Facebook's latest crisis concerns CEO Mark Zuckerberg: what you need to know

Facebook is back on the hot seat this week after the New York Times has released an investigation report of more than 5,000 words on the reaction of its leaders to a series of scandals.

The latest revelations come at the right time for the world's largest social network, which is already going through a difficult year. Whether it is to fight against electoral interference or hate speech or deal with a serious security breach, the woes of the tech giant are constantly accumulating. It is trying to restore confidence with more than 2 billion active users a month, but it is also facing the increased regulatory potential of lawmakers.

Here's what you need to know.

Why is Facebook still under fire?

The New York Times survey focuses on how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 34, and the Director of Operations, Sheryl Sandberg, 49, have handled crisis after crisis these last three years. The report was a harsh criticism of their leadership, raising new questions about them, their role on Facebook and the future of society.

The leaders "ignored the warning signs and then sought to conceal them in plain view," the paper writes. They were also "distracted by their personal plans and passed on their security and political decisions to their subordinates".

Facebook has tried to "deflect blame" and "hide" the magnitude of the data privacy scandal that erupted in March. Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm, has collected personal data from about 87 million Facebook users without their permission.

The newspaper also said that Facebook was aware of Russia 's activity on the platform as early as spring 2016, more than a year before the company warned the public. Sandberg has run into chief security officer Alex Stamos, who has since left the company, on how to handle the problem, according to the Times.

Meanwhile, Facebook's executives were apparently intent on protecting the image of the social network. To do this, the Times said, the company resorted to an "aggressive" lobbying tactic and exploited its relations with Washington to blame the technology rivals and ward off criticism. At one point, the company hired a company known for its research on the opposition, Definers Public Affairs, which tried to discredit critics by associating liberal billionaire George Soros with activists protesting against Facebook.

Why do people care so much about what Facebook does?

Facebook is the largest social network on the planet. With an active user base of about 2.3 billion people, the number of its members is greater than that of the population of any country in the world. Yet Facebook is a business. There is no elected and there is no court of appeal. It is only Zuckerberg, his management team and the people hired.

This tension has emerged since Facebook was created in 2004. Almost from the beginning, whenever society made big changes (like when he introduced the thread of news or when he forced people to download Messenger as a separate program), users frustrated by the unilateral movements of society have made waves.

After the 2016 elections, we discovered that Facebook was no longer simply a place to share photos of our children or what we ate for lunch. Russian agents have also learned that it is an effective tool for intervening in elections by propagating misinformation.

Since then, flat answers from Facebook, and the glaring controversies this arises around them, like the one involving Cambridge Analytica, aroused anger from all over the world.

How is this scandal different from others?

In the past year alone, the social networking giant has faced four spiral crises, but this one specifically involves the company's leadership and how it responds to the problems.

At the beginning of the year, the biggest ongoing scandal on Facebook was the investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election. The technology company announced in 2017 she had found evidence that Russian agents had used the social network to buy ads on controversial topics. But questions remain as to when Facebook was aware of Russia's activity and whether it was acting fast enough. This year, on the eve of the mid-term US elections, Facebook has shot more than 100 accounts this may have been linked to the Russian Internet Research Agency.

In March, the company faced a new scandal when the New York Times and The Guardian's Observer newspaper revealed that tens of millions of Facebook users had been seized by a political consulting firm called Cambridge Analytica. The scandal has raised concerns about Facebook's ability to protect the treasure of information collected about users. Even worse, it took nearly three years for Facebook to alert users about the misuse of data. The tumult provoked Zuckerberg to make a rare appearance before the Congress.

Then, during the summer, Facebook joined the rest of the technology industry when it banned the theoretician from the far right conspiracy. Alex Jones of his platform for violating his rules against hate speech and violent content. Jones was widely criticized for spreading false stories, including a complaint that the mass shooting of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax. The ban has reignited allegations that Facebook was censoring conservative voices, which the company denied.

Critics of how Facebook protects the data of users returned in September after the company revealed a massive security breach. Hackers exploited the View as Site feature code, which allows users to see what their profiles look like for other users. Let the attackers steal personal information from 29 million Facebook usersincluding phone numbers, birthdays and hometowns.

OK, this controversy is about a company called Definers Public Affairs. What is the problem with them?

Definers was founded by Republican political agents. According to the Times, the Definers circulated a research paper and tried to pressure reporters to deepen financial ties between Soros and members of Freedom from Facebook, a coalition of critics on Facebook who urged regulators to dismantle the social media giant.

The allegation does not suggest good intentions for Facebook, which is under pressure to fight misinformation and hate speech. Soros, a Hungarian Jewish billionaire, has publicly criticized Facebook in the past, but he has also been the target of antisemitic and far-right conspiracy theories. A homemade bomb was delivered to his home in October. The fact that Facebook, through Definers, pointed to Soros' alleged activity behind the scenes played on conspiracy theories, intentionally or unintentionally. Facebook partners and advertisers also said that Definers' work revealed that Zuck & Co was willing to use dirty policies to protect their brand.

Definitors have also focused on Facebook's tech rivals, the Times said. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, some of the social networks have criticized other companies and personalities in Silicon Valley, including Apple CEO Tim Cook. Definers has links to a conservative news site, NTK Network, which has published dozens of critical articles on Apple and Google.

The Definers also targeted Senators who questioned Sandberg during a Congressional hearing in September, according to a separate article in the Times.

Who funded Freedom from Facebook?

According to director Axios, Pennsylvania philanthropist David Magerman, a former hedge fund manager, had left Facebook's original donor.

Magerman said he had poured about $ 425,000 into the campaign so far, saying Facebook held "too much power over how the world communicates."

A head of Soros non-profit foundations, Open Society Foundations, told The Times that he had funded some of the Freedom from Facebook member groups, but that he had not supported any of campaigns against Facebook.

How did Facebook and its leaders react to criticism?

Zuckerberg and Sandberg opposed criticism of how they handled the scandals. "It is simply wrong to suggest that we did not want to know the truth or that we did not want to hide what we knew or did not want to prevent investigations from being carried out," Zuckerberg said less than a day later. the publication of the Times article.

The two also stated that they did not know that Facebook had hired Definers or the company's work. After the Times report, Facebook terminated its contract with Definers. Facebook also plans to study its relationships with other lobbying companies. Sandberg told CBS that Definers had been hired by "the communications team".

"The article said I spent time hiding, hijacking or hiring PR agencies to do something else – it's just not true," Sandberg told CBS. "I did not participate in that, and I do not think that's the basic strategy at all."

Definers said that Facebook had not hired for opposition research, but that its main work was focused on "media monitoring and basic public relations around public policy issues to which it is not". business is facing ". The firm acknowledged, however, that it had provided "basic research and information on criticism – both left and right".

Facebook also denied being aware of Russia's activity as early as spring 2016, but the New York Times sticks to its reports.

What impact will this controversy have on Facebook?

The company could be faced with more government regulations.

Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who is expected to become the next chair of the antitrust committee of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, responded to the Times' report by saying that Facebook could not be trusted to regulate himself.

When Congress met in January, Cicilline wrote on Twitter and Facebook that he should work on legislation aimed at "combating the corrupting influence of corporate money in our country. democracy".

Meanwhile, Democratic Senators ask the Department of Justice, which investigates the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to check if Facebook "has fought back against critics or officials seeking to regulate the platform or concealing vital information from the public".

In addition, Facebook is already struggling with a decline in morale of employees, wrote the Wall Street Journal, and his latest scandal does not help.

Will Zuckerberg or Sandberg resign or get fired?

This seems unlikely.

Zuckerberg controls 60% of Facebook's voting shares, so he can not be forced to leave the company. Until now, he has reported that he also had no intention of withdrawing.

Following the latest Facebook controversy, he also expressed his support for Sandberg. And Facebook's board of directors defended Facebook's leadership and the way the company has managed its efforts to combat Russian election interference.

"When you run a business that has tens of thousands of people," Zuckerberg said. "There will be people doing things I do not know in the company."

Infowars and Silicon Valley: all you need to know about the debate on freedom of speech in the technology sector.

CNET's Holiday Gift Guide: The place to find the best tech gifts for 2018.