Mark Zuckerberg still has too much control of Facebook despite putting Nick Clegg in hot seat

tech.hindustantimes.com:

 Facebook has always been good at telling a story. After a whistle-blower revealed astonishing harm caused by the company’s products to the mental health of teens and others across the world, the company changed its name and got everyone talking about the metaverse instead. Now Mark Zuckerberg has announced that his top policy executive, Nick Clegg, is being promoted and taking over the tough job of navigating an upcoming legal and regulatory minefield. The new story: Zuckerberg is relinquishing control and allowing Meta Platforms Inc. (Facebook) to be steered by a sophisticated public-policy savant.    

But this announcement is actually doing two things. Yes, it is handing off much of Zuckerberg’s responsibility around policy, relieving him of uncomfortable duties like answering to lawmakers and allowing him to focus on building and monetizing the immersive world he wants us all to one day inhabit. Zuckerberg has grown noticeably tired of apologizing for Facebook’s noxious side effects and has spent much of the past year in his Hawaii compound. He publicly ignored the whistle-blower’s disclosures for weeks, permitting Clegg to take those slings and arrows.   

It also creates an illusion that someone else might take a different line on policy. Why else give them more sway? “We need a senior leader at the level of myself,” Zuckerberg wrote of Clegg in a Facebook post on Wednesday night. 

Clegg was already the most senior policy official at Facebook. He will go from reporting to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, to reporting to both Sandberg and Zuckerberg. But Clegg was already in the room with both; this isn’t so much a step up as shifting an inch closer to the person who is really in the driver’s seat.

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