No More Apologies: Inside Facebook’s Push to Defend Its Image

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The modifications have concerned Facebook executives from its promoting, communications, coverage and integrity teams. Alex Schultz, a 14-calendar year corporation veteran who was named main marketing and advertising officer final 12 months, has also been influential in the graphic reshaping energy, said 5 folks who worked with him. But at the very least one particular of the choices was pushed by Mr. Zuckerberg, and all had been accredited by him, 3 of the folks reported.

Credit…Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images

Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman, denied that the company had adjusted its solution.

“People are worthy of to know the techniques we’re having to address the different concerns experiencing our firm — and we’re heading to share those steps extensively,” he explained in a assertion.

For decades, Fb executives have chafed at how their corporation appeared to get additional scrutiny than Google and Twitter, said present and previous personnel. They attributed that notice to Facebook’s leaving by itself extra exposed with its apologies and supplying obtain to interior knowledge, the people today reported.

So in January, executives held a virtual conference and broached the idea of a more intense defense, a person attendee said. The group talked over employing the News Feed to promote positive information about the firm, as effectively as working adverts that connected to favorable articles or blog posts about Fb. They also debated how to determine a professional-Fb story, two members said.

That exact same thirty day period, the communications team mentioned strategies for executives to be a lot less conciliatory when responding to crises and decided there would be significantly less apologizing, mentioned two persons with understanding of the system.

Mr. Zuckerberg, who experienced grow to be intertwined with policy issues which includes the 2020 election, also needed to recast himself as an innovator, the folks mentioned. In January, the communications group circulated a doc with a strategy for distancing Mr. Zuckerberg from scandals, partly by focusing his Facebook posts and media appearances on new goods, they reported.

The Facts, a tech information site, previously reported on the document.

The influence was quick. On Jan. 11, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s main operating officer — and not Mr. Zuckerberg — explained to Reuters that the storming of the U.S. Capitol a week before had minor to do with Fb. In July, when President Biden mentioned the social community was “killing people” by spreading Covid-19 misinformation, Male Rosen, Facebook’s vice president for integrity, disputed the characterization in a weblog put up and pointed out that the White Residence had skipped its coronavirus vaccination objectives.