LONDON-- Facebook Inc. has hired one of Britain’s best-known politicians as its top policy and communications executive, giving a Silicon Valley outsider the task of mending the social network’s image as it deals with increased political scrutiny in the U.S. and abroad.
Facebook FB, +0.04% said Friday that Nick Clegg, who as deputy prime minister was Britain’s No. 2 leader from 2010 to 2015, would replace Elliot Schrage, who said in June that he was stepping down.
Clegg starts his new job Monday and will move to California in January. Schrage will remain at Facebook and report to Chief Operating Officer Sandberg as an adviser, focusing for now on helping Clegg transition to his new role, according to a Facebook spokeswoman.
Clegg’s recruitment comes as trust in Facebook has eroded in 2018 and as Silicon Valley faces growing scrutiny from European regulators on several fronts.
Outrage grew this spring over allegations that data firm Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed information on tens of millions of Facebook users and that Russian-backed propagandists had exploited the social network.
More recently, hackers, believed to be spammers, gained access to the private information of 30 million Facebook users.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.
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