Jennifer McKiernan
Billionaire and X owner Elon Musk could become a "political puppet master" in the US, former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has said.
Clegg, who is now Mark Zuckerberg's second-in-command at Meta, where he is the president for global affairs, made the comments to Nick Robinson's Political Thinking podcast.
When asked whether Musk was a threat to democracy, Clegg said the entrepreneur had been "playing an outsized role" in the US election and in the formation of the new Trump administration.
He also stood by comments labelling Meta's social media rival, X, a "one-man, hyper-partisan, ideological hobbyhorse".
The former Liberal Democrat leader, who served as deputy PM to David Cameron in 2010's coalition government, swapped Westminster for Silicon Valley after losing his Sheffield Hallam seat to Labour in the 2017 general election.
In 2022, he was promoted to a senior role by Zuckerberg, with responsibility for policy as well as communication and a reported bonus of £10m on top of his £2.7m annual salary.
He has been the voice of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, on a range of highly controversial issues since then.
In his interview with Nick Robinson, he spoke about how his role was making judgements about how to balance freedom of expression with protecting audiences from harmful content on Meta.
In contrast, Musk has spoken of his mission to "remove all the censorship" from X, with Clegg saying "you can't move [on X]... for want of tripping over stuff from the person who now privately owns it".
When asked if Musk was "a threat to democracy", Clegg said: "I think Elon Musk is obviously now playing an outsized role in both the election and now the formation of the new US administration.
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