Former Meta exec Nick Clegg offers careful criticism of ‘cloyingly conformist’ Silicon Valley

Meta’s former policy chief Nick Clegg seems to be walking a tightrope as he promotes his upcoming book, “How to Save the Internet.”

Unlike certain other Meta employee memoirs, “How to Save the Internet” doesn’t sound like a tell-all or a scathing critique. And in an interview with the Guardian, Clegg (who previously led the U.K.’s Liberal Democrats) seems to distance himself from Silicon Valley without quite disavowing his former employer.

“I really do believe that, despite its imperfections, social media has allowed billions of people … to communicate with each other in a way that has never happened before,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t have worked for Meta “if I felt Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg were the monsters other people say they are.”

Still, he delivered memorable sound bites about the Valley, describing it as a “cloyingly conformist” culture where “everyone wears the same clothes, drives the same cars, listens to the same podcasts, follows the same fads.”

Clegg also sounded be mystified by the industry’s growing obsession with masculinity, saying, “I couldn’t, and still can’t, understand this deeply unattractive combination of machismo and self-pity.”