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After Initially Calling The New York Times' Report False, Facebook Confirms Most Claims Made in the Story (nytimes.com)
Nellie Bowles and Zach Wichter, reporting for The New York Times: Joining a long tradition of companies and campaigns that drop bad news on holidays, Facebook on Thanksgiving eve took responsibility for hiring a Washington-based lobbying company, Definers Public Affairs, that pushed negative stories about Facebook's critics, including the philanthropist George Soros. Facebook's communications and policy chief, Elliot Schrage, said in a memo posted Wednesday that he was responsible for hiring the group, and had done so to help protect the company's image and conduct research about high-profile individuals who spoke critically about the social media platform. Mr. Schrage will be leaving the company, a move planned before the memo was released.
Facebook fired Definers last week, after a New York Times investigation published on Nov. 14. "Did we ask them to do work on George Soros?" Mr. Schrage wrote in the memo, a draft of which had circulated online earlier in the week. "Yes." He added: "I'm sorry I let you all down. I regret my own failure here." This is a change from just a few days ago, when Facebook wrote on Nov. 15 that the Times report was full of "inaccuracies." The same day, Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer, posted on her Facebook page that she had no idea the company had hired Definers.
Facebook fired Definers last week, after a New York Times investigation published on Nov. 14. "Did we ask them to do work on George Soros?" Mr. Schrage wrote in the memo, a draft of which had circulated online earlier in the week. "Yes." He added: "I'm sorry I let you all down. I regret my own failure here." This is a change from just a few days ago, when Facebook wrote on Nov. 15 that the Times report was full of "inaccuracies." The same day, Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer, posted on her Facebook page that she had no idea the company had hired Definers.
Zuckerberg has a history of following the motto "it's easier to apologize than to ask permission". No one should be surprised when Facebook's initial response is childish denial instead of a factual explanation of events.
The entire Web 2.0 generation has been doing this with impunity, which is part of how they overcame the 1.0 guys who were naive and pushing some limits, but not generally flaunting the law, or the expectations of most of their userbase.
While geocities, myspace, infoseek, etc had their issues, most were not outright evil and amoral like the generation that replaced them (Excluding AOL, Time-Warner, SBC etc.)
What do you do when the lawmakers and regulators are themselves corrupt because they benefit from being negligent in their duties? Vote them out? I'm thinking we need to take the nuclear option of Plato's idea of a ruling class forbidden from owning money/property.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.