Former Meta exec Nick Clegg: American dominance of the internet is over

As AI takes over the web, Clegg said Meta and other tech companies still don’t appreciate some of the fundamental shifts that are about to occur, like the fact that they will no longer have the legal protections that enabled the modern internet.

Clegg joined Meta in 2018, when it was still called Facebook. The platform was then embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal and accused of allowing misinformation that skewed elections in the US and other western countries, and led to massacres in places like Myanmar.

But Facebook and other companies had a legal shield, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which essentially deterred lawsuits over content posted by their users.

With AI, companies like Meta are going to have a direct relationship with users via their AI chatbots, possibly opening them up to liability. “I don’t think people in Silicon Valley have remotely got their head around what it means,” Clegg said, when courts say “It’s you, Sam Altman, it’s you, Satya Nadella, it’s you, Mark Zuckerberg, because it’s your AI entity.”

Meanwhile, he says, the massive social graph that was Meta’s competitive moat is “not as unique as it used to be,” as social media has become more akin to traditional media, albeit with algorithmically recommended or, nowadays, synthetically generated content.

Online social networks are getting smaller and more intimate, as young people organize into group chats and segment their identities across different platforms.

As US hegemony in today’s global internet wanes, the machinery that made it all possible in the first place is being taken apart, Clegg said in the interview, pointing to cuts to research funding at universities and stricter immigration policies. “American universities suck in the very best brains from around the world, support them to do research and PhDs in the most important, cutting-edge technologies, and then spit them out to populate the most competitive companies in the world,” he said. “That flywheel is an extraordinarily powerful one.”

Whether Clegg is right or wrong about how the US should deploy AI technology around the world and “save the internet,” there’s a bigger question: Why are we still talking about the internet?

As Clegg notes in his book, the innovations that power today’s internet were conceived of more than 50 years ago. The US was so far ahead, there was no competition, and therefore no discussion about “how to dominate.”

It was a byproduct of an effort to beat the Soviet Union. The internet was as much a result of the space race and ICBMs as it was standards like HTML and HTTP.

It’s true that AI has changed everything and will change the internet, but we are still looking at the world through an outdated lens. The next big thing feels close, but we still don’t know what it looks like.

There’s a good chance that it comes out of the US. But right now, as Clegg noted in his interview, bad policy decisions are hurting its chances.

Clegg’s charitable view of Zuckerberg and Meta have drawn the ire of critics who believe he’s playing the role of apologist for an out-of-control industry. Here’s an example of a book review from The Telegraph:

Your worries about tech, too, are misplaced. Social media has not turned our politics into one long shouting match between competing tribes of brain-poisoned imbeciles. It’s fine that children under five now start slamming their head against the wall if they have to spend 10 seconds without a screen. There is nothing creepy about targeted advertising. Not only is AI not going to kill us all, it will help us to overcome gender inequality. If students are now incapable of writing 500 words of their own thoughts, that’s just progress! Everything is going great.