Top official at Facebook ordered staff to investigate Soros interests

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, told employees to investigate the financial interests of billionaire George Soros in response to his January criticism of the social media giant.

Ms. Sandberg wanted to know if Mr. Soros had a financial incentive to criticize Facebook, the company said in a statement, confirming reporting by The New York Times.

Two weeks ago, news broke that Facebook had hired a right-wing consulting firm, Definers Public Affairs, to deflect negative attention and discredit critics of the social media giant by highlighting that certain critics received funding from billionaire George Soros. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, said he and Ms. Sandberg learned that Facebook had hired the firm when they read The New York Times report about it.

A week later, Ms. Sandberg walked that back, saying that “some of [Definers’] work was incorporated into materials presented to me and I received a small number of emails where Definers was referenced,” but that she had forgotten.

Ms. Sandberg’s statement was appended to a post by Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s outgoing head of communications and policy, in which Mr. Schrage took responsibility for hiring Definers and defended Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg. Under pressure, Mr. Zuckerberg has expressed support for Ms. Sandberg and said he will not step down as chairman of Facebook’s board.

On Thursday, the company confirmed that Ms. Sandberg herself told employees on the communications team to investigate Mr. Soros’ financial interests.

Her directive came after Mr. Soros laid into the social media giant in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, saying that “Facebook and Google have grown into ever more powerful monopolies” which “deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide” and “have neither the will nor inclination to protect society against the consequences of their actions.” He added that “regulation and taxation will be their undoing” and that “their days are numbered.”

Mr. Soros frequently funds progressive political causes, and is a frequent subject of right-wing and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In her statement last week, Ms. Sandberg said that “it was never anyone’s intention to play into an anti-Semitic narrative against Mr. Soros or anyone else.”