking to eradicate a bug, might be exactly what Facebook needs.
Read more: Nick Clegg on AI, Brexit and life in politics: UpVote 20
“Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Oculus and Instagram are at the heart of so many people’s everyday lives – but also at the heart of some of the most complex and difficult questions we face as a society: the privacy of the individual; the integrity of our democratic process; the tensions between local cultures and the global internet; the balance between free speech and prohibited content; the power and concerns around artificial intelligence; and the wellbeing of our children,” Clegg writes.
“I believe that Facebook must continue to play a role in finding answers to those questions – not by acting alone in Silicon Valley, but by working with people, organisations, governments and regulators around the world to ensure that technology is a force for good.”
To do this, of course, Clegg will have to be more than a lobbyist. He will need to grapple meaningfully with the issues he has chosen to highlight, and to demonstrate that Facebook is willing to make decisions that are in the best interests of society, not just its shareholders. The company can no longer afford the tin ear that has become its hallmark. If Clegg is to prove that he really means what he says, he will have to deal with issues such as corporate tax avoidance – an issue that he highlighted during his tenure as deputy prime minister.
A year ago, at an event organised by Campaign, Clegg already sounded like a Silicon Valley employee. While conceding that Big Tech companies had much to do to prove that they are “good global citizens”, he argued that, “in other areas they’re being unfairly caricatured, often by a print media that has an ulterior motive to discredit social media because of its success in attracting online advertising revenues that otherwise might be spent on newspapers.”
Claiming that the failures of Big Tech are being “unfairly caricatured” is, of course, specious. Clegg has long argued for the rights of citizens to be paramount in decision-making – it is to be hoped that this sentiment is still central to his thinking as he glad-hands lawmakers in Washington, Brussels and Beijing on behalf of the fifth most valuable company in the world. In government, Clegg was principled but pragmatic. He will need to emphasise the former of these qualities if he is to change the current perception of his new employer.
Facebook should hope that, this time around, Clegg will be able to deliver on his admirable sentiments. It’s important not just for Mark Zuckerberg – but for all of us.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
