Sir Nick Clegg has said he quit his position with the US tech giant Meta over concerns the company had "embraced Maga politics" and pandered to the shifting political climate.
Speaking on The Rest is Money podcast, the former Deputy Prime Minister said Mark Zuckerberg's attempts to "seek approval" with Donald Trump were "of course" linked to his exit last year.
Sir Nick accused Silicon Valley executives of aligning themselves with the Trump administration for reasons that were partly "self-interested".
He told the podcast that Meta had "changed utterly" from the organisation he joined seven years earlier in 2018.
"I mean, to put it mildly, it was not exactly the kind of thing that appealed to me," he told the podcast.
During his tenure at Meta, Sir Nick served as president of global affairs, reportedly earning £2.7million annually.
Financial records from the social media company revealed he accumulated at least £24million through share sales during his seven years with the firm.
After initially relocating to California, the former Liberal Democrat leader found Silicon Valley to be a "happy-clappy" environment that leaned to the left politically.
The former deputy prime minister said Meta had 'changed utterly' from the organisation he joined in 2018
| GETTYHowever, Sir Nick said: "Fast forward to now and the whole of Silicon Valley, not just Mark Zuckerberg, but all that you saw that in the inauguration have decided to, rather than shun politics, which is what they did for a long time, in my view, sensibly, they've decided to embrace at least Maga politics for a whole bunch of reasons, some no doubt high-minded and some more self-interested."
He departed his role as Mr Zuckerberg's second-in-command in January last year, following Donald Trump's election victory – succeeded by Joel Kaplan, a Republican lobbyist and advocate for free speech.
Around the same period, Mr Zuckerberg contributed $1million to Mr Trump's inauguration fund and scrapped the platform's fact-checking system in favour of community notes, mirroring the approach used by X.
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The company's rightward trajectory continued with the appointment of Dana White to its board.
The UFC chief executive, who is also a longstanding ally to Mr Trump, played a central role in organising the President's controversial White House cage fight event scheduled for June 14.
Mr Zuckerberg had previously backed progressive immigration reform, with his 2021 decision to remove Mr Trump from Instagram and Facebook following the January 6 riots.
However, Sir Nick took aim at technology companies for switching stances depending on the political climate.
Mark Zuckerberg had previously backed progressive immigration reform
| GETTY"I actually just think as a sort of businessperson, I don't think it's sensible business to flip-flop every time the political weather changes in Washington," he told podcast host Robert Peston.
On the contentious matter of content moderation, he argued it was wiser to avoid aligning with any particular political faction when navigating such sensitive territory.
"So absolutely no hard feelings or anything, but it was just a very good time after seven years for me to move on," the ex-Liberal Democrat leader added.
In a Guardian interview last year promoting his book, How to Save the Internet, Sir Nick described Silicon Valley's culture as exhibiting a "deeply unattractive combination of machismo and self-pity."
The former party leader now serves on the board of NScale - a cryptocurrency-mining firm constructing Britain's largest AI data centre.