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When critics reached their peak around Facebook earlier this year, an aggressive lobbying operation was put in place in the background. The goal: counter criticism. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg was working on his campaign, following the data scandal with Cambridge Analytica.
This is clear from a major investigation by the New York Times. The newspaper pieced together how the social network had evolved from crisis to crisis over the past three years and how the company had attempted to manage the network. Opponents of Discredit This was done in part by associating them with billionaire George Soros, writes the newspaper
. Anti-Facebook Movement
The office allegedly distributed a research document among the journalists in which Soros was reported to have been deposed. as an "unrecognized force" behind an anti-Facebook movement. The paper refers to a previous speech by Soros at the World Economic Forum in which he criticized Facebook and Google.
The PR agency also urged reporters to investigate financial links between Soros and organizations. who were members of & # 39; Freedom from Facebook & # 39 ;. An organization founded by Soros' son was also a member, writes the New York Times. Freedom from Facebook is a club that calls Facebook to separate. separating WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger from the parent company
The agency Definers Public Affairs was originally hired by Facebook in October 2017 to monitor reports on the platform.
Negative reports on Apple and Google
The agency also reported that, according to the New York Times, it broadcast messages on an information site – NTK – which accused them of Google and Apple. bad practices. Apple's chief, Tim Cook, was described as hypocritical because he had berated Zuckerberg about Facebook's privacy policy, while Apple had also collected a lot of data .
NTK is not that big, but the message has been picked up by Breitbart, for example, the paper writes.
A few hours after publication, the newspaper announced that Facebook had stopped working with the company. In a blog post that has just been published, Facebook says that the newspaper's story contains factual inaccuracies, including the work of the PR agency: "We've never asked Definers to spread misinformation on Facebook. "
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