Nick Clegg: What really happened at Facebook?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 September 2025
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nick Clegg worked intimately alongside Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook/Meta for seven years. He departed Silicon Valley in January and has written a new book - How to Save the Internet - and given his first broadcast interview to The News Agents.
Is the world wide web as we know it being dismantled? Does he still see social media as a force for good? Could it impact an election? And how much did Zuckerberg care about the impact the product has on children’s health? We chat AI, British politics, and why he suspended Trump from the platform...
The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.1 | This is a global player original podcast. It's not often that we get the chance to speak to somebody |
| 0:15.2 | right at the heart of the world's biggest social media company. Nick Clegg was the president of |
| 0:20.7 | global affairs at Meta, that's formerly Facebook. |
| 0:24.4 | He was also our deputy PM in the coalition years alongside David Cameron. |
| 0:29.5 | He left his job there in January, just before Trump returned to office. |
| 0:33.6 | Did I make sure while I was there, not least, perhaps notoriously in the case of suspending Trump, that if the community standards were broken, sanctions and penalties were applied? Yes, I did. |
| 0:44.7 | Do you think it cost you your job? |
| 0:47.2 | What? The defendant, I suspended Trump? No, I left. I didn't. Are you sure? Am I sure I left? |
| 0:52.8 | I mean, are you sure you didn't get fired? That's a really weird question. Who else is going to know whether I got fired or not me? I left. I chose to leave. I chose to leave at a time of my own choosing. He's the author of a new book, How to Save the Internet, and he's given his first broadcast interview to us, the news agents. We discussed the power of Facebook, good and bad, |
| 1:12.3 | what it was like to work in the heart of the beast alongside Mark Zuckerberg, and how he finds |
| 1:16.9 | UK politics in 2025. Welcome to the Newsagents. |
| 1:25.8 | The Newsagents. |
| 1:32.8 | Sir Nick Clegg worked at Facebook, now Meta, from 2018 until earlier this year. |
| 1:39.6 | It's a company with three and a half billion active users a month through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. |
| 1:42.6 | It reaches more than any other media platform in the world. |
| 1:46.2 | His new book asks questions about what it does with all this power. |
| 1:50.8 | He sets out a plan for global cooperation, offers thoughts on the AI future. |
| 1:53.5 | He also has lessons for the current UK government. |
| 1:56.5 | And I ask him how he looks back on his apology. |
| 1:59.0 | I'm sorry. over tuition fees. |
| 2:07.7 | Nick Clegg, I've just finished reading your book, How to Save the Internet. |
... |
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