Facebook Claims NYT Expose Has 'A Number of Inaccuracies'

Earlier today, Facebook issued a response to a New York Times report on the social media company's handling of the many scandals it faced last year, including Russian interference and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. 'There are a number of inaccuracies in the story,' Facebook said in a point-by-point blog post, including that the company was aware of Russian meddling on the social platform months before taking any action. Variety reports: Facebook said it has 'acknowledged publicly on many occasions' that 'we were too slow to spot Russian interference on Facebook, as well as other misuse.' But Facebook denied the allegation in the Times report that the company knew about Russian activity as early as the spring of 2016 and had failed to actively investigate it. The company cited CEO Mark Zuckerberg's congressional testimony from April 2018, in which he said Facebook detected threats related to Russia only in the weeks leading up to the U.S. election in November 2016. When it identified fake accounts that were used to furnish stolen information to journalists, 'we shut these accounts down for violating our policies,' Zuckerberg testified.

Meanwhile, Facebook in October 2017 enlisted Washington, D.C.-area PR firm Definers Public Affairs, founded by Republican political strategists, as part of its crisis response to dealing with the Russia fallout. Among other activities, Definers launched a campaign linking Facebook critics to liberal billionaire George Soros, a common tactic used by anti-Semitic alt-right groups. At the same time, Facebook lobbied the Anti-Defamation League to portray other critics of the company as anti-Semitic, per the Times report. On Thursday, Facebook said it terminated its contract with Definers on Nov. 14 after the Times story was published. Facebook acknowledged that Definers 'did encourage members of the press to look into the funding'of Freedom From Facebook, an anti-Facebook organization that has called for the company's breakup. 'The intention [of the Definers' efforts] was to demonstrate that it was not simply a spontaneous grassroots campaign, as it claimed, but supported by a well-known critic of our company. To suggest that this was an anti-Semitic attack is reprehensible and untrue,' Facebook said.

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