Mark Zuckerberg is fed up with all the damage being done to Facebook.
Yes, you did read that right. The Facebook CEO launched a sweeping tirade against the 17 news outlets that were cooperating to publish on a sizable collection of stolen internal papers known as the Facebook Papers at the beginning of his company’s third quarter earnings call. According to Zuckerberg, the issue is not the numerous atrocities made public by the reporting, but rather the media witch hunt against his well-intentioned trillion-dollar corporation.
Zuckerberg fumed, “Good faith criticism helps us go better, but my judgment is that what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to utilize leaked documents to selectively present a false picture of our firm.
This strategy has been tried and failed by Facebook in the past to invalidate reporting that it deems to be unflattering. The company’s PR department received harsh criticism for objecting to media outlets accepting embargos, a common journalistic practice that Facebook itself routinely requests of reporters.
Despite his previous failures, Zuckerberg persisted in pursuing the strategy. After launching his attack on the massive media conspiracy, Zuckerberg switched to equating Facebook’s internal research, which was exposed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, with actually acting on the research’s results.
He lied, saying, “The truth is that we have an open culture where we encourage inquiry and conversation about our work so we may advance on many complex subjects that are not particular to just us.” “We have programs that are at the forefront of the industry to examine the effects of our goods and to be transparent about our success.”
Notably, we are aware that researchers working for Facebook repeatedly tried to get Facebook leadership to act on their results, frequently with little or no success.
Oh, and Zuckerberg took a time to tell everyone listening that this polarization thing had little to do with him personally, if anything at all.
He emphasized in a manner that was most definitely not objecting too much, “Polarization started rising in the U.S. before I was born.
Finally, the CEO wanted everyone who disliked him to know that nothing they do will stop him from moving forward.
