Mark Zuckerberg AWOL From Facebook's Data Leak Damage Control Session (thedailybeast.com)

An anonymous reader writes: It's not just that he's silent in public. Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg declined to face his employees on Tuesday to explain the company's role in a widening international scandal over the 2016 election. Facebook employees on Tuesday got the opportunity for an internal briefing and question-and-answer session about Facebook's role with the Trump-aligned data firm Cambridge Analytica. It was the first the company held to brief and reassure employees after, ahead of damaging news reports, Facebook abruptly suspended Cambridge Analytica. But Zuckerberg himself wasn't there, The Daily Beast has learned. Instead, the session was conducted by a Facebook attorney, Paul Grewal, according to a source familiar with the meeting. That was the same approach the company used on Capitol Hill this past fall, when it sent its top attorney, Colin Stretch, to brief Congress about the prevalence of Russian propaganda, to include paid ads and inauthentic accounts, on its platform. Further reading: Where in the world is Mark Zuckerberg? Frustrated Facebook execs are asking.

Comments

Leave Zuck alone

[Anonymous Coward]

He deserves privacy in these trying times

Re:Leave Zuck alone

[Wrexs0ul]

Too late, he clicked a friend's link to discover what kind of potato he was :(

Defend the undefendable

[sinij]

I can't blame him, how would you defend the obvious fact that FB collected way too much information and does not tightly control who uses it and for what purpose? Leaking your data all over is their core business model.

Re:Defend the undefendable

[amicusNYCL]

It's kind of telling when your company needs to do a "damage control session" because the public finally figured out what your business model is.

Here's a hint: if there's a company with a market cap of almost $500 billion, and you don't know what their product is, you're probably the product. Cambridge Analytica is the customer, they buy you.

I would be more interested in hearing about what data they actually got and what they paid for it, I want to know more about that market value.

Re:Defend the undefendable

[Zocalo]

I would be more interested in hearing about what data they actually got and what they paid for it, I want to know more about that market value.

Can't help you on what they paid, but it seems pretty clear that one way or another Cambridge Analytica got hold of pretty much the entire contents of all those 50m Facebook profiles, including stuff that their owners (or as Zuck once supposedly called them, the "dumb fucks") thought was actually "private". If you're in the EU and have a FB profile then you can find out all about want profile contains - and much, much, more! - come May 28th when the GDPR comes into force by hitting them up with a Subject Access Request, or "SAR". Here's a template to get you started.

Re:Defend the undefendable

[sycodon]

The allowed Obama to do it and didn't bat an eyelid.

So Big Data for Oabama, Good.

Big Data for Trump, Bad (even though he didn't even use it in the general campaign...RNC data was more accurate).

Re: Defend the undefendable

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are the details, oulined by a former Obama campaign manager:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-19/obamas-former-campaign-director-makes-bombshell-facebook-claim-they-were-our-side

Re:Defend the undefendable

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll spoon feed you baby bird

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/03/19/why-are-we-only-now-talking-about-facebook-and-elections/#4d3432924838

Re:Defend the undefendable

[slew]

Please google for information about Carol Davidsen, director for media analytics for Obama's 2012 campaign and Ken Strasma, Targeting Director for the 2008 Obama and 2004 Kerry campaigns.

Apparently Christopher Wylie (the renegade from Cambridge in the crosshairs of facebook) learned the craft from about micro-targeting and data politics from Ken Strasma.

If you are search engine impaired, you can start here...

https://heavy.com/news/2018/03...

Send in the attorneys, not the clowns . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

If you don't appear . . . and don't answer questions . . . you don't commit perjury.

Hey, even a US government IRS employee refused to testify in front of Congress. Of course, Zuck just sent his lawyer.

He's not going to say anything in public or on the record until his legal team has sorted their strategy out.

Re:Send in the attorneys, not the clowns . . .

[quantaman]

If you don't appear . . . and don't answer questions . . . you don't commit perjury.

Hey, even a US government IRS employee refused to testify in front of Congress. Of course, Zuck just sent his lawyer.

He's not going to say anything in public or on the record until his legal team has sorted their strategy out.

There's also a big PR aspect.

Zuckerberg, as the founder and CEO, is a very big part of Facebook's brand. And keeping him as a likeable trustworthy figure means that people are more likely to trust the company as a whole.

Zuckerberg on camera talking about FB related scandals leaves an impression that Zuckerberg personally knew and approved of the scandal causing behaviour, and that leaves a much bigger mark on FB's reputation.

It's much better to have some non-identifiable lawyer or PR person speak on behalf of FB, then it seems like this was just some rogue group or misguided executive. Zuckerberg might have to step in eventually, but they're probably better off protecting his reputation.

2016?

[ArhcAngel]

Why is it a scandal when a company is working for a conservative/GOP candidate but not even a story when it isn't. This type of data collection has been going on for years.

Re:2016?

[XxtraLarGe]

Why is it a scandal when a company is working for a conservative/GOP candidate but not even a story when it isn't.

Because the mainstream media, Obama and Clinton were all fellow travelers. From their perspective, it's only wrong if it's being done by someone you disagree with.

Re:2016?

[reboot246]

Did you just figure that out today? Most people have known it for years. The left knows it and doesn't care. The right knows it and can't do anything about it. The mainstream media is the propaganda department of the Democrat Party.

Re:2016?

[quantaman]

Why is it a scandal when a company is working for a conservative/GOP candidate but not even a story when it isn't. This type of data collection has been going on for years.

For the same reason that anytime the word "email" came up in conjunction with Clinton it became a major news story but historically stories related to record retention or classified information barely made a blip.

It feeds into the narrative. Right now voter manipulation by Russia, particularly over the Internet, is a big story. And Cambridge Analytica is actually under suspicion as a possible link between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.

Any story involving voter manipulation, the Internet, and Cambrige Analytica is going to be big news.

Re:2016?

[liquid_schwartz]

And yet Obama said his administration was scandal free....and the media reported it that way verbatim without commentary.

So apparently he was lying, and the media was covering it up.

Obama was the most protected president *ever* by the media. Even more than JFK which I would have thought hard to imagine. His many flaws are slowly starting to leak out, like his association with Farrakhan, his lifting sanctions on Myanmar as they kill their own civilians, Assad getting away with genocide, slavery increasing on his watch, etc. He competes with Bush II for worst foreign policy in recent memory.

"strategy"....

[gDLL]

And by strategy you mean "narrative"...

Trump Aligned

[InvalidsYnc]

That company is used by a TON of other companies and entities, just because they also happened to be employed by Trump at the time, doesn't mean that they haven't done the same for countless others, even people on the other side of the aisle. The blatant politicization of EVERYTHING is getting so fricking annoying. Soon every breath you take will be analyzed to see if it "leans to the left, or the right, politically speaking".

Re:Trump Aligned

[labnet]

Oligarchs don't care if you vote left or right, as long as you are distracted by it!

Frustrated Facebook execs are asking...

[edi_guy]

If you are an executive at FB you dug this hole on your own. You made the FB system work the way it did, you were fine with the low level of privacy protections you had in place, and were super fine with packaging, selling, re-selling and marketing people's digital lives. You are remunerated handsomely for those decisions and probably gave yourself lots of credit for being so strong, so independent, so smart in all those meetings. But now that your decisions are viewed under a different light, you go crying for you parents (Zuck and Sharon). Yes, they also need to be held to account, but not much more than you FB execs.

Russia is Deeply Embedded in Facebook

[chill]

Original post by Puffin Fitness: https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/85p30j/deletefacebook_movement_gains_steam_after_50/dvz4y6o/

* * *

In 2009, Russian social-media mogul Yuri Milner invested $200 million into Facebook at a valuation of $10 billion dollars without voting rights or a seat on the board. To understand this investment, at the time the world was going through a global recession and Facebook's general valuation had dropped from the $15 billion from the year prior to $4-$6 billion in 2009.

https://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-valuation-the-cheat-sheet/

One company did offer a valuation of $8 billion, but with a seat on the board, which Zuckerberg was strongly against. In other words, Yuri Milner invested in Facebook when they were strapped for cash and at an inflated price without voting rights or a seat on the board. That's an amazing deal for Zuckerberg!

Here's Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg hanging out for an interview: https://techcrunch.com/2009/05/26/mark-zuckerberg-and-yuri-milner-talk-about-facebooks-new-investment-video/

The deal was coordinated by Alisher B. Usmanov, a Russian oligarch that earned his fortune managing steel mill subsidiaries for Gazprom.

Usmanov spent six years in prison for fraud and embezzlement in the 80's.

In 2008, Usmanov fired a publisher and editor at one of Russia's most respected news paper after it published detailed accounts of Russian election fraud.

It is said, "His ties to the Kremlin and Facebook have stirred concerns that he might influence the companyâ(TM)s policies in subtle ways to appease governments in markets where Facebook is also an important tool of political dissent, such as Russia." This was in 2009.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/technology/a-russian-facebook-bet-pays-off-big.html

Usmanov is close friends with Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alisher_Usmanov

Ivanka Trump and Wendi Deng are good friends with Abramovich's then wife, Dasha Zhoukova. Here they are watching a tennis match.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3784716/Ivanka-Trump-Karlie-Kloss-Wendi-Deng-Murdoch-watch-Open.html

The leak of the Paradise Papers revealed the money Yuri Milner used to invest into Facebook came from Gazprom, a US sanctioned Russian oil and gas company, at one point owning 9% of the company.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/what-is-the-paradise-papers-leak-facebook-yuri-milner-facebook-twitter-russia

Soon after, Zuckerberg and Milner became friends, meeting monthly:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/zuckerberg-got-early-business-advice-194957335.html

And even spoke together in November 2015 at the 2016 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/what-is-the-paradise-papers-leak-facebook-yuri-milner-facebook-twitter-russia

In May 2012, Milner attended Zuckerberg's wedding. In 2014, Milner moved to California home he paid 100% above value on.

http://time.com/5011000/paradise-papers-tax-ha

Re:Facebook and MI6 were "The Russians"

[oh_my_080980980]

As opposed to Clinton supporters...two peas in a pod...

Facebook has always been monstrous.

[jbn-o]

Objecting to Facebook on the basis of surveillance? That's hardly new. Software freedom fighters got there years ago.

Free Software Foundation got there earlier. From publishing https://www.fsf.org/facebook published on on Dec 20, 2010. FSF & GNU Project founder Richard Stallman has been rightly objecting to Facebook for years in his talks and on his personal website.

Long-time former FSF lawyer Eben Moglen rightly called Facebook a monstrous surveillance engine in talks and he pointed out the ugliness of Facebook's endless surveillance (at length in part 3 but in other places in the same lecture series as well). See http://snowdenandthefuture.info/ for the entire series of talks.