‘If the individuals who ran Fb have been monsters, I wouldn’t have labored there’: Nick Clegg on tech bros, Trump and leaving Silicon Valley

[ad_1] T he rain is simply beginning to fall from a gray London sky as Sir Nick Clegg arrives, ducking by the site visitors and carrying what appears to be like like his laundry. Clear shirts for the photoshoot, he says, earlier than apologetically questioning if he would possibly presumably get a espresso. Inside minutes he has additional apologised for desirous to swap the leather-based membership chair he's provided for a tough plastic one; after which, in horror, for any impression inadvertently provided that my questions would possibly ship him to sleep.

Impeccable English manners ought to by no means be mistaken for diffidence – at 58, Clegg stays the one British political determine who may convincingly be performed by the equally posh however self-effacing Colin Firth, whose outdated London residence Clegg just lately purchased – however there are backbench nobodies extra grandly self-important than the previous deputy prime minister who grew to become quantity two on the tech large Meta. Which can be simply as properly, given rumours that his subsequent supporting function could also be to his lawyer spouse Miriam González Durántez’s nascent political profession in Spain. It seems she “by no means actually settled” within the land of the billionaire tech bro, certainly one of many causes the couple swapped poolside life in Palo Alto, California, for London virtually three years earlier than he left Meta, which owns and operates Fb, Instagram and WhatsApp. “She’s fomenting rebellion in Spain now,” Clegg says of España Mejor, her non-profit aimed toward bringing residents into policymaking.

It’s virtually as if the marital tables have turned. “Yeah, properly, she’d be a significantly better politician than I,” he laughs. Every week later, rumours floor that González Durántez would possibly take into account main a brand new Spanish liberal occasion.

If Clegg ever wanted to fade gracefully into his spouse’s political shadow, as Invoice Clinton did for Hillary, I believe he’d be snug with that. He has completed 15 powerful years on the frontline: first because the Liberal Democrat chief in a Conservative-led coalition authorities, usually defending or apologising for the compromises that accompany energy; adopted by one thing not dissimilar however higher paid as president of worldwide affairs at Meta.

Are studies that he earned £100m in wage and inventory choices over seven years in Silicon Valley true? “I’m positive they’re incorrect, however I haven’t put the … ” He wriggles. “I used to be paid extraordinarily properly. I really feel extraordinarily lucky.”

Both means, maybe what his critics most wish to know is whether or not he actually was dedicated to the trigger, or offered out to large tech for the cash. “I’m afraid the reality is worse than they think about,” he says genially. “I actually do consider that, regardless of its imperfections, social media has allowed billions of individuals – particularly billions of people that usually cultural elites like us within the developed world don’t take into consideration, throughout Africa, Latin America, Asia – to speak with one another in a means that has by no means occurred earlier than.”

So this nice human experiment in bringing a billion individuals into one another’s properties was price it? “Something that empowers individuals to specific themselves, I've a really visceral liberal view that could be a good factor. And all of the proof I’ve come throughout suggests the web impact may be very constructive.” It’s what comes subsequent that considerations him. His new ebook, Find out how to Save the Web, warns of the hazards posed to a free and open international web by an age of autocrats and a titanic energy wrestle over AI.

Clegg introduced his departure from Meta simply weeks earlier than all of the tech titans – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, his personal former boss Mark Zuckerberg – have been photographed lining up obediently at Donald Trump’s inauguration. The timing was no coincidence: Clegg anticipated Trump to win, however hadn’t foreseen “fairly the alacrity with which the entire of Silicon Valley was going to maneuver from what it was once I moved there, which was cautious of politics, to in search of to be joined on the hip with the brand new administration”. Having lengthy argued for Meta to remain out of politics, evidently that was Clegg’s purple line.

Nonetheless, he insists his exit was “very civilised”. He received’t criticise the measures introduced days after he left – together with changing skilled factcheckers on Fb and Instagram with a Wikipedia-style system of customers correcting misinformation, plus loosening the constraints round posting on scorching matters akin to immigration or gender – to cut back what Zuckerberg known as “censorship errors”. A course correction, Clegg insists, was not illogical. “I believe it was affordable to say, significantly across the time of the pandemic, that we barely overdid it. More often than not I used to be there, the strain from authorities and, dare I say it, from papers just like the Guardian, was all the time ‘take down’.”

In Silicon Valley, everybody wears the identical garments, drives the identical vehicles, listens to the identical podcasts. It’s herd-like behaviour However did he agree with Zuckerberg telling the manosphere-friendly Joe Rogan podcast the identical week that company life wanted extra “masculine vitality”, and a tradition that “celebrates the aggression a bit extra”? There's a pause. “It’s probably not me,” he says flatly. “I don’t actually know what to say about that.” Effectively, he may simply say what he thinks?

“After I take into consideration all the issues of society, I don’t suppose the one factor we want is extra masculinity,” he begins slowly, then immediately he’s off, at an more and more indignant gallop. “You’d suppose, wouldn’t you, that should you have been immensely highly effective and wealthy like Elon Musk and all these different tech bros and members of that podcast neighborhood, that you just’d mirror in your luck in contrast with most different individuals?

However right here’s the fascinating factor.” His tone grows extra scathing. “In Silicon Valley, removed from pondering they’re fortunate, they suppose they’re exhausting completed by, they’re victims. I couldn’t, and nonetheless can’t, perceive this deeply unattractive mixture of machismo and self-pity.”

He insists he’s not directing any of this towards Zuckerberg personally. “And please don’t painting it as such – it's a cultural factor, from Elon Musk’s chainsaw-wielding stuff to any Silicon Valley podcast. If you happen to’re accustomed to privilege, equality appears like oppression.”

It’s not the primary time the idea of recognising your personal privilege enters our dialog – Clegg jokes that returning to London helped keep away from the youngest of their three sons, 16-year-old Miguel, rising up “a spoilt Silicon Valley brat” – however it appears probably the most heartfelt, for causes maybe rooted in his personal childhood.

N ick Clegg was born in Buckinghamshire, the third of 4 kids of a half-English, half-Russian banker father and a Dutch mom who as a toddler survived internment and near-starvation in a brutal Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. These early experiences left their mark: Clegg and his three siblings, although privately educated, have been raised to not take their gilded lives with no consideration and by no means to waste meals.

Of the three bubbles by which he admits to spending his working life – Brussels as an MEP, then Westminster as an MP and at last Silicon Valley – Clegg discovered Westminster “probably the most unbearable, partly simply due to the residing on previous glories and the pomposity of it”.

Charismatic and good, he was tipped for the management earlier than he even arrived in parliament in 2005. However even he appeared faintly disconcerted by Cleggmania, that feverish interval in 2010 when voters unconvinced by Gordon Brown or David Cameron determined that they, too – in what grew to become the catchphrase of the first-ever televised election debate – agreed with Nick. In hindsight, Cleggmania foreshadowed a a lot angrier pressure of populist revolt towards the mainstream to return.

But it surely couldn't survive him becoming a member of Cameron in coalition. The Lib Dems received battles – over free faculty lunches and tax cuts for the low-paid – however by no means recovered from having to defend profit cuts and renege on their pledge to scrap tuition charges. After their crushing defeat within the 2015 election, Clegg may solely watch from opposition as Cameron known as and misplaced a Brexit referendum that also enrages him. (Every time his former companion is talked about, he noticeably stiffens: once I say I’d heard Cameron envied his fancy job and recent begin in California, his solely response is a clipped, “I can’t touch upon how different individuals really feel.”) He's satisfied Britain will rejoin the EU inside his lifetime, and if he ever noticed that debate resuming, “I’d drop the whole lot – whether or not to stuff envelopes or man the barricades.”

In 2017, Clegg misplaced his seat to an underwhelming Labour candidate later jailed for fraud. But it surely wasn’t the worst factor to occur that 12 months; within the autumn the couple disclosed that their then 15-year-old eldest son Antonio had undergone remedy for most cancers. (Now fortunately recovered, Antonio and his youthful brother Alberto have stayed within the US for college and work.) Coincidentally, that summer season the household had holidayed in California to have fun the top of Antonio’s chemotherapy, which meant when the then Fb government Sheryl Sandberg approached Clegg a few job in 2018, “lets say to the boys, ‘Do you wish to return and stay within the place we’ve simply holidayed in?’”

With the then British prime minster David Cameron en path to a coalition cupboard assembly in January 2012 … {Photograph}: WPA/Getty Pictures … and together with his spouse, Miriam González Durántez, on the Liberal Democrat autumn convention in October 2014. {Photograph}: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Pictures The concept of beginning over in sunny, can-do California clearly beat “making an attempt to relitigate the battles of the previous” again residence. But it meant leaping from the frying pan into the fireplace of an organization accused of swinging the 2016 election for Trump, ruining youngsters’ psychological well being and failing to cease its platform in Myanmar getting used to assist incite violence towards the Rohingya minority, by which 1000's died and greater than 700,000 fled.

Clegg insists he wouldn’t have joined the corporate if he wasn’t satisfied Fb needed to alter. However, crucially, he additionally has the unwavering dedication to free speech – even when what is claimed is offensive – of a liberal raised in pre-internet instances. He fought pitched battles in authorities with then residence secretary Theresa Could over on-line state snooping, and is uncomfortable now to learn of British police making 30 arrests a day for allegedly offensive social media posts.

It clearly rankles that the case totally free speech is argued loudest not by liberals however by Reform chief Nigel Farage – who just lately criticised the introduction of age verification on social media websites, meant to cease kids seeing authorized however dangerous content material akin to pornography – and US vice-president JD Vance. “There may be nothing I discover extra stomach-churning than the brazen hypocrisy of Trump administration members flying first-class over to Europe and pontificating about being the good defenders of free expression, after they then fly again to intimidate and bully their opponents,” Clegg says. It’s within the US, not Europe, he notes, that international college students cleanse their social media feeds to keep away from deportation. But he warns that if crackdowns on so-called on-line harms – odious however not unlawful materials – turn out to be all-encompassing, they are going to be politically exploited. “The Farages of this world will get extra of a listening to the extra imprecise these boundaries are.”

Regardless of his libertarian instincts, Silicon Valley was a tradition shock. In an trade obsessive about Chinese language rivals, Europe barely figured (the one British situation individuals requested about was Harry and Meghan, a topic he views with “shoulder-shrugging indifference”). And although his ebook is in elements very humorous – Musk beaming into an AI summit through video hyperlink from his non-public jet like “a hostage video shot on the Loss of life Star”; then tradition secretary Nadine Dorries demanding he take down a controversial tweet, seemingly unaware Meta doesn’t personal Twitter (now X) – Clegg quickly realized to not make jokes at work, after one ice-breaker about not bringing your “genuine self” to the workplace elicited stony silence.

Although he liked exploring the good open air together with his sons, he discovered Silicon Valley “cloyingly conformist”, regardless of its claims to radical disruption. “Everybody wears the identical garments, drives the identical vehicles, listens to the identical podcasts, follows the identical fads. It’s a spot born of immense type of herd-like behaviour.”

But whilst an outsider, Clegg nonetheless sees tech as a power for good. His ebook was conceived as a plea to protect the open move of data and cash throughout borders, in a time of drawbridges being yanked up. But it surely additionally confronts claims that social media has made us angrier, dumber and sadder, mainly by arguing, in true centrist dad type, that it’s truly extra sophisticated than that. “You don’t simply swap your telephone on, scroll, then immediately one thing occurs to your neural pathways to make you suppose and really feel belongings you by no means did earlier than.”

I want Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves took greater swings. What they’ll be taught, which I realized, is you solely have one crack at it The proof linking social media use with kids’s psychological well being is weaker than usually advised, he argues, with some troubled youngsters discovering consolation on-line; however he acknowledges it’s not all the time the case for susceptible individuals. In 2021 a whistleblower leaked inner Instagram analysis suggesting a worrying variety of ladies already scuffling with points akin to physique picture reported that utilizing social media made the troublesome instances worse.

Clegg doesn’t disagree with calls for brand spanking new age limits on kids’s social media use. “I can't consider a greater choice that needs to be taken by parliaments, not by tech bros.” He thinks 13- to 16-year-olds ought to have separate social media, with age restrictions enforced through app shops when kids first arrange their telephones.

Equally he argues within the ebook that affective polarisation – hostility to individuals with totally different political opinions – began rising within the US earlier than mass use of social media, and even fell in some international locations as social media use elevated. Does he suppose the sway it holds over politics now is kind of unhealthy than that wielded by outdated media kingpins akin to Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre? “I believe it’s far more unhealthy within the arms of individuals like Dacre as a result of he’s well-known for simply kneecapping individuals he doesn’t like for political ends. No tech bro goes to do this, as a result of the individuals who run the platforms, they don’t generate the content material.”

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His arguments are made with the fluency of somebody who has been delivering them professionally for years, and he’s proper that trigger and impact isn’t simply confirmed right here. However is he actually claiming social media has nothing to do with the rise of Trump, Reform or violent flashpoints akin to final 12 months’s Southport riots (partly fuelled by posts wrongly describing the killer as an unlawful immigrant)?

He does concede that virality is new and might, as seen in Myanmar, “create new perils. Does it imply the anger of the mob is invented by social media? In fact not. Pol Pot, the Thirties, the pogroms – all of this stuff occurred properly earlier than social media.”

But when, as he argues, it wasn’t social media, then what did depart Britain so “knackered and sullen and out of puff”? Clegg blames the “near-death expertise” of the 2008 banking crash, adopted by what some would name his authorities’s crippling austerity measures, then Brexit and a “power wasted decade” of political paralysis. “I keep in mind so vividly in 2015 pondering, oh, lastly. Individuals’s earnings began rising above costs in 2015 after years of this bone-crushing strain on wages. And it actually flipped in a single day in 2016.”

T he one time he appears genuinely flustered is when requested about Careless Individuals, a memoir by ex-Meta government Sarah Wynn-Williams – who left the 12 months earlier than he joined – portray an image of poisonous tech bros uncontrolled. Meta, which initially sought an injunction stopping the writer selling it, insists the ebook incorporates “defamatory and unfaithful allegations”.

Wynn-Williams claims she was requested by Sandberg to affix her in mattress on board the company non-public jet. Did Clegg witness something like that? “No. I haven’t learn it for superb causes. You’ll need to ask her why she wrote it eight years after she left, I’m writing mine eight months after asserting leaving Meta.”

However you needn’t have learn it to reply the query? “They’re situations in time once I wasn’t there. I didn’t see any of that.”

Wynn-Williams additionally accuses her boss, Joel Kaplan – later Clegg’s deputy, now his successor – of sexually harassing her. (Meta calls this “deceptive and unfounded”, saying an inner investigation cleared Kaplan, and Wynn-Williams was fired for “poor efficiency and poisonous behaviour”.)

“I don’t know something about these topics,” Clegg says. “Joel Kaplan was all the time an exceptionally respectable, diligent, principled man who labored with me, so I can’t provide you with a operating commentary on a ebook I haven’t examine an individual I don’t know at a time once I wasn’t even on the firm.” Now he’s getting agitated: “If individuals need, ‘Oh, he’s left Fb, he’s now going to sentence them’ – after all I’m not, that’s not what my ebook is about. It’s not how I really feel, and even when that’s how I felt, I wouldn’t then write that ebook.

With Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in 2018. {Photograph}: through Sheryl Sandberg/Fb “If I felt Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg have been the monsters different individuals say they're, I don’t suppose I might ever have labored there … Are there issues the place I very strongly disagree with them? Are there errors they’ve made? You wager there are, a lot of which they’ve acknowledged. However, , on the finish of the day I arrived at that firm satisfied these have been two individuals who recognised it wanted to alter dramatically and took me on to ship the change.”

The reforms he fought for included creating an impartial oversight board to adjudicate large choices, akin to whether or not to droop high-profile customers, and commissioning impartial analysis monitoring the affect of varied measures – banning political advertisements, or switching feeds to chronological moderately than algorithmic order – on management teams of customers throughout the 2020 election. “The wildly underwhelming conclusion was it makes virtually no distinction in any respect to how individuals truly vote.”

He additionally launched new parental controls, together with the flexibility to restrict kids’s time on Instagram – although the Cleggs didn’t ration their very own boys’ display screen time. “We’ve all the time simply talked to them quite a bit about what they're seeing – I’ll discover out in 20 years if it’s completed any good. Fortunately I've football-obsessed boys, so that they spend all their time taking a look at clips of the most recent Messi purpose.”

After I ask about his hardest day at Meta, I’m half anticipating one thing just like the suicide of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who had been viewing self-harm pictures on Instagram (the coroner dominated she died “whereas affected by melancholy and the unfavourable results of on-line content material”). However, as a substitute, he picks the “very, very uncomfortable” choice he took to droop Trump from Fb in 2021 for incendiary posts throughout the Capitol Hill riots. “I discovered that actually weighed on me very closely and nonetheless does as a result of, on the one hand, I felt very clearly that the content material guidelines of the corporate had been violated and, alternatively … it’s an unelected non-public firm making a call that impacts the general public realm. And he was the outgoing president of the world’s strongest democracy.”

He would nonetheless defend the choice, however the precedent set troubles him. “Ultimately, in a democracy you need democratically accountable figures to thrash it out.”

Having seen America’s descent into rightwing populism, does he suppose Britain can keep away from that destiny? Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are “respectable individuals”, he suggests, however maddeningly cautious. “I simply want they took greater swings. It’s all these countless half measures – a bit reform right here, a bit step in the direction of Europe there, a bit placation in the direction of Trump. What they’ll be taught, which I realized, is you solely have one crack at it.” For all of the coalition’s flaws, he says, it was daring. “I keep in mind sitting round a desk with Cameron and [George] Osborne saying, ‘Look, that is coalition authorities, it’s in all probability not going to final, let’s simply go for it.’”

Labour ought to, he argues, be pinning the failures of Brexit on Farage. “His one greatest achievement was a catastrophe. It’s made us poorer, weaker, much less related, extra anxious, extra inward-looking.” Nor does he suppose they'll stay near each Trump and the EU. “On the finish of the day, we as an island should determine. There will probably be a selection between Europe and America,” he says exasperatedly, citing Vance’s help for the far-right AfD throughout elections in Germany. “This was American political interference in home election contests in Europe, far more overt than something the Russians ever did.” He was horrified by Vance’s now-infamous Munich speech, which argued the actual risk to Europe was from unchecked migration and exclusion of the far proper. “It’s hiding in plain sight, it's important to select.”

{Photograph}: David Vintiner/The Guardian. Grooming: Alice Theobald at Arlington Artists utilizing Rhug Wild Magnificence and Charlotte Tilbury In January, he made his selection. However Silicon Valley selected very otherwise. Why did the once-liberal scions of tech fall in so quick behind Trump? It wasn’t simply in hopes of avoiding harder regulation, Clegg argues: he thinks the shared willpower to win an arms race with China over AI created an unhealthy alliance between American tech, navy and political elites, exemplified in Musk’s quasi-government function as chainsaw wielder-in-chief. For democracy’s sake, he was relieved when the president received a current standoff with the unelected Musk over deliberate tax cuts. “Anybody who cares about ensuring these tech bros are held in test and the individuals we elect are in cost – no matter else one would possibly take into consideration him, it was necessary that the political received.”

Having labored on the high of each fields, Clegg rejects the concept that tech firms are extra highly effective than governments. “They don’t decide the curriculum of your youngster’s historical past classes, or whether or not you ship individuals into conflict, or increase or decrease individuals’s taxes.” But he recounts a dialog with the then British chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who identified that Meta may afford to do issues your complete British state couldn't, like ploughing “70 billion quid” a 12 months into constructing AI infrastructure. And therein lies the ebook’s warning.

5 years from now, Clegg predicts, “agentic” AI – bots who will navigate duties on-line for us – will probably be routinely embedded in our telephones, or maybe in wearables akin to glasses. They’ll do the whole lot for us from “me being reminded of my mum’s birthday, to reserving a vacation, to recommending songs you want”.

A lot of the content material we’ll see will probably be AI-generated by platform homeowners, who’ll construct and personal the underlying infrastructure on which this AI-powered future relies upon. AI could possibly be empowering, he argues, liberating people from tiresome admin. However the extra we depend on it simply to stay our day by day lives, the extra energy and wealth may accrue to the handful of firms controlling it. “When energy will get concentrated in so few arms for such intensive social affect – means greater than social media … ” Clegg pauses. “I don’t suppose these firms will proceed to have social permission to function.” Is he saying these are circumstances for social unrest? “Sure.”

He suspects AI will eat human jobs extra slowly than forecast, “at a tempo we will socially adapt to” if we’re fortunate. “Having stated that, I believe there are probably the substances for pitchfork fury at this small elite of individuals accruing huge, huge wealth, whereas there's quite a lot of turbulence and adjustment and ache”. If large tech push their luck, he argues, they threat being nationalised.

Will individuals like his outdated boss hear? “I believe these firms will realise, in the event that they’re good, they’re not going to have the ability to lord it over society like some sci-fi film.”

His personal subsequent step, he says, is making an attempt to forestall the European tech trade getting sidelined, as he fears it's “hurtling in the direction of museum standing. The scenario is a lot worse than individuals respect.” American GDP has rocketed away from Europe’s within the final decade, he factors out, making a painfully apparent disparity in existence. “Take a look at the Cotswolds, it’s turn out to be a type of Disney for wealthy People.” However, largely, he needs to maintain making the case for the longer term, moderately than for retreating into the previous. “If you happen to worry the whole lot new, you'll do nothing for worry that one thing would possibly go incorrect,” he says passionately. “The entire level of being progressive is to suppose that tomorrow will probably be higher than right this moment, that you just’re excited in regards to the potentialities of the longer term.” Although in politics, no less than, that future now not belongs to him.

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