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- Facebook's outgoing policy and comms boss says he's to blame for hiring an opposition-research firm.
- Definers tried to smear Facebook's critics with links to George Soros, a line of attack that has been labeled anti-Semitic.
- Elliot Schrage, who announced he was leaving back in June 2018, is taking responsibility — a move that may help protect senior leadership, like Sheryl Sandberg, from the fallout.
- Sandberg also conceded, in an internal response to Schrage's memo, that "some of [Definers'] work was incorporated into materials presented to me and I received a small number of emails where Definers was referenced."
Facebook's outgoing boss of policy and communications, Elliot Schrage, says he's taking the blame for the hiring of a controversial PR firm whose attacks on Facebook's critics led to accusations of anti-Semitism.
TechCrunch has obtained an internal memo that Schrage sent his colleagues at Facebook about the controversy, in which he said the hiring of Definers was his responsibility and he apologized for "my own failure."
"Responsibility for these decisions rests with leadership of the Communications team. That’s me. Mark and Sheryl relied on me to manage this without controversy," he wrote.
"I knew and approved of the decision to hire Definers and similar firms. I should have known of the decision to expand their mandate. Over the past decade, I built a management system that relies on the teams to escalate issues if they are uncomfortable about any project, the value it will provide or the risks that it creates. That system failed here and I’m sorry I let you all down. I regret my own failure here."
Definers, a PR and opposition research firm, has come under intense scrutiny since the publication of a New York Times investigation that detailed how the firm attempted to smear critics of Facebook by linking them to billionaire Jewish financier George Soros, a line of attack that has been criticized as anti-Semitic.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have denied any prior knowledge that Facebook was working with Definers, instead blaming the communications team broadly for the issue. But in a response to Schrage, also obtained by TechCrunch, Sandberg conceded that "some of their work was incorporated into materials presented to me and I received a small number of emails where Definers was referenced," even though she apparently didn't remember them.
In his memo, Schrage admitted that Facebook asked Definers to look into George Soros. "In January 2018, investor and philanthropist George Soros attacked Facebook in a speech at Davos, calling us a 'menace to society.' We had not heard such criticism from him before and wanted to determine if he had any financial motivation. Definers researched this using public information," he wrote.
"Later, when the 'Freedom from Facebook' campaign emerged as a so-called grassroots coalition, the team asked Definers to help understand the groups behind them. They learned that George Soros was funding several of the coalition members. They prepared documents and distributed these to the press to show that this was not simply a spontaneous grassroots movement."
Schrage's ownership of the latest scandal may help to shield Zuckerberg and Sandberg from some of the fallout. The COO has come under intense scrutiny following the company's latest round of controversies, with some Facebook investors now asking if they should be worried about her leaving. (Zuckerberg says she's not going anywhere.)
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See Also:
- Mark Zuckerberg's new wartime leadership style is opening up bitter divisions at Facebook
- Facebook comms staffers are reportedly fuming at COO Sheryl Sandberg after they were thrown under the bus over a smear campaign
- Mark Zuckerberg reportedly blamed Sheryl Sandberg for the Cambridge Analytica fallout, making her worry for her job
