Sandberg vows action after reports of Russian interference

NAACP has called for a one-week boycott of Facebook, additional congressional probes

WASHINGTON— Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said Tuesday the company needs to do more to protect its users from disinformation efforts, after researchers found Russian trolls attempted to suppress African-American voter turnout during the 2016 election.

“Facebook is committed to working with leading U.S. civil rights organizations to strengthen and advance civil rights on our service,” Ms. Sandberg wrote on her Facebook page. “They’ve raised a number of important concerns, and I’m grateful for their candor and guidance. We know that we need to do more: to listen, look deeper and take action to respect fundamental rights.”

The mea culpa is the latest from Facebook executives who have spent the past year under a relentless barrage of criticism from lawmakers, investors and users accusing the world’s largest social-media company of reacting slowly and doing far too little to address concerns about foreign interference and other matters over the past two years.

It also reflects the tightrope Facebook has had to walk as it works to appease both progressive groups that say the company has ignored racial discrimination and conservative activists who have accused it and other Silicon Valley companies of having a liberal bias.

On Monday, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said it was returning a recent donation from Facebook following the release of two reports on Russian interference in the 2016 election, commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Those studies found that Russian trolls aimed social media posts at black voters, seeking to stoke racial tensions and suppress turnout among African-Americans, who tend to vote Democratic.

The NAACP, one of the oldest U.S. civil-rights organizations, has criticized the social-media giant’s targeting of its opponents, the “utilization of Facebook for propaganda promoting disingenuous portrayals of the African American community,” and more.

The group has called for a oneweek boycott of Facebook and additional congressional investigations.

Ms. Sandberg, who has been under scrutiny in recent weeks for her role managing Facebook’s response to Russia’s election interference in 2016, acknowledged the reports’ findings. She highlighted Facebook’s release Tuesday of initial findings of a civil-rights audit led by Laura Murphy, a former legislative director at the American Civil Liberties Union, that discussed issues related to ad-targeting of minority groups, a lack of diversity at Facebook and voter suppression.

“We take this incredibly seriously, as demonstrated by the investments we’ve made in safety and security,” Ms. Sandberg said in Tuesday’s post. “The civil rights audit is deeply important to me, and it’s one of my top priorities for 2019. I’m committed to overseeing its progress and making sure that it is a well-resourced, cross-company effort.”

While lawmakers in both parties pounced on the new findings, there wasn’t an immediate push to again call executives from Facebook or other companies named in the reports, including Twitter and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, to testify in Washington.

Lobbyists for technology companies have said they generally expect 2019 to be more focused on issues involving user privacy than foreign manipulation of social media.

Several nonprofit groups have accused Facebook of dedicating insufficient resources to its review of discrimination on its platform and dragging its feet with the audit. Thirty-one nonprofit groups, including the NAACP and Freedom from Facebook, made public a letter on Tuesday to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg calling for a reorganization of the company’s board that would include Ms. Sandberg leaving the board and Mr. Zuckerberg relinquishing his role as chairman as long as the two serve in their executive roles.

Despite calls from some investors and Facebook critics, Mr. Zuckerberg has said he has no plans to step down as chairman. Earlier this month, Facebook’s board of directors affirmed their support of Ms. Sandberg, saying it was “entirely appropriate” for her to ask if Mr. Soros had shorted the company’s stock after he called the social-media giant a “menace.”

Facebook also has been under scrutiny over its use of Definers Public Affairs, a consultancy and opposition-research firm. Facebook has said its executives asked Definers to encourage reporters to probe antiFacebook groups, including Freedom from Facebook, and whether they were financed by billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, who has criticized the social-media company.

“For years, many of us have engaged directly with your company in good faith, seeking change from within the company that we hoped would address a range of civil rights, privacy, and safety problems resulting from abuse and mismanagement of the platform,” the groups wrote in Tuesday’s letter. “Recent news demonstrates, however, that Facebook was not only looking the other way in response to our concerns, but also has been actively working to undermine efforts by those who seek to hold the company responsible for abuses on the platform.”

Facebook said its civil-rights audit is ongoing.

Ms. Murphy said in her summary of the auditing work so far that her team had met with rep- resentatives of more than 90 organizations to focus on issues related to voter suppression, hate speech and the potential discriminatory impact of artificial intelligence.

Ms. Sandberg said Facebook, as a result of the audit, updated its policies to ban misrepresentations about how to vote and threats of violence related to voting. Ms. Sandberg also said voter suppression requires additional attention.

Among other findings, the reports released Monday highlighted tactics by Russian trolls during the 2016 election that sought to dampen enthusiasm among African-American voters for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and persuade them to not vote or to switch support to Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

The reports, written separately by the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge and researchers at the University of Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Project, also concluded Facebook and other companies may have been misleading at times in answers given to Congress suggesting there had been no discernible effort waged by the Russians to target certain demographic groups or suppress votes.

“As a direct response to feedback from civil rights advocates, we are focusing on voter suppression as a distinct civil rights challenge and will continue this work to be better prepared for future elections,” Ms. Sandberg said.