Zuckerberg grilled over crisis tactics

Facebook founder on defensive over Russian meddling.

WASHINGTON — On Thurs- day, Mark Zuckerberg, Face- book’s chief executive and chairman, held a conference call with reporters to discuss how the social network manages problematic posts and its community standards.

The call quickly went side- ways.

For more than an hour, the 34-year-old billionaire instead fielded questions about how he and his No. 2, Sheryl Sandberg, obfuscated problems such as Russian interference on Facebook and how the company had gone on the attack against rivals and critics.

In response, Zuckerberg — at times defiant and at times conciliatory — defended the social network, Sandberg and his own record.

“The reality of running a company of more than 10,000 people is that you’re not going to know everything that’s going on,” he said at one point.

Yet even as Zuckerberg was making his case, a furor against his company was gathering momentum.

In Washington, Republi- cans and Democrats threatened to restrain Facebook through competition laws and to open investigations into p ossible campa i gn finance violations. Shareholders ramped up calls to oust Zuckerberg as Face- book’s chairman.

And activists filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission about the social network’s privacy policies and condemned Sandberg, the chief operating officer, for overseeing a campaign to secretly attack opponents.

The outcry followed a New York Times article that raised questions Wednesday about Facebook’s tactics in dealing with disinformation and other problems on its site, as well as the way it treats competitors and opponents.

“Face b ook cannot be trusted to regulate itself,” said Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the House antitrust subcommittee. “This staggering report makes clear that Facebook executives will always put their massive profits ahead of the interests of their customers.”

The social media giant has faced a succession of crises since 2016, when it was accused of influencing the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Facebook has since acknowledged that its platform was a critical conduit for Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and it has grappled with leaks of customer data to a British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica.

The Times article Wednesday described how Zuckerberg and Sandberg passed off many critical security and policy decisions in recent years and delayed responses to abuse on Facebook or played down its significance. More recently, Facebook went on the attack, employing other companies to divert attention to critics and competitors.

That has raised questions about the accountability of Zuckerberg and Sandberg.