Facebook’s Dream Hire Has Made a Bad Start
Zuckerberg and Clegg’s efforts to please EU politicians are falling flat. The need for more robust regulation of the company hasn’t gone away.
Nick Clegg was meant to be Facebook's dream hire for winning over its political enemies. He's off to a poor start.
Photographer: Niall Carson - PA Images/PA ImagesThe forthcoming European parliamentary election was meant to be Facebook Inc.’s big chance to please a constituency that trashes it on a regular basis: Politicians.
After all of the controversy around fake news on the website and the Cambridge Analytica scandal (where Facebook user data was harvested for political purposes), the company hired the former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to help clean up its act. The social network has announced a slew of measures intended to fight misleading news stories and foreign meddling in elections, including: Tougher oversight of political ads, a fact-checking operation, and more content moderators to block abusive content.