THEY’RE IN YOUR ‘FACE’
Zuck: Never apologize
Mark Zuckerberg reportedly urged his employees not to apologize for Facebook’s ills as staffers called lawmakers in Washington, DC, in an effort to discredit whistleblower Frances Haugen.
In an effort to stop Democrats and Republicans from uniting in opposition to Facebook — which recently changed its corporate name to Meta — the company’s Washington team reached out to Republicans and claimed Haugen was a Democratic activist who wanted to boost President Biden’s party, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Fending off Congress
Meanwhile, Meta operatives reportedly warned Democrats that Republicans would use Haugen’s leaks to blast the company’s decision to ban posts in support of Kenosha, Wis., shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted in November of murder and attemptedmurder charges.
Republicans and Democrats who spoke to the WSJ described the calls as an effort to prevent lawmakers from uniting across party lines in opposition to Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp.
During previous crises, Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have followed the traditional playbook of publicly apologizing and pledging to make changes.
But after Haugen leaked internal documents this year showing the social-media titan’s negative effects on teen mental health and efforts to crack down on human trafficking, and its role in amplifying lies about political issues, the company has taken a harder line.
Zuckerberg has told employees not to apologize and urged them to respond more forcefully to bad press, according to the Journal. Longtime board members, including venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, have egged Zuckerberg on, the report said.
Pleasing up
The report comes after a Facebook employee who worked with caustic policy-communications director Andy Stone told The Post in October that the company’s aggressive approach was designed to please Zuckerberg and Sandberg.
“The traditional corporate p.r. playbook says that the company apologizes, offers to be part of the solution and generally finds ways to make Congress happy,” the ex-employee said. “Facebook is beyond that right now.”
“The target audience is Mark and Sheryl,” the former staffer added.
During this fall’s maelstrom of bad press, some Meta executives also floated the idea of abandoning plans for a version of Instagram targeted at children, according to the Journal. But Zuckerberg reportedly said abandoning Instagram for kids wasn’t an option — so the company instead announced in September that it would “pause” the project.
Haugen’s proposed solutions include creating a federal regulator to oversee Facebook rather than using antitrust laws to break it up.