Nick Clegg is doing the same dirty work for Meta he did for the UK’s Tory party
New besties?
A new era of protection?
Clegg’s hiring in October 2018 as vice president of global affairs – essentially a well-connected lobbyist and spokesman – was meant to publicly allay all the fears surrounding the company. The former Liberal Democrat leader has emphasized his status as an outsider to Silicon Valley who cut his teeth by making difficult compromises as the junior partner in David Cameron’s coalition government of 2010-15.
Heargued thatthere’s an analogy here when it comes to regulating extremist content on social media platforms. For example, he hasadvocated fora bipartisan approach to data protection in the US that would include setting up a new digital regulator. Overall, however, manyhave wonderedwhether Clegg has changed anything at Meta beyond a slight change of image.
With his promotion, Clegg is now supposedly being given carte blanche to ensure Meta adheres to and promotes an ethos of data fairness and protection. Yet this announcement sounds similar to Google’s pledge to reduce itssystemic social biasesin its algorithms, where search results reinforced prejudices around issues like race and sometimes drove users to extremist content. In 2018, it hired the brilliant computer scientist Timnit Gebru to help address and solve this problem. Yet it very publiclyfired herwhen she sought to bring about real changes to the company.
It is unclear if this could be Clegg’s fate as well if he seeks to be a genuine reformer at Meta – the suspicion is that he would not have been promoted had he fought for real change over the past three years. If that sounds cynical, it would certainly be in line with a broader trend in the corporate world towards “ethics washing” – using PR to make the public think you are being ethical without meaningfully altering your behavior.
Examples abound, perhapsmost famouslyin companies making cosmetic appeals in their advertising or public statements to the need for sustainability while continuing to pollute and push back against stronger regulations. Similarly, firms have taken public stands again racismwithout necessarilypracticing what they preach. Scholars such as Professor Carl Rhodes, with whom I have writtena book, refer to this as the era of “woke capitalism”.
Clegg-washing
Ironically, Nick Clegg has gone through his own early political version of such “washing”. As part of the coalition government, Clegg and his party had hoped to use their position to fight for lower universitytuition feesandenvironmental sustainability. In retrospect, Cleggwas arguablypart of a Tory branding exercise, giving them cover to impose economic austerity.
As far as Meta is concerned, what has to be acknowledged is that the company’s problems are not the result of a few “bad apples”: violating people’s data privacy to sell back to advertisers and ensure they continue using the platform has been fundamental to the business model.
The language of the statement announcing Clegg’s hiring was telling. Zuckerbergdeclared that:
The emphasis was on shaping public policy and perception, not necessarily creating stronger measures for protecting people’s data rights.
Ultimately, Clegg’s hiring shows the power of public pressure, even for a huge tech conglomerate like Meta. The debate about the extent twhich our digital society should be publicly owned and democratically controlled will most likely grow even stronger in the years to come. But if Meta does not change with Clegg’s elevation, we will look back on this as just another example of ethics washing – but this time around privacy?
Article byPeter Bloom, Professor of Management,University of Essex
This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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