Facebook late Wednesday admitted it used Definers Public Affairs to research and spread information ... [+]
Facebook said Wednesday evening it had asked Definers Public Affairs to look into George Soros' funding activities after the billionaire philanthropist called the social network a "menace to society" in early 2018 and Facebook called for a deeper investigation of its critics.
"We had not heard such criticism from him before and wanted to determine if he had any financial motivation," wrote outgoing communications head Elliot Schrage on the Facebook blog. He said, at Facebook's behest, Definers investigated groups that were part of a “Freedom from Facebook” campaign and learned Soros was funding several of the coalition members. Definers then spread that information to the media to show "that this was not simply a spontaneous grassroots movement."
The admission, made on the eve of Thanksgiving, corroborates some of the reporting in an explosive New York Times investigation that detailed how Facebook hired the opposition research firm to counter criticism of its role in spreading Russian misinformation and exposing its users to the political-ad-targeting firm Cambridge Analytica.
Soros' Open Society Foundations has lambasted the tactics, which included distributing news stories via a partner site called NTK. Facebook's top executives have found themselves in a now familiar position — defending the way they've handled the internal knowledge that outside companies misused the activity of its 2.3 billion users to influence elections.
The Times says Facebook staff were aware in spring 2016, more than a year before making the disclosures public, that Russian hackers used the platform to interfere with the 2016 presidential election and that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg decided to publicly downplay concerns about interference. When Facebook finally revealed, in the fall of 2017, that a Kremlin-linked operation had reached nearly 150 million users with false posts in an effort to sway the 2016 election, Facebook launched an intensive lobbying and PR campaign to minimize criticism, including by hiring Definers.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg last week denied they knew about hiring the Washington, DC public relations firm led by political veterans who have worked and campaigned for Republican lawmakers such as Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio. Parts of its work were well known to the media after Facebook in October 2017 started to use the firm for advisories and arrange events, though the extent of that work — including using an affiliate news site to spread stories negative about its clients' rivals or critics — was not. After the newspaper published its report, Facebook fired Definers.
Schrage, who said he took responsibility Wednesday for deciding what Definers would do, said it also used the firm to investigate Facebook's competitors.
Some of the most stinging criticism that's followed the Times report has centered around Definers' information campaign on Soros, a frequent target of anti-Semitic campaigns that place him at the center of conspiracy theories, such as that he orchestrated the migrant caravan headed for the U.S. border.
"No matter how innocuously you may choose to represent it publicly, pushing the Jewish 'puppet masters' trope was intentional," wrote Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, in a letter Zuckerberg and Sandberg, which was shared with the media.
Definers spread information that Soros was a funder of Color of Change, a civil rights organization that was part of the Freedom From Facebook coalition, according to the Times report.
That approach, defended by Facebook as simple research into publicly available information, has a more sinister intent, said the nonprofit. "It is ripped from a playbook centuries in the making and directly linked to attempts to undermine the civil rights movement in the 1960s," said Robinson.
Sandberg speaks on Soros
Sandberg, in the same blog as Schrage, said "it was never anyone’s intention to play into an anti-Semitic narrative against Mr. Soros or anyone else. Being Jewish is a core part of who I am and our company stands firmly against hate. The idea that our work has been interpreted as anti-Semitic is abhorrent to me — and deeply personal."
Definers, which has said investigating Facebook's critics was a small part of its work for Facebook, issued a new statement Wednesday that said calling its research into Soros a "'smear campaign' against Mr. Soros and anti-Facebook groups is a completely false and an unfortunate part of the story."
