Facebook says it stepped in where officials failed in creating oversight board

Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president of global affairs, told ABC's "This Week" that the company's oversight board is a solution where elected officials have abdicated.

Driving the news: Clegg defended the platform's two-year suspension of former President Donald Trump, after recent criticism from Trump about the company's right to censor or silence free speech.

• Asked to address calls to break up Facebook to diminish the company's power over public political speech, Clegg said, "My own view, for what it's worth, is the answer is not break up — the answer is regulation."
• "American democracy does not belong to Silicon Valley, it belongs to the American people and the people who should set the rules for how American democracy plays out," he added.
• Clegg clarified that the company's new policies on public figures regulate the incitement of violence, not lies.

"In the absence of regulation, in the absence of consensus from lawmakers on where we should draw the line, we have tried our best. ... [I]t's the first of its kind anywhere. No other Silicon Valley company has done this — this independent oversight board to hold us to independent account.

But all of that, I agree, is an inadequate surrogate for what in the long run we need, which is societal rules set by democratic process — by lawmakers, not by private companies."

Go deeper: Facebook sets Trump ban at two years in response to Oversight Board ruling