INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Facebook is facing calls to conduct an external investigation into its own lobbying and PR activities by an aide to billionaire George
Soros.
BuzzFeed reports that Michael Vachon, an advisor to the chairman at Soros Fund Management, made the call in a letter to friends and
colleagues.
The call follows an explosive investigation, published yesterday by the New York Timesbased on interviews with more than 50
sources on the company, which paints an ugly picture of how Facebook leadership team responded to growing pressure over election
interference, in the wake of the Kremlin ads scandal of 2016, including by engaging an external firm to lobby aggressively on its
behalf.
The firm used smear tactics targeted at Soros, according to the NYT report, with the paper writing that: &A research document
circulated by Definers [the PR firm engaged by Facebook] to reporters this summer, just a month after the House hearing, cast Mr
Soros as the unacknowledged force behind what appeared to be a broad anti-Facebook movement.&
Wikipedia describes Definers as &an American
right leaning opposition research firm… [that] performs media monitoring services, conducts research using the Freedom of Information Act
and also creates strategic communication to negatively influence the public image about individuals, firms, candidates and organizations who
oppose their clients&.
Facebook has since responded to the NYT article, rejecting some of the report as inaccurate — and denying outright
that it ever asked Definers to smear anyone on its behalf.
&The New York Times is wrong to suggest that we ever asked Definers to pay for
or write articles on Facebook behalf & or to spread misinformation,& the company writes
&Our relationship with Definers was well known by the media & not least because they have on several occasions sent out invitations to
hundreds of journalists about important press calls on our behalf.
&Definers did encourage members of the press to look into the funding of
‘Freedom from Facebook,& an anti-Facebook organization
The intention was to demonstrate that it was not simply a spontaneous grassroots campaign, as it claimed, but supported by a well-known
To suggest that this was an anti-Semitic attack is reprehensible and untrue.&
In a follow up report today theNYTsays Facebook cut ties with
the PR firm on Wednesday, after the publication of its article.
In his letter, Vachon describes it as &alarming that Facebook would engage
in these unsavory tactics, apparently in response to George public criticism in Davos earlier this year of the company handling of hate
speech and propaganda on its platform&.
&What else is Facebook up to The company should hire an outside expert to do a thorough
investigation of its lobbying and PR work and make the results public,& he adds.
We contacted Facebook for a response to Vachon call for an
external investigation of its internal conduct
A company spokesman just directed us to its earlier response to the NYT article.
Facebook has recently faced calls for an external security
and privacy audit from the European parliament in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.
And calls for its CEO and founder
to face up to international politicians& questions over fake news and election interference
Although Zuckerberg has continued to decline to attend.
So the external pressures keep piling up…
A damning story about Facebook which
underlines why we need to hold their top people to account & Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook Leaders Fought Through Crisis
https://t.co/cwJmKVR3qD
— Damian Collins (@DamianCollins) November 15, 2018
The title of the NYT article — &delay, deny and deflect&
— hints at the meaty reportage within, with the newspaper presenting a well-sourced view of Facebook management team grappling ineptly and
then cynically and aggressively with an existential reputation crisis by reaching for smear tactics associated with the worst kind of
politics.
&[Facebook COO Sheryl] Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook critics, shift public anger toward
rival companies and ward off damaging regulation,& the newspaper writes.
It also alleges that Facebook knew about Russian activity on its
platform as early as the spring of 2016 but was slow to investigate.
Again, in its rebuttal, Facebook rejects that characterization —
claiming a less inept early handling of the political disinformation threat
&Leading up to Election Day in November 2016, we detected and dealt with several threats with ties to Russia … [including] a group called
APT28 … we also saw some new behavior when APT28-related accounts, under the banner of DC Leaks, created fake personas that were used to
seed stolen information to journalists
We shut these accounts down for violating our policies,& it writes.
It also denies its then CSO, Alex Stamos, was discouraged by senior
management from looking into Russian activity.
Although Stamos clashing with Sandberg over the Russian disinformation threat has previously
been causally linked to his departure from Facebook this summer
(And in an internal memo that BuzzFeed obtained earlier this year Stamos does admit to having had &passionate discussions with other
execs&.)
&After the election, no one ever discouraged Alex Stamos from looking into Russian activity — as he himself acknowledged
onTwitter,& Facebook writes now, rejecting that portion of the NYT report
&Indeed as The New York Times says, &Mark and Sheryl [Sandberg] expanded Alex work.&
Facebook has also denied treating Donald Trump comments
about Muslims — when in December 2015 the US presidentposted a statementon Facebook calling for a &total and complete shutdown& on Muslims
entering the United States — any differently to &other important free speech issues&.
On this the newspaper sources told it that Facebook
management team had delegated key decisions on whether or not Trump post constituted hate speech to policy staffers who &construed their
task narrowly& yet were alsomotivated by worries about stoking a conservative backlash.
The post was not deleted
And the NYT writes that it was shared more than 15,000 times on Facebook — &an illustration of the site power to spread racist
