Facebook is set to call on lawmakers to draw up tighter regulation for global tech giants, signalling the company’s openness to sweeping changes to the rules governing online content.

Speaking ahead of a major speech today, Nick Clegg, who became Facebook’s head of global affairs and communications in 2018 after serving as the UK’s deputy prime minister from 2010 to 2015, said that responsibility for new rules on removing harmful and violent content from its platforms was not something the company “can or should” do on its own.

Calling for a widespread examination of regulation for social media platforms and search engines, the former Liberal Democrat leader told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It's not for private companies, however big or small, to come up with those rules, it is for democratic politicians in the democratic world to do so.”

Clegg said there was a “pressing need” for action to regulate internet standards on user privacy, election rules, data and the definition of hate speech.

In a speech scheduled for this afternoon, Clegg is expected to make the case for collaboration between governments, regulators and major tech giants, including Facebook, to draw up rules on internet content.

His intervention comes after a report compiled by MPs on the digital, culture, media and sport committee looked into Facebook’s role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the data of millions of Facebook users was harvested by the data analytics firm and used for political advertising.

In February, the committee called for stricter regulation to put a stop to the spread of fake news on Facebook’s platform and alleged that founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg had failed to show “leadership or personal responsibility” over the issue.

Clegg said that Facebook had conducted its own analysis into whether Russia had been able to use Facebook’s platform to influence the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum and had found “absolutely no evidence” of a direct link.

“Much though I understand why people want to sort of reduce that eruption in British politics to some kind of plot or conspiracy - or some use of new social media through opaque means - I'm afraid the roots to British Euroscepticism go very, very deep,” said Clegg.

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