(2018-11-14) NyTimes: Delay Deny And Deflect: How Facebook's Leaders Fought Through Crisis

NyTimes: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis. September 2017, more than a year after Facebook engineers discovered suspicious Russia-linked activity on its site, an early warning of the Kremlin campaign to disrupt the 2016 American election. Congressional and federal investigators were closing in on evidence that would implicate the company.

But it wasn’t the looming disaster at Facebook that angered Ms. Sheryl Sandberg. It was the social network’s security chief, Alex Stamos, who had informed company board members the day before that Facebook had yet to contain the Russian infestation. Mr. Stamos’s briefing had prompted a humiliating boardroom interrogation of Ms. Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, and her billionaire boss. She appeared to regard the admission as a betrayal.

Facebook sought to deflect blame and mask the extent of the problem.

And when that failed — as the company’s stock price plummeted and sparked a consumer backlash — Facebook went on the attack.

Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, persuading a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic.

This account of how Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg navigated Facebook’s cascading crises, much of which has not been previously reported, is based on interviews with more than 50 people

Then Donald Trump ran for president. He described Muslim immigrants and refugees as a danger to America, and in December 2015 posted a statement on Facebook calling for a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the United States

Mr. Zuckerberg, who had helped found a nonprofit dedicated to immigration reform, was appalled, said employees who spoke to him or were familiar with the conversation. He asked Ms. Sandberg and other executives if Mr. Trump had violated Facebook’s terms of service.

The question was unusual. Mr. Zuckerberg typically focused on broader technology issues; politics was Ms. Sandberg’s domain.

Some at Facebook viewed Mr. Trump’s 2015 attack on Muslims as an opportunity to finally take a stand against the hate speech coursing through its platform. But Ms. Sandberg, who was edging back to work after the death of her husband several months earlier, delegated the matter to Mr. Schrage and Monika Bickert, a former prosecutor whom Ms. Sandberg had recruited as the company’s head of global policy

The company hired a former aide to Mr. Trump’s new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, along with lobbying firms linked to Republican lawmakers who had jurisdiction over internet companies.

Minimizing Russia’s Role

spring of 2016, a company expert on Russian cyberwarfare spotted something worrisome. He reached out to his boss, Mr. Stamos.

Russian hackers appeared to be probing Facebook accounts for people connected to the presidential campaigns

Ms. Sandberg was angry. Looking into the Russian activity without approval, she said, had left the company exposed legally. Other executives asked Mr. Stamos why they had not been told sooner.

By January 2017, the group knew that Mr. Stamos’s original team had only scratched the surface of Russian activity on Facebook, and pressed to issue a public paper about their findings.

When it was published that April, the word “Russia” never appeared.

By August 2017, Facebook executives concluded that the situation had become what one called a “five-alarm fire,” said a person familiar with the discussions.

After Mr. Stamos and his team drafted the post, however, Ms. Sandberg and her deputies insisted it be less specific

board’s audit committee, chaired by Erskine Bowles, the patrician investor and White House veteran.

The disclosures set off Mr. Bowles, who after years in Washington could anticipate how lawmakers might react. He grilled the two men, occasionally cursing, on how Facebook had allowed itself to become a tool for Russian interference

Later that day, the company’s abbreviated blog post went up.

Just one day after the company’s carefully sculpted admission, The Times published an investigation of further Russian activity on Facebook, showing how Russian intelligence had used fake accounts to promote emails stolen from the Democratic Party and prominent Washington figures.

A Political Playbook

In October 2017, Facebook also expanded its work with a Washington-based consultant, Definers Public Affairs, that had originally been hired to monitor press coverage of the company

Opposition Research

In March, The Times and The Observer/Guardian prepared to publish a joint investigation into how Facebook user data had been appropriated by Cambridge Analytica to profile American voters

Facebook went on the offensive. Mr. Kaplan prevailed on Ms. Sandberg to promote Kevin Martin, a former Federal Communications Commission chairman and fellow Bush administration veteran, to lead the company’s American lobbying efforts. Facebook also expanded its work with Definers.

The rash of news coverage was no accident: NTK is an affiliate of Definers, sharing offices and staff with the public relations firm in Arlington, Va

In public, Facebook was more conciliatory. Mr. Zuckerberg agreed to testify on Capitol Hill.

Thanks to intensive coaching and preparation, the company’s communications team believed, he had effectively parried tough questions at the April hearing. But they worried he had come off as robotic — a suspicion confirmed by Facebook’s pollsters.

Personal Appeals in Washington

Ms. Sandberg began taking a more personal role in the company’s Washington campaign

Her top Republican target was Mr. Richard Burr.

Deflecting Criticism

Facebook also used Definers to take on bigger opponents, such as Mr. Soros, a longtime boogeyman to mainstream conservatives and the target of intense anti-Semitic smears on the far right. A research document circulated by Definers 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.

In at least one instance, the company also relied on Mr. Chuck Schumer, the New York senator and Senate Democratic leader. He has long worked to advance Silicon Valley’s interests on issues such as commercial drone regulations and patent reform. During the 2016 election cycle, he raised more money from Facebook employees than any other member of Congress

Mr. Schumer also has a personal connection to Facebook: His daughter Alison joined the firm out of college and is now a marketing manager in Facebook’s New York office, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Mr. Schumer confronted Mr. Mark Warner, by then Facebook’s most insistent inquisitor in Congress. Back off, he told Mr. Warner, according to a Facebook employee briefed on Mr. Schumer’s intervention

The War Room

late summer

Ms. Sandberg was set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee

Facebook lobbyists had already worked the Intelligence Committee hard, asking that lawmakers refrain from questioning Ms. Sandberg about privacy issues, Cambridge Analytica and censorship. The argument was persuasive with Mr. Burr, who was determined to avoid a circuslike atmosphere. A day before the hearing, he issued a stern warning to all committee members to stick to the topic of election interference.

Nov15: Facebook Cuts Ties With Washington Firm That Sought to Discredit Social Network’s Critics.

Facebook has ended its relationship with a Washington-based consulting firm, Definers Public Affairs, which spread disparaging information about the social network’s critics and competitors, according to a person familiar with the decision.

Top Facebook executives including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were not aware of the specific work being done by Definers, the person said.

After the Times article, other organizations also began re-evaluating their relationship with Definers. One of those was Crooked Media, which runs the popular political podcast Pod Save America. Mr. Miller is a frequent contributor to the podcast.

Nov15: Facebook Moves to Limit Toxic Content as ‘Times’ Scandal Swirls.

Mark Zuckerberg would like you to know that despite a scathing report in The New York Times, which depicts Facebook as a ruthless and selfish corporate behemoth, things are getting better—at least, the way he sees it.

But perhaps the most consequential update is that the Facebook News Feed algorithm will now try to limit the spread of sensationalist content on the platform, which represents a major change from how the social network traditionally has approached moderation

"As content gets closer to the line of what is prohibited by our community standards, we see people tend to engage with it more," he said. "This seems to be true regardless of where we set our policy lines."

6 Questions After The New York Times' Facebook Bombshell

1) What is Sheryl Sandberg’s future at Facebook?

2) What other tech company has been hiring an opposition group to smear Apple?

3) What will the relationship be between prominent Democrats and Facebook in the coming year?

4) What exactly was Facebook doing with its accusations about George Soros?

5) Did Facebook lie about what they knew about Russian operations on the platform during the 2016 election?

6) Has the company fundamentally changed in the past two years?

Zuckerberg Defends Company in Friday Meeting with Employees

The idea that Facebook tried to “cover up anything” was dead wrong, an impassioned Mr. Zuckerberg said, using an expletive in his response, according to these people. Some employees responded with muted applause and cheers

In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Mr. Zuckerberg criticized what Definers had done on behalf of his company and said he and Ms. Sandberg were not aware of the specific work the outside firm was doing. He added that someone on the company’s communications staff probably hired Definers, although he later complimented the communications staff for their “hard work.”

Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg said the Times’s investigation was “completely unfair” and at times “simply not true.”