Zuckerberg Hits Back at Scathing Report About Response to Russian Meddling
*By Alex Heath*
Facebook’s CEO isn’t backing down.
In a conference call with reporters on Thursday that lasted more than 80 minutes, Mark Zuckerberg declared that an extensive New York Times report about his company's insufficient and self-preserving response to Russian meddling on the platform was "simply untrue."
The founder also fielded several questions about Facebook's [past relationship](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/technology/facebook-definers-soros.html) to a conservative opposition research firm in D.C., Definers Public Affairs.
"I think we are just going to say we feel very comfortable in our reporting and leave it at that," Jack Nicas, a reporter on the Times' story, told Cheddar in response to Zuckerberg’s comments.
Wednesday's report revealed that Definers employed a number of behind-the-scenes tactics to fire back at Facebook’s ($FB) critics ー including telling members of the media to investigate potential ties to a left-wing, anti-Facebook coalition and liberal billionaire George Soros. The piece also rendered an unflattering portrait of the company's high-profile COO Sheryl Sandberg, who allegedly chided her security chief, Alex Stamos, for throwing the company "under the bus."
While Soros has been a vocal critic of Facebook’s content policies and business model, Zuckerberg said Thursday that he was unaware of the anti-Soros campaign by Definers and that he had "tremendous respect" for the philanthropist.
Zuckerberg also defended Sandberg, who did not participate in the conference call. He said she was doing “great work” for the company and declined to reveal whether anyone at Facebook had been fired over the company’s missteps in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Facebook’s board of directors also issued a rare statement supporting Zuckerberg and Sandberg on Thursday.
“As Mark and Sheryl made clear to Congress, the company was too slow to spot Russian interference, and too slow to take action,” the statement read. “As a board we did indeed push them to move faster. But to suggest that they knew about Russian interference and either tried to ignore it or prevent investigations into what had happened is grossly unfair," the statement read.
Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook will establish an independent, outside committee in 2019 to review appeals of content the social network removes from its service. Several large, institutional investors have publicly called on Zuckerberg to step down as Facebook’s chairman and relinquish his majority control over Facebook’s voting shares.
*With additional reporting by Chloe Aiello.*
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
