It’s ‘untrue’ Facebook hindered Russia investigation

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded to many of the claims in a lengthy investigation from the New York Times, which claimed the social network’s leaders were reluctant to address how Russia manipulated the social network to interfere with the 2016 election.

In a conference call with reporters, Zuckerberg acknowledged that the company was slow to act, but denied that it had hindered investigations by its security team.

“I’ve said many times we were too slow to spot Russian interference,” Zuckerberg said. “To suggest we weren’t interested in knowing the truth or wanted to hide what we knew or wanted to prevent investigations is simply untrue.”

The New York Times report, which was based on months of investigation and dozens of interviews, had said that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and the company’s Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos, had clashed over how to deal with Russian interference. Tensions between the two had been previously reported, but the latest report went much farther, stating that Sandberg had admonished Stamos for investigating the issue without prior approval and for his discussions with Facebook’s board.

The report also detailed Facebook’s work with Definers, a public relations and consulting firm whose staffers directed inflammatory coverage of Apple and other Facebook rivals. 

Zuckerberg repeatedly said that he had only learned of Facebook’s work with Definers from the NYT report and that Sandberg was also previously unaware of the relationship. When asked who was aware, Zuckerberg simply said “someone on our comms team must have hired them.” As COO, Facebook’s corporate communications team is under the purview of Sandberg.

“As soon as I read it, I looked into whether this is the type of firm we want to be working with, and we stopped working with them,” he said. “We certainly never asked them to spread anything that wasn’t true.”

Facebook had previously published a blog post stating that “our relationship with Definers was well known by the media” but that the company had ended its contract with the firm. 

The occasion for the press call was Facebook’s latest transparency report, which details how the company enforces its community standards that govern content on the platform. In addition to new stats on takedowns of fake accounts, spam and other problematic content, the company plans to create an “independent body” to handle appeals of content decisions, Zuckerberg said.