Former Britain Deputy Prime Minister Sir Nick Clegg appointed as the head of global affairs at Meta

Facebook’s growing technology and its involvement in recent scandals have prompted the company to hire more influential figures lately who can present their case properly before critics. Sir Nick Clegg who was once a leading candidate for Britain general elections, is now serving as one of the most powerful executive at Facebook. His task is that of representing the company in any affairs outside facebook.

Nick Clegg is not new to Facebook

He had been hired back in 2018 as a Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications. Nick Clegg's appointment had come as a blessing to Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg, as she was the one who was responsible for being the face of the company in any media appearance or senate hearings, which means she had to bear the brunt of any new controversial statement or policy by Facebook.

Accusations on Facebook

Nick’s first appointment in 2018 came in at a time when Facebook was under severe criticism from Politicians and leading figures for various reasons, some of them being allegations of privacy breach better known as Cambridge Analytica scandal, Russian meddling in 2016 US Presidential elections and Facebook's alleged silence about it and other accusations such as taking extreme steps to kill off any competition to it and its daughter products.

Moreover, the policy by Facebook which allowed political ads to be run without fact checking was a big cause of concern. It allowed Presidential campaigners to spread misinformation and dangerous content, maligning the rival candidate by using Facebook's powerful audience-reaching tools. All of it went unchecked.

Ever since these allegations surfaced, Facebook has been struggling with keeping cordial relations with US senator, lawmakers and has been trying its best to prevent any law being passed which is against its interests. Many had been proposing the breaking off of Facebook. Facebook's low point came when Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren promised to break Facebook if she was elected the President. Similarly, Senators like Nancy Pelosi who were known to have good relations with Facebook and specially its COO Sheryl Sandberg, are now raising their concerns.

Facebook's lobbying

Ever since then, Facebook has been allocating bigger and bigger sums of money to its lobbying projects. Around 2018, Facebook's Washington office had been second to only one other company in spending big amount of money on lobbying within the Congress. It had hired notable Conservative and Democrat figures as its lobbyists. Facebook has a history of alternating favours between Conservatives and Democrats, and has been accused by both the parties of being aligned to their opposing party. After Donald Trump appeared as victorious in 2016 presidential elections, Facebook took the bold step of hiring one of Trump's former election campaigners who was known to have good access to the President. Facebook thought of using his knowledge of Trump's tech preferences and notions, to its advantage.

Now as Nick Clegg has been granted a decent promotion, it is clear that mending fences with Congressmen is one of facebook's top priorities at the moment. Nick Clegg's reputation among the political class is well known and his promotion may have good affects on Facebook's reputation abroad and at home.