Facebook Used Fake News and Propaganda to Discredit Critics After Multiple Scandals This Year
Nov. 15, 2018Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg are seemingly stuck under the debris of a broken system for over a year. First, accusations of inaction inRussian meddling in the US presidential electionsand then the infamousCambridge Analytica data breachhave kept top executives busy.
But a newgroundbreaking and extensive reportby the New York Times shows how Facebook’s top brass sat on the heap of issues toavoid any controversy about favoritismtowards the Democratic Party.
Ironically, instead of trying to combat fake news on its platform, Facebook also reportedly deployed its own extensive propaganda machine to take aim at critics including billionaire, George Soros. This was in response to anti-Facebook protests gate-crashing Zuckerberg’s congressional hearing earlier this year. Facebook reportedly floated an antisemitic sentiment against the protestors who belonged to a group called “Freedom from Facebook”, and used a leading PR firm Definers Public Affairs to link Soros with these protests.
“Definers pressed reporters to explore the financial connections between Mr. Soros’s family or philanthropies and groups that were members of Freedom from Facebook“, says the NYT report.
At the same time, Sandberg reportedly led a “lobbying campaign” todeflect the blame for Russian intervention towards rival firmssuch as Twitter and Google.Image courtesy: CNBC
Recently, the company turned against Apple when the latter’s CEO Tim Cook reportedly said that Apple does not peddle user data like Facebook does (or did). In return,Zuckerberg ordered employees to give up on iPhones and use Android instead.Facebook has responded to this saying they only use Android because it’s the world’s most popular OS.
