If I'm lifting my head because I'm drinking my coffee.
And this wretched headset is too bulky for me
to drink my coffee without moving the headset.
So don't think I'm craning my neck weirdly.
Yeah, some things we can't see.
Nick Clegg was the leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats.
In 2010 he formed a coalition with David Cameron's
Conservatives and became deputy prime minister.
Then that fell apart and the Brexit vote happened
and Clegg took another bruising assignment at Facebook.
Then Facebook became Meta and told us
that the future of technology was immersive digital worlds
known as the Metaverse.
So I was asked to meet Nick Clegg in the Metaverse.
Can I start off...
and you're obviously now much more tech savvy.
Hang on, Henry.
Before we start, can we just turn around?
Look, we have a logo for you, you see?
I just wanted to check that you know that we've provided
all corporate accoutrements.
I mean, I think in your politics you
had a sort of anti-establishment bent.
And does the tech world fit into that?
I think the British political establishment
is in deep trouble and I think it's
an unreformed set of institutions,
which I think are really holding the country back.
And I've long viewed social media
as being something which in the end
is enormously empowering because it allows billions of people
to express themselves in a way they couldn't do before
without being told what to say, what to think, and so on.
What's the decision you found sort of hardest or that's
most brought that home to you?
Oh, I think the Trump decision.
Right.
Which Mark asked me to sort of lead on.
And I really, really wrestled with that because on the one
hand, it seemed entirely clear to me
that what appeared on our platform in Trump's name
transgressed some pretty basic principles.
And there was a very strong case that he
should no longer be entitled to express himself on a platform.
On the other hand, whatever you think of Donald Trump,
he's the former president of the greatest democracy
on the planet.
And it is an exercise of considerable power
on the part of then Facebook to say, no,
you're not welcome on our platform for two years.
And what was interesting was that we got roundly criticised,
interestingly, by people like Angela Merkel and Macron
and others who were saying how...
so it's a classic dilemma, which was that if we had not taken
that decision we would have been roundly criticised probably
by the same people for not acting.
Because, remember, Twitter had said that he
was sort of forbidden for life.
And yet, in taking the action, we're
accused of deploying too much sort of private sector power.
And interestingly, by the way, not that you've asked,
the most difficult one decision I feel we took in government,
which is quite different to what people often expect me to say
and it's also the one I probably regret the most,
was the military intervention in Libya.
I found that absolutely agonising.
And I think we got it wrong.
I thought we got it really wrong.
And it's the one I regret most, actually.
Not interestingly enough.
When did you become convinced it was wrong?
Quite a long time afterwards.
So I'm not going to pretend it was an instant sort of wisdom,
but maybe about a year or so later.
And, of course, at that time, I remember,
oddly, I remember speaking to Biden about it a lot.
And Cameron, obviously, was speaking to Obama a lot.
And they were very, very wary of what we were... the French...
I mean, gosh isn't that an interesting thing, Henry?
To think back to a day where the French and the British
take a joint military decision where now we can't even
agree on fishing licences?
I mean, it's just an amazing illustration
of how the world has changed.
I think when you first met Mark and Sheryl,
you said the problem is that people
think you're too powerful and you don't care.
Yeah.
And that remains the case.
But at the same time Facebook wants to be more powerful.
And Meta, the Metaverse, if successful,
will lead to an increase in Facebook's power
over people's lives.
I think the answer as ever with power is to hold it to account.
One of the things I would love us to do,
and I think we will do this and this is something
that I think many people in the company believes is right,
is just give users much, much, much more control
so the power relationship between the platform
and the user shifts much more to the latter.
That's the first thing you can do.
Second thing you can do is, obviously, regulate.
Put rules in place about elections,
about privacy, about data portability,
about content moderation.
And then the third thing you need to do
is devolve things from decision-makers
in the company where you can, which
is why I think the Oversight Board is so important.
And then the final thing I'd say is
I do think there's a considerable potential
for the kind of fundamentals of blockchain technology,
such that you have a trusted system,
but you have no central authority running
that system, which is in essence the kind of governance
insight of blockchain.
I wonder whether that's something actually
you could start instilling in the Metaverse.
In other words, that you have in the Metaverse
forms of governance where precisely the company is not
in control and is not appearing like Big
Brother over your shoulders.
Do you have an idea of what safety looks like
in the Metaverse?
I.e. will I be allowed to in some kind of Meta environment
walk over and sort of and push you and maybe slap you,
like I might do in a pub?
If you're in Horizon as you are now, right?
That's run by Meta, that's owned by Meta, it's designed by Meta.
Clearly, Meta then has a responsibility
to make sure that you and I have got the controls we
need to keep ourselves safe.
And we have those already, you can literally
at the press of a button you can sort of
make yourself invisible, you can abstract yourself from a space
where you don't feel safe.
You can report to content moderators.
But remember, the Metaverse is far, far bigger
than the Meta Metaverse.
It's far bigger than Horizons.
You will move from this space to a different space, maybe run
and designed by Microsoft, or by Roblox.
The technology of the Metaverse means
that you and I will be able to literally
create rooms ourselves.
We will need to think really hard about the different layers
of responsibility.
It's obvious to me that if you're
a company that is designing the basic operating system,
you have a heavy responsibility for how that operating
system works.
In the same way that Apple and Google
have a heavy responsibility for the way in which Android
and iOS work at the moment.
Could you stay another five years here?
Another 10 years in California?
No, no, no, no, no.
I don't think so.
Not another five years?
I don't know, but I'm such a European at heart.
But through the work, I've got no sell-by date, not least
because I actually think there's some really big things
that I've been working on, particularly
this whole new kind of generational regulation
that I want to see through.
I want to see how this pans out.
It fascinates me.
How's the meeting worked out in the Metaverse?
It's fine.
Was this as good as Zoom?
Well, you tell me, Henry.
I mean, I run my team meetings every Monday morning here
and I like it because I do feel I'm sitting next to you.
How do you feel about it?
I feel...
yeah.
I think as you say, very early, I
don't want to use the word prototype, but rudimentary,
as you say.
I mean, you can see what you're building towards.
That's right, that's right.
That's very well put.
It's by no means the finished product.
Look, we don't even have legs or feet.