As open internet is fragmenting and democracies aim to control Big Tech, Silicon Valley adopts an American-first agenda, and authoritarian regimes like China and Russia to isolate their populations from the internet, the most powerful tool for bringing us together risks being dismantled.

Nick Clegg, Meta’s former President of Global Affairs, reveals where Big Tech has faltered, how Silicon Valley’s insularity has led to mistakes, and the necessary radical reforms for global platforms to ensure their future.

While new regulations are crucial, imposing national borders on the internet would undermine its capacity for sharing knowledge collaboration, education, trade and research, and ultimately, for the empowerment and improvement of billions of lives.

Nick Clegg once received a call from Nadine Dorries, the former UK secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, demanding that he take down tweets by Vladimir Putin.

“I had to explain to her that Twitter was a different company and that Putin didn’t have a Facebook page”, recalls Clegg in How to Save the Internet.

Nick Clegg, who has been a UK deputy prime minister and an EU parliamentarian  who steered the lobbying of a Big Tech giant, by offering a strident defence of his former employer, a whistle-stop history of internet, and highlighting some possible benefits of artificial intelligence.

How to Save the Internet: The Threat to Global Connection in the Age of AI and Political Conflict by Nick Clegg, Bodley Head £25, 320 pages.