Embattled Facebook enlists famous politician as new head of global affairs
Sandberg boasts of Clegg’s experience with complex issues
Facebook, which seems to be in the perpetual hot seat, on Friday named former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg to a crucial role.
Clegg will be the social networking giant’s new head of global affairs and communications, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in a Friday morning Facebook post. He will succeed Elliot Schrage, who announced in June that he would be leaving.
“Our company is on a critical journey,” Sandberg said in her post. “The challenges we face are serious and clear and now more than ever we need new perspectives to help us though this time of change.” She added that Clegg’s “experience and ability to work through complex issues will be invaluable in the years to come.”
Facebook is dealing with the aftermath of its Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the political data consulting company accessed the information of up to 87 million Facebook users without their permission. That crisis brought CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Washington for two days of Congressional grilling in April.
Last month, Sandberg testified at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, where she was asked about social media’s role in foreign interference in U.S. elections, charges of Facebook being biased against conservatives and more. Facebook is not alone in being under the regulatory microscope — other tech giants are under pressure, too, as their influence grows. Sandberg appeared alongside Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey at that hearing. And Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who was conspicuously absent at the time, is scheduled to have his turn in front of lawmakers in the coming weeks.
Clegg, who led the Liberal Democrats for several years and was Britain’s No. 2 politician from 2010 to 2015, could be instrumental as Facebook seeks to improve its relationship with European regulators, who have been setting their sights on U.S. tech giants. For example, European politicians and
regulators have been criticizing how little the companies pay in taxes — Clegg has been one of those critics — and Facebook is on that list.
Appointing a politician in an operational role — not a board seat — makes Facebook management look “clueless,” said tech analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.
“Politicians are a mixed blessing in that they may have some influence on their own party but would likely be perceived negatively by those in competing parties,” Enderle said Friday. “Coming from the U.K., which is undergoing Brexit, would further reduce their effectiveness in the EU where Facebook has its greatest problems.”
Speaking of problems, Clegg will be dealing with plenty of those on behalf of Facebook when he moves across the pond.
More recently, the company disclosed another problem that could further erode user trust and increase calls for its regulation: Hackers gained access to the information of tens of millions of users.
In addition, a new lawsuit accuses Facebook of inflating its ad-watching metrics up to 900 percent — and knowing about the error for more than a year before disclosing it.
To top it all off, there are new calls for Facebook to separate the CEO and chairman roles, both of which are held by Zuckerberg. Facebook shareholders have rejected previous efforts, but now public officials in four states — who oversee public pension funds that invest in the company — have submitted another proposal. But Facebook’s stock-ownership structure assures outsize control by Zuckerberg: He owns about 60 percent of voting shares.