Meta exec Nick Clegg blasts Elon Musk's X as a 'tiny' platform for angry elites

• Meta's Nick Clegg criticized Elon Musk's X as a platform for elites and unregulated speech.
• Clegg highlighted X's role in allowing some users to incite far-right protests in Britain.

A top executive at Meta slammed Elon Musk's X on Thursday, saying it has turned into a "tiny" platform designed for elites.

Nick Clegg, Meta's president for global affairs and the former British deputy prime minister, compared X to Facebook and Instagram. He called X an unregulated platform that lets "anyone say anything."

In a talk at a think tank in London, Clegg said that Musk turned X, which he bought in 2022, into "a sort of one-man, sort of hyper-partisan and ideological hobby horse."

Clegg noted that people barred from Meta's platforms were allowed to continue sharing on X and Telegram right before far-right protests and riots that swept Britain last month.

Clegg's examples included Andrew Tate, a self-described "success coach" and misogynist, was barred from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. He also mentioned Tommy Robinson, a far-right activist who is permanently barred from Meta's platforms for repeatedly breaking policies on hate speech.

X said it has 250 million daily active users in a March post, while Meta's platforms had 3.3 billion daily active users, it said in a second-quarter earnings report.

To be sure, Meta has faced its share of public criticism for content moderation.

In the US, Meta has faced criticism for, among other issues, its role in the illicit sale of drugs. Earlier this year, founder Mark Zuckerberg joined other tech CEOs, including X's, for a Congressional grilling about inadequate safety measures for children online. Internationally, Meta's lack of content moderation and reliance on third-party civil society groups to report misinformation have been found to play a role in proliferating violence in Myanmar, Iraq, and Ethiopia.

String of problems

The platform that was once Twitter has taken a dramatic turn since Musk's takeover.

The serial entrepreneur haphazardly launched a paid verification system, which gives users a blue check next to their names. The check was once a coveted status symbol given to verified high-profile users, including journalists, celebrities, politicians, and official agencies, but then became a badge anyone could purchase. The change made it harder for users to spot authentic accounts, and misinformation has flourished on X under Musk's leadership.

In June this year, Musk's platform allowed X-rated content, as long as it was "properly labeled and not prominently displayed."

The platform has also seen a surge in hate speech after the company lowered the guardrails on content moderation, dismantled the Trust and Safety council — which recommended ways in which the social media platform could keep users safe — and promoted baseless conspiracy theories, some from Musk himself.

Things are not going well from a business perspective, either.

X, which runs on premium subscriptions and advertising, said in July 2023 that ad revenue has fallen by about 50%. Major advertisers like Apple, IBM, and Disney pulled their ads after Musk called one X user's antisemitic post the "actual truth." Last month, X also fulfilled its promise to sue advertisers over their boycotting of the platform.

To add to its problems, Brazil suspended the platform earlier this month after it failed to appoint a new legal representative in the country before a court-imposed deadline. Brazil had the platform's fifth-largest user base.

Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story, sent outside standard business hours.