Facebook’s shades of Bell Pottinger
Facebook hired a firm to discredit competitors and may have known about Russian interference before admitting it
For much of this year Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has been on an apology tour. He was begging forgiveness for a myriad scandals that revealed that the website was open to manipulation by hate speech in Myanmar and involved in Russian internet trolls, fake news and Cambridge Analytica’s wholesale theft of personal data. Speaking to reporters and US lawmakers, Zuckerberg has consistently argued that the social media giant had underestimated the scale of the problem, that "we didn’t do enough... [to prevent] abuse" and that it was "a huge mistake". He says Facebook "didn’t take a broad-enough view of what our responsibility is" and that well-meaning Facebook didn’t see the grand manipulations coming. But now it appears to have gone on the offensive, downplaying first the fake news and then Russian interference (which it said reached 126-million users) and trying to discredit critics by using means SA will recognise as those employed by reviled former UK reputation manageme...
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