Nick Clegg: What really happened at Facebook?

This is a Global Player Original Podcast. It's not often that we get the chance to speak to somebody right at the heart of the world's biggest social media company. Nick Clegg was the President of Global Affairs at Meta, that's formerly Facebook. He was also our deputy PM in the coalition years alongside David Cameron. He left his job there in January, just before Trump returned to office. Did I make sure while I was there, not least?

perhaps notoriously in the case of suspending Trump, that if the community standards were broken, uh sanctions and penalties were applied, yes I did. But this is Do you think it cost you your job? What that I I suspended Trump. Yeah. No, I left. I didn't it I sure. Am I sure I left? I mean are you sure you didn't get fired?

That's a really weird question. Who else is going to know whether I got fired or not? Me. I left. I chose to leave. I chose to leave at a time of my own choosing. He's the author of a new book, How to Save the Internet, and he's given his first broadcast interview to us, the news agents. We discuss the power of Facebook, good and bad, what it was like to work in the Heart of the Beast alongside Mark Zuckerberg, and how he finds UK politics in 2025. Welcome to the NewsAgents.

The news agents. Sonic Clegg worked at Facebook, now Meta, from 2018 until earlier this year. It's a company with three and a half billion active users a month through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. It reaches more than any other media platform in the world. His new book asks questions about what it does with all this power. He sets out a plan for global cooperation, offers thoughts on the AI future. He also has lessons for the current UK government.

And I ask him how he looks back on his apology, I'm sorry, over tuition fees. Nick Clegg, I've just finished reading your book, How to Save the Internet. And I guess I'm trying to get a sense of where your head is now in terms of Facebook, in terms of meta. Because it is fundamentally an exploration of power, isn't it? The good and the bad. I is it The book? Well, it's an exploration I mean you call it an exploration of power.

Social media giving lots of people a voice, giving voice to the voiceless, but also putting unimaginable wealth and political power in the hands of this tiny elite. Do you come away? Thinking measure is a force for good? I think the technology is a force for good. I think social media, I know this is an unfashionable point of view, but as I explained in the book. I think the evidence, at least, to my mind, shows overwhelmingly that technology which allows people for free,'cause it's an ad

paid service, so you don't have to you don't have to pay a subscription, you don't have to pay huge amount of money for a headset or anything. You can just you know, a a a poor farmer in Guatemala can use Instagram as much as a Wall Street banker can. I think it has had a democratizing effect in terms of expression, free expression people sharing

content around the world and so on. But I call it the power paradox. You're quite right. At the same time it comes with this corollary, which is this extraordinary aggregation of power in the hands of a very small number of ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r

uh small handful of Chinese uh big tech leaders too. And so I I think that poses a f fund certainly as an ex politician, a sort of fascinating dilemma, and particularly dare I say as a l sort of liberal, which is

I love the empowerment bit. I'm really troubled by the amount of kind of concentration of power in that in the in the hands of a very small number of people. And that's where, of course, all of this evolution in big tech and the development of these so called network effects as these things become so big so quickly collides with politics and collides with society, collides with issues around regulation and so on.

And why I kinda think you can't really settle that power paradox without democratic governments setting the swim lane in which these companies should operate. Because remember, they're run by engineers. They're not philosopher kings. They're not politicians. They don't

They don't spend their time worrying maybe we we think they should, but they don't actually spend their time worrying too much about the societal trade offs and the benefits and s you know, the the the the cost benefit of of of having this technology exist in such a prevalent way across society. They They're just constantly trying to come up with a new thing that they think people will use and will delight people and so on. So so the balance, how you straighten out this.

sort of empowerment on the one hand and the kind of over centralisation power on the other, I think is an enduring dilemma.

Enduring dilemma doesn't take us that far though. I mean your book is called How to Save the Internet. Many people think the answer to that is less dominance. By the oligarchs. And yet you don't seem to be awful. Well I d I I don't really know what that means. What does how do you how do you wave a wand and say less dominance? You have these network effects which are just very well

It's a bit like saying, I don't want gravity. I'm afraid when you ha connect people, there is a natural tendency, as I describe in the book, natural trend. for these apps and services to grow in enormous scale, because the more people you're connected with, the more beneficial it is to you as a business, as an individual, as a creator, whatever. So

Sure, we can we can sit around in studios like this saying, I don't like network effects. I don't think it's gonna get you anywhere. It's just sticking our head in the sand. So what I propose instead is something very concrete, um in the last sort of section of the book, which is a deal between the three main techno democracies, India, Europe and the United States, to set new guardrails, to set new parameters.

so that this particularly this emergence of generative AI takes place is bounded if you like by a shared understanding between democracies that loosely share similar values about privacy, about individual rights and so on and so forth, about how AI infrastructure is developed. How um um you know the corollary that the harms that may flow from generative AI are monitored and mitigated.

uh how data flows themselves are kept open. So that's what I propose. Of course it seems highly unlikely that that is going to occur on a day when I think Modi is in Beijing. Of course. Um because of the dare I say it the boneheaded stupidity of this US government has basically chased Modi, one of the most important figures in the modern world, into the arms of America's uh sort of you know erstwhile rival in Beijing. I mean as an act of geopolitical dumbheadedness.

I think this spectacle of Trump mishandling his relationship with with Modi just shows quite how out of depth this U administration. So it's it's That's just a short way of saying that it it feels unlikely that that level of state craft that is required and would require American leadership. It's not exactly in evidence right now. I firmly believe it will happen, and it will happen not out of altruism.

Because I just don't believe the current course that America is on is gonna win. They're not gonna they're just they're just not gonna win. You can't the idea that you can clobber the rest of the world, humiliate the rest of the world, insult them, offend them um and just declare that somehow your technology or your um your trade needs should t should um prevail over everybody else's. That is def is already eliciting a reaction. Look at Putin, look at

the leader of North Korea, a whole bunch of BRICS countries, and Modi and and and Xi Jinping in Beijing today. That is an illustration of the early failure of US statecraft. So at some point I think there is a view amongst my former colleagues and certainly many other people in Silicon Valley, that someone is going to deliver a knockout blow in this AI race. That someone suddenly trlala, you know someone out of the magic box will come this new AI model which will just vanquish all others and

I don't believe it's like I think this technology is way more versatile than that. I think you're gonna have a mixture of what's called closed and open source models. The Chinese are already leading on open source models. So they're gonna get I f because you can use them for free, you don't have to pay Sam Altman or or or Google for the use of these um very powerful Chinese models. So you're already seeing a distribution.

and a deployment of uh of Chinese AI leadership in Africa, Asia and so on. Those trends are gonna continue. I don't think there is gonna be one hallelujah moment where everyone says, I've got superintelligence, I'm gonna keep it under lock and key

and everyone can go, hang and because I don't think that's gonna happen And because of the geopolitical reasons I described earlier, at some point the US administration is gonna relearn something it's clearly forgotten currently, which is if it wants to project its own power, it has to do it in i you know, in lockstep with others. And now that clearly that's unfashionable at the moment and people can criticise the book and say you're you're kind of speculating on a future which doesn't seem very

Likely, I'm pretty confident the wheel will turn. You've skipped ahead quite far to the future. I just want to take you back to Facebook, to Meta. Because reading the book it seems like there is genuine ambiguity in your mind. About the dangers of Screen time. The dangers of of Facebook, the dangers of Instagram for young people. You say how much we think we know about how corrosive screen time is to mental health, the data looks murkier and more ambiguous than headlines suggest.

And yet during your time at Facebook You saw how concerned the public was. You saw how concerned parents, even your own colleagues were about this issue. A lawsuit you'll be familiar with called the Tennessee case. filed by forty five states, accusing Meta of unfairly snaring teenagers and children on Meta products whilst deceiving the public about the hazard.

You knew all this was going on and yet you've come away saying, Oh, I think I think the data's a bit ambiguous. Uh I think the data is ambiguous. I mean I know of course people don't like dealing with ambiguity, but if you look at the research

from a succession of academics, all of which I cite in the book. And it's not me saying this. I really do try and as dispassionately as possible for the reader because this is a highly emotive topic. You're dealing with parents who are anxious about their kids. What are they doing on online. You're dealing obviously with some horrific and tragic um cases of of of of of teens who've taken their own lives and so on. So I I try and just very dispassionately say this is what the evidence in terms of

Claim and counterclaim seems to suggest. Where I come out is even if the evidence is much more ambivalent than I think some of the assertions suggest. Mae llawer o wybodaeth sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n

You're always going to find individual cases where people are exposed to content they shouldn't be. But societally the evidence is if you look at the work for instance of Professor Andrew Prozilski in Oxford, the Oxford Internet Institute, who's done one of the biggest longitudinal study of the relationship between the use of social media and mental well being amongst teens and so on.

I you know it it just doesn't show some great causal link. Much as people would want to. Having said having said all of that, where I come out is

It c almost kinda doesn't matter what you think the data shows, you should take a precautionary approach. That's what I did at Facebook, I pushed for and successfully pushed for and introduced a whole raft of measures which didn't exist when I arrived at the uh arrived at the company, including now uh defaulting teens around the world in their hundreds of millions.

into much more protective what are called teen accounts. They can't be contacted by unit. I just want to drill down into this Nick, because we've seen I think there's something fourteen hundred pages of company documents and correspondence filed by the state of Tennessee in this case. Including some of your emails.

What is fascinating about this is it starts a long time ago. You know, it starts in April twenty seventeen with Kevin Sistrom, Instagram chief executive, asking for more staff to work on mitigating harms to users. And Zuckerberg then says, Oh, you know, we've got more extreme issues, whatever. And Systrom emails again saying we need more staff. Then it happens in January 2018, Zuckerberg receives a report about

Four million kids under thirteen on Instagram against the company's own policy. Then we hear from Margaret Stewart. She says, I hope we could maintain a moderately protective stance given the risk to minors. I hope we won't look back on it years from now and feel good about the decision we made here. Frances Haugen, you know her. She she disclosed thousands of pages about the um internal documents about the harm done to kids. And then you you get on this, I think in late twenty twenty one.

And you say you write an email to Mark Zuckerberg saying there are mounting concerns from regulators about the company's impact on teenage mental health. You r you requested funding for, what is it, forty five more employees?

Yeah, sorry, you're picking so many things from before I was at the company from like it It doesn't matter. But it shows the movement from your colleague. From chief p from from Facebook executives saying this is something we keep getting into. I'll tell you why, because the only measure that matters is did the um uh did the company

Th they're not selective quotes. What I'm showing you is over the course of five years. I was there for seven years. So let me just tell you my experience. So what actually matters is did the company take measures, certainly during the time I was there, which consistently improved the safeguards which were applied to young people. The record unambiguously shows that is the case. It is a completely different company, it's a complete different set of apps.

There are a whole range of new safeguards which didn't exist when I arrived in the autumn of twenty eighteen. And I'm very proud of the fact that I was one of the main I I had thousands of people working for me, Emily, honestly with with respect. Not of whether you pick one email from ten years ago or not. It's does a young person today using Instagram in particular. It's not ten years ago, Nick. No, it's from twenty twenty one.

You sent this email and you didn't get a response and then you went back to Zuckerberg. You've warned of the mounting concerns. You said we need to do more. We're being held back by a lack of investment on the product side required to be responsive to policy maker concerns. And then he starts I think posting about Surfing a surf picture? And you accuse him of being tone deaf. He's being accused of exploiting children, in a sense, right? He's being accused of ignoring

And you accuse him of being toned air. So uh just to explain for your viewers and your listeners, I did not accuse him. I I think what you're citing is an email, an internal email, to people who worked for me in the press department. where I said, I think'cause I think on the same day there was a congressional hearing about child safety. My concern, as as part of my responsibility in the company, as one of the most senior executives there was the reputational

uh uh sort of health of the company, I felt that that the that that post might look tone-deaf. So I didn't accuse him. I made an totally Cat candidly, commonplace observation. Nor did these emails I mean, I spoke to Mark Zuckerberg every day, sometimes multiple times. Did we make the changes? Yes, while I was there, we made

like thirty, forty, fifty changes. You now have a whole experience on Instagram which didn't even exist when I was at the company, called Teen Accounts. That means that if you now have a teen, uh or sixteen or below, they are automatically defaulted into something where they cannot communicate with people they could before They have the most restrictive controls and limits on the content they can receive. They have the most restrictive kind of limits on the

communication between adults and children. None of that existed when I arrived. Should it have happened earlier? Maybe. Should it have happened before I even arrived at the end? We still have we still have. Earlier this year The picture of British parents going to America, trying to get the company to listen to them because they have lost children and they think it's fallen on deaf ears.

This happened in April of this year. We know that Instagram tried to start up something called Instagram Kids. We know that they were still marketing, whether they approved it in a policy or not, to under thirteen year olds.

Do you understand what that means? I'm not sure if you do. Instagram kids at the idea at the time,'cause I was very much involved in the debates and in fact I was the person who in the company said for a whole bunch of unrelated reasons that I thought the company shouldn't proceed with it and I won that argument. But just it's really quite important because I think you're being somewhat misleading. Messenger Kids, for those who use Messenger, is a messaging app.

Messenger Kids has existed for a long period of time. It means that you can safely have a youngster use a messaging app because it has all sorts of controls and crucially it allows parents to see exactly what their child is doing. So what the Instagram team thought, not unreasonably, is we should give parents asked far more control, far more visibility, so they see in real time they can control who their child is communicating with, what kind of content they're receiving.

They can put time limits to what their child child would use. That's actually what Instagram Kids was about. It wasn't trying to sort of Why did you need to market anything to kids?

Doing something which I believe you want it to do, which is to actually make sure that when children use social media apps which unfortunately. Why why are they using social media at all? Well I guess what? One of the reasons is because this government, and as far as I can make up, very few governments around the world have actually legislated to make age verification tools work properly. It's something I have said to

A succession of ministers in the United Kingdom for the last almost near decade. If you really want to make sure that you have watertight legislation To make sure that these age controls of 13 and below, or 15 below, or 16 below, work, you should go much further than the online safety act currently does, and make sure that every time anyone downloads an app from either the iOS

App Store or the Android app store. But don't but but but don't have them for under thirteen year olds then. I mean if you've got age verification then it would be working properly. The average American teen today I mean I d if I sound frustrated it's it's kind of like

I wish I wish it was as easy just to say, oh, people shouldn't do this or shouldn't do that. Do you know the average American teen now uses forty different apps? Anyone listening to this or watching this who has teens knows they don't use one app. They use TikTok, they use they use Instagram. Specifically to target kids who you don't want on on social media. Emily, you're fundamentally misunderstanding this. If teens are using multiple apps,

If what you do, which is currently the case in this country, is expect each individual app to do individual age verification, you get the mess that we currently have. Parents don't understand it? Kids don't understand it.

people play you have different and uneven standards between one app and the other. What I'm actually advocating for is to go far further than what I think you are suggesting, far further than what this government has done, far further than the legislation that has been put onto the statute book by MPs in Westminster, I'm suggesting that you should have a universal requirement on ev on the on the two choke points in the internet, which are the

uh which are the Android and iOS app stores. You can't download apps other than those those through those two app stores. And at that point that's the choke point of the internet. They that's the Google and App Apple run the underlying architecture of the internet that we all use. That is the point at which you can enforce very, very stringent age verification. I made that case to this government, inf indeed to the previous Conservative government. It's something that can be technically done.

actually some states, interestingly, in the United States are now starting to legislate to do just that. That is a good example of something where I don't think the industry is gonna do it on its own and it can't do it on its own.

So you have to do it from the kids point of view and from a kids point of view what matters is every single kind of app they're gonna use. And that's what we don't currently have. We don't have something which is universally applied to all of them. This is a really interesting live debate.

And I do not understand why none of that Has been examined in here. How did you arrive at the conclusion? That all was fine. I didn't at Facebook. I didn't. How did you arrive at the conclusion? Well you No one's gonna read that book and think that what you've just said is that is simply not what I say in the book. Well, you know from everything that I've just read out, from all the executives' emails and your own emails to Mart Zuckerberg that he was

Pretty much Emily toned down. I don't actually say that in the book. Please don't tell your viewers something which I didn't say. I actually say in the book that I think we should go much further. You are very ambiguous, slightly defensive, but very ambiguous about whether there is any actual harm to mental health or to teens.

with the products that Facebook says. I do two things. I one don't accept the caricature that nothing was be done by those companies,'cause that's simply not true, and I explain in detail what was done and why those apps and services are now wholly different than they were So you think the problem starts? I didn't say that either. And then I say we should go much further.

So please don't please don't foist upon me an assertion which I don't say in the book, which I would never say in the book, when in fact I'm I've not only now, but through my throughout my whole time at Meta and in all my interactions with governments around the world, including a succession of British governments, I said I think you should go much further. Did you think Mark Zuckerberg cared about this stuff?

Do you, really? Yes of course he did. I d do you look, you can think what you like about people in Silicon Valley. But this idea is not it's not about me, I'm asking you because you you praise him, you're you're pretty falseome, you call him, I think, in indefatigably competitive. Yes, you know he's indefatigably competitive, sure. But look, the the point is I think the depiction that people in Silicon Valley want to actively harm children and that they have an incentive

Okay, let me just give you this because I think this is important. We spoke to a whistleblower, you'll know her, Sarah Wynne Williams. Who cr who described Mark like this? Territories to be conquered, be it China or be it children.

Her book was called Careless People. It's not about active harm, it's about carelessness. Do you recognise that description of Mart Zuckerberg? I haven't read the book. I don't know Sarah Wynne Williams, she left the company before I even arrived. You could have read the book. Well I haven't read the book because I didn't it wasn't even it wasn't even she wasn't even at the company when I was there. She she left before I arrived.

For example, she recalls a tool that Instagram was using to market beauty products to young girls who deleted photos of themselves after posting leaning into their vulnerability. We don't see that mark emerge at all here.

I can't comment about a book I haven't read, Emily, from a person I don't know. She wasn't wasn't my job and she left before I I I I came and she if I she'd been there She would have worked for me and I would have known her so I can't let me help you out then, because she's also said that Facebook worked alongside the Chinese government. Helping to create a bespoke censorship tool for the Chinese government, cutting off a dissident at China's request. Did that strike you as possible?

I wasn't there at the time, Emily. When I arrived at the company, I was one of the first people. I'm describing the character of the company that you worked for. Yes. I'm describing things that I've done. And I can I know you're describing things that I was not part of and I didn't participate in, and I'm giving you an answer which is I can only

Well, I would qualify you to know that. But of course it would. But I wasn't there at the time and when I was there I was actually the leading advocate that we shouldn't as a company, meta is. try and enter into the Chinese market because unsurprisingly, Chinese communists in Beijing don't want to have Western style social media

uh available to their citizens, which they still don't to this day. But all this had happened before, you know that, for example, that Facebook was embedded in the Trump campaign of twenty sixteen. You know that executives had to explain to Mark Zuckerberg That was the power of Facebook, that you could make people change their brand of toothpaste, you could make people change their vote.

And yet you go on to write. What? Do you believe that what someone sees as they're scrolling on Facebook will inst instantly change their political opinion? It's a really good question because you mean that's what you just asserted. Well you say it's deeply patronizing, right? No, no, no. I don't say that's particularly patron. I just think there's no evidence. That scrolling on a social media app

changes who you vote for. And in fact I one of the things I did at the company, because there are so many claims and counterclaims about this, I set up the world's only hitherto only wholly independent uh research project during the time of the twenty twenty US election. I think there were eleven US universities involved with very, very large thousand, three hundred thousand I'm I'm sure I haven't got the numbers exactly right, but very large numbers of US voters

who would use Facebook in different ways. So they would have one where there was no algorithm at all and you just had it chronologically um chronol chronologically listed. Another one where you couldn't wait for it. No,'cause it's so interesting. You keep making these assertions in passing where the evidence doesn't actually suggest So you don't think having a Facebook employee showing the Trump campaign how to use tools better

swayed the vote for Trump at all. My understanding again, this is uh what almost three years before I arrived at the company. My understanding is that all social media companies at the time I mean in fact the leading proponent of using social media in American politics was Barack Obama. Right. So so what those companies did at the time, you can r retrospectively say whether it was foolish or not.

is they said, let's make sure that all these politicians who want to use social media to communicate with voters know how it works. That is my understanding of what happened that all the campaigns were uh uh people were made available to me. But just go back to that question, do you not think Having somebody in the Trump campaign.

They did. But they had a woman I you asked me a question about a book I haven't read about. But I'm trying to explain to you because she makes some pretty important claims here about

what the company was like that you went on to work for. You've been at the heart of that. This is the one chance we get and sorry to hear about the heart of Metro. And instead of instead of you simply asking me ask me questions about events that weren't that didn't take place when I was there, maybe I could talk to you.

uh including about everything that I i uh that I cover in the book, about what I did see. Now you can disagree or agree with my caricature, what you can't do. You don't ask me to make judgment about events that I wasn't part of at all. It's part of a bigger question. You say

Page thirty seven. It is deeply patronizing to assume it can sway the way people vote. People have agency. So I'm genuinely interested To know whether you think that there is a relationship between political volatility and Facebook, or between disinformation and Facebook, whether you think that the anti-vax movement, that Robert Kenner G is now espousing the

is dangerous on Facebook or whether you think, Well, don't be patronising, people have agency. I mean either you believe that this stuff can be harmful or else you say, Oh, don't be patronizing, people have agency. But of course content on social media can be harmful, which is why you need rules

Well in that case if it can be harmful, then it can sway you. Clearly. Um i I think there are definitely instances where people Uh partly by because of what they consume on social media, but partly because of the circumstances of their own lives. Where of course it can play a role in how how they live their lives, what they do, whether they do things which are good for them. Of course it does. It'd be foolish to Think otherwise in the same way that I'm sure you as a veteran of the British media

would not claim the British media has no influence at all. Of course I wouldn't. Exactly. And I wouldn't say it's patronising if people were swayed. Uh what I actually said, which is quite different again to what you just suggested, I think it is patronizing to assume

that what people consume on social media in a sort of passive way entirely determines what they think, how they vote, how they speak and so on. I think there's very little evidence to suggest that is the case, because guess what? Thankfully we're much, much more complicated creatures than that. It's uh how we think, how we feel, how we vote depends on a whole range of issues from family. You joined Facebook in twenty seventeen. Eighteen. Eighteen. You must have thought

About whether that company had played a role in getting Trump elected. Did that never cross your mind? Did you never think there's any evidence to suggest that Trump would not have been president of the United States? That's all the same thing. Did Facebook play a role in that? Sorry, it's like saying do I think the Daily Telegraph plays a role in British politics or your podcast plays everyone plays a role because it's all part of how we

consume and share information. I'm just interested because again, Sarah's book So I do by the way, I do think it is patronizing to assume that you th that I'm not sure if this is what you're suggesting, that one social media app Can somehow one giant influential app. Okay, but there are many others. There are many other big apps. I'm gonna qu I'm gonna quote again from Sarah t for one second because she talks about a meeting that Martin Zuckerberg had in I think it was December. He went to APAC.

He he met with Barack Obama and Barack Obama basically pulled him aside according to her conversation with him and said, You've got to watch what you're doing. This is really dangerous and you are gonna start putting dictators in power if you don't watch what the company's doing. So Barack Obama was telling Mark Zuckerberg about the power of Facebook and yet I hear you are kind of five years later saying.

Mm i it's patronizing to assume that it had a big impact. So that's not what I say in the book. Uh uh you're taking one sentence from the book where I'm making a particular reference to what I think people what a rather techno determinist view that people have, which I strongly disagree with.

that the idea that the technology you consume or use has an automatic effect on the way that you think and believe. I think there's no evidence that's the case. I do think that is somewhat it's techno-determinist, I do think it's patronizing. I'm not extending that to a conversation which I have didn't know about, I wasn't there at the time between Barack Obama I've spoken to Barack Obama separately about social media. I've been in conversations with him and Mark Zuckerberg.

f many, many years later, we can talk about that if you like. You're once again asking me about a conversation of which I was not a part, from a book which I haven't read, from an employee who wasn't even the company when I arrived. I can only speak to you from my own experiences. I have not at one I have not no one can read my book and reasonably suggest that the book says what you are now suggesting it says. I'm not giving social media a clean bill of health

at all. I wouldn't have pushed as I did I changed the whole company's stance on regulation, from being implacably against regulation to actually embracing it. I think there are a whole range of things that governments need to do, which you can't just trust the tech industry to do itself. I introduced, and others did as well, it was a collective effort, a vast range of

to to protect kids. Is that work complete? No of course it's not complete. Can you expect the industry to come up with all of the solutions? No. Does some of the solutions need to be imposed up by parliaments and governments? Yes. Do I think parliaments and governments should go even further than they already have? Yes, I do. So I look I'm I'm I'm slightly dismayed that you seek to foist upon my book

An interpretation of social media based on a time when I wasn't even living in S Silicon Valley or even working in that company. And I would like if If it's possible to go back to actually the themes which are in the book derive from my own personal experience. It's about to be a very important thing.

Rydych chi'n gwybod, mae'r postiau wedi'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i' Three years old. I'm sure some people say, Oh, you know, you should have done it earlier or it's an easy, easy decision to make. I don't think it's an easy decision to make at all, uh, for a private sector company to

suspend um in that case the outgoing president of the most powerful democracy in the world. I clearly don't agree with his his politics and I abhorred many of the things that he said then and has said on different occasions. But I I yeah, I know it it definitely it troubled me then and troubles me now because it's it's the

It's back to your earlier point about power. It's the use of private sector power intervening in the political and public realm. And as a sort of old fashioned liberal, I think you need to do that warily. But you did it because you recognized that it could incite violence. In other words You saw that link.

remove millions and millions and millions of pieces of content. No, no, but y you you s you seem to be kind of almost insinuating that it's just some sort of weird, wild, free for all. No, it isn't. There are there are these rules if you want I can go into a little bit of detail. There is a connection between social media and political volatility. That's all I'm saying. No, let me try and explain to you. Let me try and explain. There are things called community standards.

Which are I think there are twenty to twenty one. uh, categories of content, which Meta is a company and I guess the other companies do something similar, and one of my responsibilities in the seven years I was at Meta was to oversee the development of these rules. They're rules and they say

There are certain categories of i. e. intellectual property fraud you can't commit on Facebook, you can't bullying and harassment, certain categories of of hate speech. An incitement to violence is clearly a category of content which of course these companies don't want to on their so and can I explain to you why they don't, which is why it's so different to the caricature I think you seem to be perpetuating here. Because it's they're run r remember who pays their

pays their bills. It's advertisers. If you're an advertiser selling a car or or or or kitchenware or or, you know, washing up uh liquid. You don't want your content near vile, hateful, insightful content. So the company has a vast it's not even altruism, altruism has a vast standing commercial incentive.

to make sure that its content rules, these community standards, are abided by. One of my responsibilities, and overseeing a whole bunch of teams in that company, was in this instance, was did what Donald Trump uh said I think he initially said it on Twitter and then just reposted it automatically on uh Facebook a a couple of hours later. Did that break those community standards? That was the judgment I had to make.

And my judgment at that time was that it broke the community standards and it was very important for Facebook in the end, however much it was a high wire act. uh suspending a a a very prominent and powerful, if outgoing, president at the time. I thought it was very important to demonstrate that it didn't matter who you were, you could be the Pope or a pauper, if you broke the company's community standards

you would attract the same penalty as anybody else. So that was my thinking. That was the decision I took. I of course stand by it now. Your question was a somewhat different one, is do I think it's a difficult decision? Of course I think it's a difficult decision. No, no, it wasn't that. It was whether you recognised that if he had incited violence

in the post. I think that was part of why he'd broken the community standards according to your twenty one rules, wasn't it? Incitement to violence. Yeah. Then presumably But do you know all of what he said this is so interesting was on every television in the country, was on every radio station, was every newspaper. It's this sort of extraordinary uh sort of insinuation that somehow what he said on Facebook

was uniquely corrosive but what he said on every single network, every single cable news t television channel or programme or programmes that you've been on somehow don't have the same effect. But Actually a lot of the limits that meta imposes on speech are much stricter. than many of the and certainly than cable news in in in America.

Uh many of the advertising restrictions, for instance on political advertising are far stricter. No no but you're you're then trying to extrapolate that and say therefore No, I'm asking do you recognise

that there is a link, a strong link, between political volatility, instability and social media. Do you recognise that? Um I think history shows that political volatility, I'm afraid, was not invented when social media was invented. Do you think Stalin or Pol Pot or the the the polarization extremism of the nineteen thirties or world wars or civil wars going back decades and centuries none of that none of them erupted?

Mass violence, prejudice. I don't think that social media then plays a particular role in this. That's all that's all I'm trying to ask. Again, the research. If you look at the research, what the academics call and I describe this in the book and I describe as dispassionately as I can, called affective polarisation. The the research suggests there isn't appears to so effective polarization as academics measure it.

actually increased most rapidly in the years, I think, the eighties, before in the United States in large parts of the West. before social media was invented. And more than that, that a lot of polarisation seems to have increased most rapidly amongst people who use social media the least, often people who haven't got college or university degrees who are who are elderly. So

The evidence, since I'm interested in evidence, i is not as cut and dry. Does that mean that um companies like that should be indifferent to what is said on the platform? Absolutely not. Did I make sure while I was there, not least Perhaps notoriously in the case of suspending Trump, that if the community standards were broken, uh sanctions and penalties were applied, yes I did. But this is Do you think it cost you your job? What that I I suspended Trump. No, I left. I didn't it I sure

Am I sure I left? I mean are you sure you didn't get fired? That's a really weird question. Who else is gonna know whether I got fired or not? Me. I left. I chose to leave. I chose to leave at a time of my own choosing. Not because The company decided that you'd be no use to them when Trump was re elected. Do you want to go into the reasons why I decided? I mean why I decided to be. Okay. And I'm giving you the answer. I left.

I chose to leave. And if Kamala Harris had been elected, do you think you would have stayed? Might have done, might have done. I certainly felt that um I wasn't particularly interested in it didn't really appeal to me or my sort of skill set. uh when I saw that the sort of wasn't just meta, that Silicon Valley as a whole was going to enter into a wholly different relationship with um the the you know, the powers that be with the with the US Can I finish the sentence?

Um, I thought at that point it's I had actually spent most of my time at that company advocating a uh sort of d distance really between Silicon Valley and politicians and I felt that as they clearly are now working sort of hand in glove with each other and you now have the

chief technic you know, technology officers a lot of these big platforms, not just Meta, who actually I think they've been adopted into military regiments that uh are are uh in the US, which are being used to deploy uh the AI inventions of Silicon Valley for

um, you know, the the defence and national security purpose of the United States. They're free to do so. Is that something which sort of interests me? Was that in line with my view about the kind of um division of labour between politics and of course it wasn't.

I guess one way of looking at it is a sort of running theme here. Everything I say you sort of feel is not c y you want me to sort of almost say what you want me to say. Which is that I'm more sort of critical or this. No I'm I'm trying to give it to you as discretionally as possible. Our viewers, our audience and our listeners are

a sense of of what your takeaway is of Facebook, of MetaNow. And and frankly, we all saw that picture of Trump's inauguration with Mott Zuckerberg and others standing right behind him. We We read about him ditching the external fact check. I just wonder, Nick, whether you didn't after seven years thinking

W why have I wasted my time here? Was it all for nothing? I mean, it's right back in Trump's pocket. Because they went to the inauguration. Right back in Trump's pockets. Sorry, you think you think that everything I did for seven years was for naught because they went to the inauguration?

I'm asking you if you feel that way. Do you feel that way? Well self evidently I don't. It was an odd question that because pe because all of the t Silicon Valley leaders collectively went to the inauguration. Would I have gone? No. Is that do I therefore think everything that I did for seven years was w what an odd Well you're certainly quite defensive, but I think it's a fairly natural question. I'm not defensive. I'm be quite open with you. I'm very exasperated.

that you a portray my book as saying something which it doesn't say, which I think is honestly not very phlegmatic about the rights and wrongs and the damages and the I'll tell you why I'll tell you why what you call I'm surprised. Yeah. Because you have a fixed view. And I hate to break this to you. Maybe your book and I'm asking your fixed view is not correct. And what I'm trying to do in the book, amongst other things, is absolutely.

To break down what I think is a tendency for people to just sort of throw rocks at this problem, this issue, and make what I think are simplistic and sweeping assertions. about the role of social media in society, about the role of social media i in politics. And what I try and do, you call it phlegmatically, I try and do it as objectively and rigorously as possible in the book.

And I would urge anyone to read the book and then decide for themselves. I try and lay out what the evidence is. I don't, for instance, think there is evidence to your earlier assertion that social media is somehow wholly, largely, or exclusively responsible for political division and polarization, given that political polarization and division unfortunately has been around since the dawn of time and erupts and re erupts at a whole bunch of different moments in our in our collective

history. So you're right, I don't indulge in'cause I don't believe in indulging in caricatures about complicated subjects. And I've always believed, whether it's in politics, or is it in Silicon Valley, that instead of just sort of dismissing complexity, it is sometimes necessary and more honest to actually engage with it. That's what I try and do in the book.

That's why of course I find it a little bit exasperating we spent what forty minutes with you basically a asking me questions based on a set of assertions.

No. Well I about the stuff. And I've explained on team safety, I think we should go a lot further. We go a lot further than we currently have done. And I d I if you want to know, I'm exasperated on that point because I said to a succession of ministers in the British government Um this government and previous ones, you're not legislating far enough to make age verification watertight. We'll have more from Nick Clegg on the UK and what it felt like to say sorry and have that put to music.

The news agents. Let's talk a bit about the the way the book ends and and you get on to AI. We've talked a bit about the case for the internet staying open. You explain that it is I mean it's already becoming harder with the sort of triangulations we're seeing between Modi and she and Trump doesn't seem to be an open government kind of guy particularly. What about AI? Do you think that governments around the world get how radical this shift is going to be to the workplace, to all of us, to jobs?

I think the honest answer is no one really knows, is is the is the honest answer. Um I think you've got a lot of claim and counter claim again about w what generative AI is and what it's gonna bring. You have a real tendency in Silicon Valley, it's a sort of it's a hype filled place. People are constantly leaping from one hype cycle to the next. And you've got to remember a lot of these people who are making these predictions about

it's gonna put everybody out of work by next Tuesday and so on. You know, they've got they've got technology to sell, they've got to raise money for for the for the latest uh foundation models which are very, very expensive to build. So you've got you've got you've got another you've got another cycle and and we also have a tendency which is a curious one, which is we call it artificial intelligence but we spend all our time anthropomorphizing it. We sort of keep

sort of imbuing it with human qualities. They're machines. They're probabilistic machines. They digest vast amounts of data. There's a whole debate about exactly what kind of data they can ingest, but just vast, vast amounts of data from the public internet and so on. And then they make these connections, these par what are called parameters.

billions of them across the all of that data set and they spit out these probabilistic I was using ChatGPT this morning. It's amazing you ask these questions. It sort of talks to you in a sort of human voice.

But it doesn't it it doesn't sort of know the world. It doesn't it has no conscience, it has no so So I feel we're trapped in an environment where clearly this po this uh this uh technology is very, very powerful, very versatile, seems to me obviously will have some very profound effects on how we shop, how we book our

How do we work? I mean you've got you've got y young adults children kind of entering the work. But again again, it's not the first time that technology has had a very disruptive effect over time on the labour market. We used to live in a country where eighty-five percent of people were in the you know made made their living in agriculture, agricultural mechanisation. I personally think some of the hype about saying it's

It's bigger than fire or the wheel or the printing press is is is excessively breathless. Um I think it is you remember artificial intelligence has been around or talked about since the nineteen fifties. It's an evolution in it. I think there are some jobs where which clearly will get obviously disruptive by by AI, because you'll have AI agents and bots doing things that human beings might do. I think the question I have, and I just d really don't know what the answer is.

is not will it have a sort of an effect on the labour market. Clearly it will. It's I think the more important question is how quickly will it? Yeah. What's the pace?'Cause I think history suggests that Um again, looking at the evidence, that that it's the pace of technological disruption of the labour market w which is the most painful thing. If it's very sudden then I think we as society we've done this before, whether it's through, you know

mm, mechanization, agricultural industrialization and and so on. And on that I just don't know. I th I some ti I think there are some um areas of work where I think it's the impact is going to be quite quick. There are other areas of of the labour market where I actually think the adoption might be much, much more

slower than that. Not least because this technology is quite flawed, remember. It's it you know, don't rely on this technology for if you want absolute accuracy in law or accountancy. I absolutely I mean you can try and fine tune your own models. Chat GPT when it's wrong. It's really funny. Yeah. They sell it when it's wrong. And it apologises straight away. Yeah, yeah. No, exactly. No, exactly. And it'll do it in that slightly uncuous tone which they all which they've all adopted now. So

So uh uh so I think it's I think it is a very powerful technology, it's a very versatile technology. I think there's clearly transformation and things like medical and health diagnostics and others which are are gonna be fantastic.

Um I for me on the labour market question, since that's what you asked about jobs, I think it just all depends on how quickly this is really adopted in workplaces of it. And quite of the early evidence suggests that I think there was an MIT study out a couple of weeks ago which suggested that actually where

executives have tried to introduce it in their companies I think in America, the benefits have been pretty pretty meager. So I think everyone's still trying to work and remember, lots of people have an incentive not to deploy it in their workplace'cause they're worried about their own job. So I think there'll be some resistance.

So I think pace is the thing I'd really look out for. Um and that's a difficult one because I certainly think as far as Britain is concerned, since we're not we're not gonna compete with the American and Chinese companies on building these models in the first place. The area where we might be extract the greatest benefit is actually deploying it more successfully in schools and hospitals and

uh workplaces than in other other c so there's a sort of ambivalence about the pace. I I wanna come back to British politics for a moment. You've been at the heart of government. You will have seen the Keir Starmer sort of mini reset or relaunch yesterday.

I'm sure you wouldn't give him advice, but what would you be doing differently, thinking differently? How would you approach so what we're doing? I don't really follow I don't follow it with much d I th the impression I get is they're still trapped. in a set of judgments or misjudgments they made before they even got into power, which is often the case in politics. Uh boy do I know it. Um See uh what what I the way I see it, because all of this comes really down to

the government and the economy and their commitments to producing growth and why they're failing to do so. And I think So not not small boats, not immigration. I think immigration is super important, absolutely, but they need to get on top of that. I suspect they will over a period of time. I think in the long run, by the next election

This is my guess. My guess, as I think one way or another they'll get on top of this small boat's issue. I think they have to they have to show they have control it. That's I I if I was in government I'd be remorseless on that. I think they I think they one way or another they will. Um I think however it's what people feel about their jobs, about money in their pockets, about you know, w are there

wages rising in real terms and so on. And I think there that's for me the more fundamental problem for this government, which is that the Labour Party and I remember this when I was in coalition, basically spent a decade lying to itself. and its supporters about some of the basic facts of how you run an an open economy with a floating exchange rate like like ours. They ba you know they s vilified any attempt to try and bring any fiscal discipline or any fiscal kind of

constraints to to to um you know the what we what money comes into the government, what money goes out. They fetish this word austerity and so on, even though during the coalition years I can only speak for the coalition years, not what George Osborne and others did afterwards, but during the coalition years we actually reduced the deficit more slowly than George than uh Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling had planned themselves and legislated for. So

They they they became they became so opposed to any kind of th th the sort of basic laws of economic and fiscal gravity. Then late on before they just before they the election they thought, Oh, we m we must try and do something to you know, keep the markets off our back. So they made this totally rash claim of saying we're not gonna touch any of the big

any of the big taxes, uh income tax, VAT and um employee uh national insurance. Well they didn't say employee they said national insurance that's not the same. Oh they said national inside okay. Well that you'll know it better than I do. But anyway I mean which is which which is the big lever?

And then of course they had this endless narrative saying there's not been any growth for fourteen years. Not true. So I mean literally false. The lat latter years of the of the of the coalition. I'm very proud of this. We actually took

um helped certainly the government at the time take a economy which was deeply damaged by the two thousand and eight financial crisis and by the middle uh years of the coalition onwards it was the fastest growing economy in the G seven. So I think if you go into government Tying your hands are necessarily on tact. basically fibbing about the economic record over the last decade and a half uh and being so sort of moralistic and sanctimonious about any attempt to try and um uh introduce fiscal

a discipline to an an economy, you you end up with a result which we have now. Today we have found that long term borrowing rates in this country are now the highest they have been since that financial crash. That is very serious. It means that we're spending about ten percent of our o of of of government revenue just on servicing our debts. And the cost of those long term yields are going up and up and up. We've now got the highest d debt long term debt servicing

costs of any G seven economy. So they're in real, real trouble. They have got no margin m manoeuvre because of those errors. And I don't honestly have I mean I have a lot of sympathy for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves personally. I think they're good, decent people, but I've no sympathy for them politically, because it's a series of misjudgments they've made over the last decade. And I think what they should have done, this is my view, and I felt it at the time, was w when Trump was elected

They came out and they said the world has changed utterly. They were right. And at that point I think they could have carried the country with them if they'd said the the world has changed utterly and we are going to change with it. Um we're now going to face a basically a tariff war with our with our erstwhile. And done what? And borrows.

No, no, I think I th I think they will need to revisit taxation, but you need to do it with a full suite of taxes which were w which um which is So you'd say raise taxes, would you? But it's part of the mix. If you if you're if you're ca if you're facing the highest long term borrowing cost

Since the financial crash in two thousand eight, you have a number of choices. You either you're well you have to generate more revenue, you have to either or reduce spending or you have to raise some taxes, or a mixture of all of them. It'll be a mixture of all of them. It it always is.

But uh but but they've got into such trouble because they've taken off the table the very taxes where actually you can spread the burden most even and I of course I know if you read the Pages of the Guardian and all the other. I I wish it was as easy as that. You y you sure you can put up taxes for the rich. That's never gonna pay for the huge, huge costs that this country now faces. You have to have some broad base.

tax measures included in the mix. You were in government for five years with David Cameron, George Osborne. Do you speak to them still? Do you speak to David? I haven't for a while. I think I'm seeing I think we've agreed to see each other shortly, but no I don't know. Would you call them buddies? No.

Did they screw you? I mean, do you think at the end of it all's fair and love and election? I think you b I think in politics you shouldn't whinge about No no no. I mean by the way, when I said it's just'cause they're not mates'cause I didn't I didn't go into government to find mates. I mean I I've got a rich circle of friends of my own.

But w you know, do we have per perfectly civilised conversations when we meet with with each other? Of course. I I don't h hold any animus. And on politics, you've got you shouldn't go to politics. It you live by the sword, you die by the sword. You know that I made mistakes.

I think I think the coalition government, I think with each passing day In my view, of course maybe I'm you know, maybe I'm not entirely objective, but I think any reasonable assessment would suggest that that government, for that five year period, particularly given what we inherited

in the in the shadow of the terrible financial crisis in two thousand eight was the best government that this country's had over the last decade and a half. And I think the record shows that it was. It was a reforming government. We had the fastest growing G seven economy. We had low employment.

Things we didn't fix were things like productivity and real wage increases were slow to come through and then unfortunately finally started coming through and then everything was undone by that madness of Brexit.

uh which I still think is one of the greatest acts of self harm really in the last century two of t for our country. I was thinking back Nick, I think you did one of the only political mere culpers. I can remember of the last ten years. Put to music. Put to music. What you think of the political apology now? Everyone seems very good at apologising for other

people's misdeeds or what's my political apology. Do you look back and you think, Oh I went out there, I apologised, I then lost my seat, the party tanked, why did I bother? Oh well'cause I don't think it's as simple as that. I don't think it's one event or one apology that makes the political weather. I mean I think y you know look

Smaller political parties in coalitions, unfortunately, seems to be a bit of a rule of thumb across Europe. We're not really a country that has coalitions very often.

first and s hitherto last coalition in the in in in this country in the post war period. But if you look in Holland, if you look in Germany, it's it's I'm afraid it's a pattern over and over again, particularly where centre left ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r

So look, we uh um I do I think if I hadn't made that apology, the outcome of the two thousand of course not. I don't think that would have made the blindest bit of difference. Uh why do you think people don't apologize anymore though?

Oh, because it was this whole sort of, you know, p sort of PR orthodoxy that it shows weakness and that this that I look, uh everyone has to take their own decision. I I I think the Lib Dems and I think we and I think I were in a totally invidious position on this uh issue because

Fees had been introduced by the Labour Party, not by us. It had actually been increased against their own manifesto commitment previously by the Labour Party. We had inherited a report from a man called Mr Brown, which had been commissioned by Peter Mandelson by the Labour Party, to have no upper limit on fees at all, and we'd inherited this thing. Trying to come up with the best possible policy wasn't consistent with our own manifesto. But guess what? I hadn't won the election.

I didn't have a majority. I mean, I think we were in this position but people were you know I guess the the thing that, you know, you've you've had people saying for the last ten years is you could have abstained. You could have just said

You know, you know where my policy is, I know where the Tories are, I'm just gonna abstract. We're in government. I mean i th people don't look at the exact voting record to decide how they it honestly Most normal human beings, thankfully, don't look at politics as closely as you do or I uh I used to and they wouldn't it

Th they would have just looked at a government. Yeah. To be honest, my question was only about the political apology. I was just interested to see whether you think, you know, is the mere culpa dead? Now? Yes.

Um well it s certainly isn't the age of Trump, isn't it? Where you just you literally just do very unscrupulous things and you just you you appear to sort of uh it's just not my style, it's not the way I would have been able to operate. I um I could see sort of how much, you know, kind of controversy and anguish and anger um that decision had taken

uh had made. Uh I try to explain it over and over and over again. Uh you know, of course in politics what they say, if you're explaining you're losing. So, you know, I felt I felt I should try and sort of be open about the fact that of course I regretted that that you know, that that things turned out like that. But if it wasn't that I probably would have found something else to uh, you know, r regret. Guess what? We're all flawed. All governments are not perfect.

uh no government's record is is unblemished. I'm incredibly proud of the coalition. I genuinely think it's the best government this country's had in a very long period of time. But yeah, I kind of I like to think that most voters would kind of Just accept that if you you know, if you feel you've messed up you you kinda say so. But but who knows, maybe maybe that is now out of fashion. If it is, so be it. Nick Clegg. Thanks very much. Thank you.

The news agents. Well, that's it for today. The book I was referencing in that interview was called Careless People by Sarah Wynne Williams. She's been gagged by the company she wrote about in the book, so she's unable to join in future conversations or interviews, but you can catch my original interview with her on the newsagents. The episode's called Inside the Murky World of Facebook. That's all for today. We'll be back tomorrow. See ya then. This is a Global Player original podcast.