"A similar tactic was employed in 2018, after George Soros criticized Facebook as a “menace” against which society needed to be defended in a public speech in Davos. The company hired a firm to produce incendiary pro-Facebook research that contained anti-Semitic tropes about Soros, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, as the shadowy funder of anti-Facebook groups. The documents were then passed around to journalists with the urging that they look into Soros’s financial interests. In the ensuing controversy, Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s head of comms and policy and already on the way out, was blamed, while Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg stated they had no knowledge of the affair."
How does Facebook get away with this kind of stuff?
"Several reporters told me that Facebook, like other large tech companies, makes aggressive use of off-the-record sourcing to obstruct the reporting process. “It’s pretty standard for a tech comms person to give you an on-record statement, they’ll talk about the story with you on background, and then when it’s published, they’ll come back to you and try to undermine it off the record,” says Biddle."
I must say, I never thought of it this way till today. Big Tech and Donald Trump are basically two peas from the same pod.
This tweet from the former employee suggests that many FB employees already know this, but the money is keeping them there. Once ad revenue stops flowing, it would be interesting to see what happens next.
>>They are 20 years ahead of any wannabe competitor.
Sounds an awful lot like the phrase "smartest guys in the room". Unfortunately, it didn't save Enron, because they were also the slimiest people on the planet.
Prediction: ad buyers pulling out of Facebook is going to be the Lehmann Brother's moment of the coming economic recession/depression/collapse whatever you wish to call it.
Facebook is quite unique in that they are like the government. No one actually likes them, but you don't really have an alternative. But once this cascades on to the rest of the ad tech industry, it will trigger another round of economic collapse which will probably crash the entire big tech bubble.
How does Facebook get away with this kind of stuff?