Key Points
- Former Meta executive Nick Clegg warned that tech companies and politics “don’t mix very well.”
- The new U.S.-China deal for TikTok is a prime example of this dangerous trend. He questioned whether the deal would truly protect U.S. user data and the handling of the algorithm.
- Clegg is worried about a global trend of “data localization,” which could fragment the internet.
- The U.S.-China rivalry is the biggest threat to the future of the open internet.
Former Meta global affairs chief Nick Clegg has a simple message for the tech world: stay out of politics. He said Friday that people should feel “uneasy” when tech companies get involved in the public space, pointing directly to the new deal to keep TikTok alive in the U.S. as a perfect example of this messy mix.
“I generally don’t think that politics and tech innovation mix very well,” Clegg told CNBC. “I think it’s quite good when they kind of keep each other at a certain, respectful distance.”
While the TikTok deal is intended to address national security concerns, Clegg raised two major red flags. First, will American user data truly be safe and protected from surveillance? Second, who really controls the powerful recommendation algorithm? He called the idea of sharing the algorithm “quite difficult.”
Clegg’s bigger worry is that the TikTok deal is part of a dangerous global trend of “data localization,” where countries force companies to keep all data related to their citizens within their own borders. He warned that if this trend continues, the “dominoes will start to fall,” and the open, global internet as we know it will begin to break apart.
He identified the tense relationship between the U.S. and China as the single biggest risk to the internet’s future. He fears that other major countries, such as India, might follow China’s lead in creating a walled-off, state-controlled internet, thereby shattering the original vision of a single, open web.
