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Hello and welcome to TechScape. Happy new year! May dry January leave us all with fewer headaches. Today on TechScape: Meta promotes a Trumpian bulldog, TikTok faces growing problems that aren’t a ban, Meta faces a backlash against its approach to AI, and Elon Musk meddles overseas.
Nick Clegg, former deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom, is now Meta’s former head of global affairs. He announced his resignation on Thursday after six years at the tech giant. He spent two years in the company’s top political position.
In announcing his departure, Clegg wrote: “It truly has been the adventure of a lifetime! … I hope I have played some role in the quest to bring together the very different worlds of technology and politics.” He sold nearly $19 million in Meta stock during his time at the company and owns about $21 million more. He could return to British politics as the party he once led, the Liberal Democrats, won a record number of seats in last year’s general election.
You can see from the titles of Clegg’s books what a politician from a less polarized era was like: Politics: Between the Extremes (and How to Stop Brexit (and Make Britain Great Again). He missed neither of his shots. on goal with these books: We live in extreme times and Brexit was not stopped. Donald Trump is president of the United States again, and Meta’s country of origin has. moved further to the right than when Trump first won the White House. Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, so well connected in Democratic circles, is no longer even on Meta’s board. Clegg no longer keeps up with the times.
Clegg is a centrist and stated in 2011 that his party’s policy was that of the “radical centre”. More than a dozen years later, political centrism has collapsed, unable to compete with the superlative appeal of the extremes, especially on Facebook.
Clegg is also a globalist in an age of protectionism and nationalism, having in his previous career led the European Commission’s trade negotiations with China and Russia. A global policy perspective makes financial sense at Meta, which has users in all corners of the world. This viewpoint flies in the face of “America First,” which is a problem when Mark Zuckerberg is donating a million dollars to Trump’s inaugural fund and showing off his Meta Ray-Bans during dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
Replacing Clegg is his right-hand man, Joel Kaplan, hired in 2011. The promotion foreshadows a more partisan era for Meta as a company and Facebook as a social network. Kaplan has championed conservative causes inside and outside of Meta. Domestically, he has pressured Meta to partner with right-wing news websites to fact-check; placed prominent Republicans in key roles; and advocated for Facebook not to restrict fake news, arguing that such a crackdown would unfairly penalize conservatives. However, he defended the nomination of conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. When Kavanaugh was called to testify about sexual assault allegations, Kaplan sat behind him, visible in the Senate chamber aisle seat.
Social networks are inseparable from politics in the last 15 years, so we can infer that they influenced the disappearance of centrism. Kaplan has successfully advocated for easing algorithmic restrictions on Trump on Facebook. It is ironic that both Clegg’s employer and his top deputy helped bring down his favorite political philosophy.
Clegg said he hoped to bridge the gap between the tech industry and politics. Kaplan, I predict, will take an approach that treats the two as one. In 2025, they will be. Kaplan, who served in George W. Bush’s White House alongside Karl Rove, is already involved in Republican networks. He is entangled in American conservative politics. Regardless of whether you agree, his profile fits the trend of the moment: Elon Musk is inevitable at Mar-a-Lago. Venture capitalists are taking on official White House roles and unofficial advisory positions. Silicon Valley right-wingers are inseparable from San Francisco politics. With Kaplan on the rise, Meta is well positioned to take advantage of the Trump presidency.
TikTok faces a second war in the US: lawsuits for child exploitation
If TikTok evades a ban in the United States (unlikely at this point, in my opinion), it will face another problem: a series of lawsuits by state attorneys general over the video app’s alleged use in child exploitation. . My colleague Dara Kerr reports:
TikTok has long known that its live video streaming feature has been misused to harm children, according to details recently revealed in a lawsuit filed against the social media company by the state of Utah. Those harms include child sexual exploitation and what Utah calls “an open-door policy that allows predators and criminals to exploit users.”
The state attorney general says TikTok conducted an internal investigation in which it found that adults paid teenagers to “undress, pose and dance provocatively” using its live streaming feature, known as TikTok Live. Another internal investigation showed that TikTok Live was used to launder money, sell drugs and finance terrorist groups, according to the lawsuit.
Utah’s case against the company is part of a wave of lawsuits filed by U.S. attorneys general for alleged exploitation of children. In October, 13 states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against TikTok on similar grounds as Utah.
Read More: TikTok Knew Its Live Streaming Feature Enabled Child Exploitation, State Lawsuit Alleges
Meta’s approach to generative artificial intelligence is to integrate it into all distribution points available to the company. Any search bar in a Meta product (Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger) now hosts an iridescent blue circle that you may have clicked on by accident. Zuckerberg likes to say that the company’s AI is the most used in the world. However, on Friday the company faced backlash against its experiment with fully AI-generated profiles on its social networks that were managed by the company itself. Meta’s intention, declared to the Financial Times, underpins the particular profiles mentioned here and imbues them with a more foreboding quality. My colleague Johana Bhuiyan reports:
after newsletter promotion
Meta removed the Facebook and Instagram profiles of AI characters the company had created more than a year ago after users rediscovered some of the profiles and engaged them in conversations, screenshots of which went viral.
The company first introduced these AI-powered profiles in September 2023, but removed most of them in the summer of 2024. However, some characters remained and generated new interest after Meta executive Connor Hayes, told the Financial times Late last week, the company had plans to roll out more AI character profiles.
“We expect these AIs to exist, over time, on our platforms, in more or less the same way that accounts do,” Hayes told the Financial Times. The automated accounts posted AI-generated images on Instagram and responded to messages from human users on Messenger.
Read more: Meta is killing off its own AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles
Elon Musk gets involved abroad
Elon Musk is increasingly putting his fingers in the politics of other nations. He has endorsed the German far-right AfD party in an op-ed. He spent the weekend tweeting loudly about “grooming gangs” in the UK. He has called on British politicians to release jailed far-right anti-Islam agitator Tommy Robinson, prompting him to rebuke UK reform leader Nigel Farage, whom Musk just met at Mar-a-Lago a few weeks ago.
In France, Emmanuel Macron spoke about the influence of the richest man in the world, in particular about Musk’s support for the AfD: “Ten years ago, who would have imagined that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support to a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in the elections, even in Germany.”
Musk is starting to take an interest in Canadian politics, which is where I think he will focus all his attention next. Justin Trudeau has resigned and Musk tweeted “great interview” about Jordan Peterson’s conversation with Canadian conservative politician Pierre Poilievre on January 2.
On the morning of January 6, the fourth anniversary of the attempted pro-Trump insurrection at the US Capitol, Musk asked his X followers to vote in a poll: “The United States should free the British people from their government.” tyrannical”. About two-thirds of them voted in favor.
In the few weeks left before Trump takes office, American politics appears to be in Musk’s rearview mirror. However, he continues to tweet. Rick and Morty Screenshots about how taxes pay for the lavish lifestyles of elite pedophiles, continuing their descent into Pizzagate territory, a distinctly American phenomenon.