Elon Musk is a ‘political puppet master’, says Clegg
Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says billionaire and X owner Elon Musk is becoming America’s “political puppet master”.
Clegg, who is now Mark Zuckerberg’s No. 2 at Meta and the company’s president of global affairs, made the comments on Nick Robinson’s Political Mind podcast.
Asked whether Musk posed a threat to democracy, Clegg said the entrepreneur “played a huge role” in the US election and the formation of the new Trump administration.
He also stood by his comments calling Meta’s social media rival X “a one-man, hyper-partisan, ideological Trojan.”
The former Lib Dem leader served as David Cameron’s deputy prime minister in the 2010 coalition government before moving from Westminster to the Valley. Lost Sheffield Hallam seat to Labor in the 2017 election.
In 2022, he Promotion to senior positions Zuckerberg is responsible for policy and communications and reportedly received a £10 million bonus on top of his £2.7 million annual salary.
Since then, he has been a spokesperson for Facebook and Instagram owner Meta, speaking out on a range of highly controversial issues.
In an interview with Nick Robinson, he talked about how his role balances free speech with protecting viewers from harmful content on Meta.
In contrast, Musk talked about his mission to “eliminate all censorship on X” and Clegg said “you can’t move[onStumble””
Asked whether Musk “posed a threat to democracy,” Clegg said: “I think Elon Musk obviously has a huge role now in both the election and the formation of the new government in the United States.
“I think he’s going to face a choice – he can be a fervent and wealthy supporter… or he can try to be a political… puppet master that goes far beyond Trump , deciding who the next Republican candidate should be and the one after that, and so on.”
He added that people are familiar with the former because “rich people” often participate in politics, but the latter “is very different from the general tradition of American democracy.”
The former Lib Dem leader also highlighted the benefits of generative artificial intelligence, scoffing at the idea that the technology would “turn us all into paperclips by next Tuesday”.
He claimed that concerns that “artificial intelligence will destroy democracy” are overblown, especially concerns that democracy will be “subverted by artificial intelligence deep fakes” in 2024, a year with the most elections in global history.
While he admitted that didn’t mean there weren’t deepfakes or attempts to use AI to spread misinformation this year, he said “broadly speaking, a dog that doesn’t bark is AI” and safeguards within the industry mean it isn’t. The end of the world”.
“When we talk about near-fictional fears, it has a paralyzing effect,” he added, urging a renewed focus on tackling “real” issues around child sexual abuse, deepfakes and disinformation.
Responding to criticism from activists and governments that Meta is not doing enough to tackle harmful content on its platform, Clegg said: “I don’t think anyone is doing enough.
“I think the question of how kids interact with the online world, how often they use smartphones, how they use social media apps is one where you should never think the job is done.”
