$1MILLION FACEBOOK PAYDAY FOR CLEGG ... but will he get tech giant to pay its fair share in tax?
NICK Clegg was branded a hypocrite yesterday for taking a seven-figure job with Facebook after saying the company should pay more tax.
The former deputy prime minister will be chief spin doctor for the controversial US tech giant, which has been embroiled in a string of scandals.
The multi-billion-pound social media firm has come under fire for allowing terrorist propaganda, far-Right hate speech and child sex abuse images on its website.
Facebook has also been accused of allowing Russians to interfere in the US election, spreading ‘fake news’, risking the data security of millions of users and shamelessly avoiding vast sums in tax.
The social network also owns the encrypted service WhatsApp, which has been criticised for allowing terrorists and paedophiles to plot crimes in secret because the messages cannot be decoded by security services or police.
Sir Nick – who quit as Liberal Democrat leader after his party’s disastrous collapse in the 2015 election – has been brought in to shore up Facebook’s sinking reputation. He will move to Silicon Valley in California to become the company’s highly paid head of global affairs and communications.
Sir Nick is likely to attract a salary of at least $1 million (£765,000), plus share options on top that could make him millions more. But the appointment raised eyebrows because the 51year-old former MP, who lost his Sheffield Hallam seat at last year’s general election, has been critical of Facebook’s paltry tax contributions in Britain.
In a newspaper article two years ago, Sir Nick wrote: ‘I’m not especially bedazzled by Facebook. While I have good friends who work at the company, I actually find the messianic Californian new-worldy-touchy-feely culture of Facebook a little grating. Nor am I sure that companies such as Facebook really pay all the tax they could.’
And speaking at a conference in London last November, he said: ‘The big five [techs firms] are in danger of being seen in the same light as bankers or even politicians. Some of that anger, for example on tax, is in my view both predictable and legitimate. The big firms have much more to do to prove that they are good global citizens.’
But Sir Nick has since defended Facebook and claimed it was ‘unfairly caricatured’ by critics.
In a newspaper column entitled ‘In defence of Facebook’, he said: ‘I know Mark Zuckerberg et al are regularly criticised for not doing enough to stop fake news and extremism, and doing too much to mine our data for the benefit of advertisers, but a threat to the continued existence of humankind? Hardly.
‘It’s time we pause for breath before everyone charges off in a stampede of condemnation.
Last night Tory MP Tim Loughton, who sits on the Commons home affairs select committee, said: ‘There is a whiff of hypocrisy about this. It will certainly surprise a few people. Given his record of being critical of social media sites being used for harmful content, maybe he can be a major influence on his new employer to take seriously how their platform is hosting hate speech, extremist content and other vile material.’
Labour’s digital spokesman Liam Byrne added: ‘In 2010, Nick Clegg boasted to the Lib Dem conference that tax avoiders and evaders must have nowhere to hide. So I’ll be asking for a meeting to hear about his plans for Facebook to start doing the right thing.’
Fellow Labour frontbencher Jon Trickett, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: ‘It is a damning indictment of the sorry state of our country’s politics that, at a time when digital giants such as Facebook are rightly coming under public scrutiny, our former deputy prime minister has been hired to lobby on their behalf.’
Sir Nick is the most senior European politician to take up an executive role in Silicon Valley. Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s founder, is understood to have spent several months personally ‘wooing’ him.
The ex-Lib Dem leader will move permanently to California with his lawyer wife Miriam Gonzalez-Durantez and their three sons in January.
One senior executive in Silicon Valley told the Daily Mail: ‘This is yet another male hire in a very male-heavy management team. They could have found a woman, but these companies just want to hire people who look like them. It’s infuriating.’
Facebook and other social media giants have been hit with a series of scandals about vile content on its platforms. Politicians and police say the firm needs to do more to remove online terrorist material such as bomb-mak-
‘Hate speech and extremist content’
ing manuals and beheading videos from their sites.
A scathing report by the home affairs select committee in 2016 found that the giant tech firms, including Facebook, were putting lives at risk by allowing Islamist fanatics to radicalise the young and vulnerable by spouting hatred, extremism and murder.
Earlier this year it emerged that the personal information of 87million Facebook users had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a data company that used the information to allegedly sway the 2016 EU referendum and help Donald Trump win the US presidency.
The social media giant also admitted that a security flaw in its systems had allowed criminals to break in and effectively take control of millions more profiles.
The hack potentially gave the cyber-attackers access to vast amounts of personal data, including people’s addresses, email accounts and even bank details. It is one of the biggest cyber-hacks ever recorded.
In an interview with the Financial Times last night, Sir Nick said: ‘I never wanted to go into lobbying. I never wanted to be an emissary for a company. Of course I will advocate, that will be part of my role, and communicate what Facebook is doing.
‘Whether one welcomes or fears the data-driven tech revolution in front of us, these questions are questions which I don’t believe can be ducked. You can’t wish away technology. It’s a really big dilemma to say where free speech ends and undesirable content begins.’
Sir Clegg said of Mr Zuckerberg: ‘I’ve been very struck at how mindful he is of the wider responsibility a company like Facebook carries.’ Taxing online giants – Page 12