"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions."

For anyone who's been defending Facebook against the NY Times' Definers Media story by claiming that it was an isolated incident... it wasn't. Of course it wasn't. After everything we've learned about the depths of Facebook's rampant amorality over the course of this past year, why would you ever think it was?

As reported by TechCrunch:

Facebook is still reeling from the revelation that it hired an opposition research firm with close ties to the Republican party, but its relationship with Definers Public Affairs isn’t the company’s only recent contract work with deeply GOP-linked strategy firms.

[...]

According to sources familiar with the project, Facebook also contracted with Targeted Victory, described as “the GOP’s go-to technology consultant firm.” Targeted Victory worked with Facebook on the company’s Community Boost roadshow, a tour of U.S. cities meant to stimulate small business interest in Facebook as a business and ad platform. The ongoing Community Boost initiative, announced in late 2017, kicked off earlier this year with stops in cities like and Topeka, Kansas and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Facebook also worked with Targeted Victory on the company’s ad transparency efforts. Over the last year, Facebook has attempted to ward off regulation from Congress over ad disclosure, even putting forth some self-regulatory efforts to appease legislators. Specifically, it has dedicated considerable lobbying resources to slow any progress from the Honest Ads Act, a piece of legislature that would force the company to make retain copies of election ads, disclose spending and more. Targeted Victory, a digital strategy and marketing firm, is not a registered lobbyist for Facebook on any work relating to ad transparency.

Just as Cambridge Analytica were only the ones that got caught, rather than being the only ones mining Facebook's user data for fun, profit, and geopolitical sabotage, Facebook's ethically-challenged use of the anti-semitic Soros-bashing Definers Media was only one of several such efforts by the firm. And this time, Sheryl Sandberg can't plead ignorance; after all, she did that with Definers Media, only to later admit that the decision really had crossed her desk, after all. Fool you once, shame on you; fool me twice.. can't get fooled again, is what I'm saying.

There is no such thing as a cockroach, folks. If you see one, the simple truth, on which you can absolutely rely, is that there are more of them hiding just out of sight. When you see a cockroach, you don't tell yourself that it's okay because you've only seen one of the pests; you call an exterminator, pronto. And it's clearly long past time to call in the social media equivalent of the Orkin Man, to deal with Facebook's sketchy, dodgy, and downright evil ways.

#FacebookIsTheProblem
#deleteFacebook

A new week in Facebook begins

Did you have a good Thanksgiving weekend? Because Facebook didn't.

Shall we start with their Black Friday news dump? Normally, dumping bad news on Friday helps to bury those ledes, as days can pass before major news outlets are able to properly cover them. Unfortunately for Facebook, though, news media organizations have adapted to this technique, a special favourite of the Trump administration, so they were primed and ready to cover whatever happened on Black Friday, including this story, as reported here by Slate:

On the day before Thanksgiving, Facebook published a blog post in which COO Sheryl Sandberg and outgoing head of communications Elliot Schrage admitted to lapses in their work with a Republican opposition research firm called Definers. The New York Times had reported in a bombshell investigation the week before that the company hired Definers to create media narratives linking anti-Facebook protestors to liberal billionaire George Soros and criticizing competitors for unsavory business practices. Facebook severed its ties with Definers after the story, but the company pushed back on the investigation by arguing that it contained “a number of inaccuracies.”

The company is now confirming that much of what the Times reported is true, at least when it comes to Definers. In the post, Schrage disclosed that he had decided to hire Definers and was partially directing its efforts on behalf of the company. “Some of this work is being characterized as opposition research, but I believe it would be irresponsible and unprofessional for us not to understand the backgrounds and potential conflicts of interest of our critics,” Schrage wrote. “This work can be used internally to inform our messaging and where appropriate it can be shared with reporters.” In the immediate aftermath of the Times article, Sandberg and CEO Mark Zuckerberg both claimed that they didn’t know that Facebook had hired Definers. Zuckerberg further sought to distance Facebook from Definers by labeling it as a typical “D.C.-type firm” and implying that he did not approve of its tactics. However, Schrage asserted in his post, “Mark has asked us to reevaluate how we work with communications consultants. It’s not about Definers. It is about us, not them.”

Facebook switches spokespeople

The Facebook apology tour took a different tone yesterday, as awkward and arrogant Mark Zuckerberg stepped out of the spotlight to let much more effective communicator Sheryl Sandberg take over. And Sandberg, unlike Zuckerberg, seems to be intent on actually coming clean about their recent troubles, rather than trying to tap-dance around them.

As reported by Business Insider:

Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, has continued the company's apology tour over its data scandal, acknowledging that Facebook knew Cambridge Analytica had mishandled users' data 2 1/2 years ago but saying the company failed to follow up when the consulting firm said the data had been deleted.

Had Facebook audited Cambridge Analytica's data holdings, Facebook could have prevented the privacy scandal that has enveloped the company, Sandberg told NBC's Savannah Guthrie during an interview on Friday's "Today" show, part of which aired Thursday night.

[...]

When asked why Facebook didn't follow up when it found that Cambridge Analytica was abusing user data back in 2016, Sandberg told Guthrie: "You are right we could have done this 2 1/2 years ago ... We thought the data had been deleted and we should have checked."

[...]

Sandberg also said, in a different interview, that Facebook could not conduct such an audit because it must wait for the UK information commissioner to finish its investigation of Cambridge Analytica's election activity. "To this day, we still don't know what data Cambridge Analytica have," she told the Financial Times.

Also unlike Zuckerberg, whose comments about the affair have typically been phrased in terms of "we," Sandberg took personal responsibility for the mess:

"We made mistakes and I own them and they are on me," she told the FT.

Of course, for people paying attention to this story, none of what Sandberg said was actually news. We already knew that Facebook knew about Cambridge Analytica's shenanigans over two years ago, and we already knew that Facebook hadn't done anything at all, really, to safeguard their users. The fact that this was a business decision is something we'd mostly already guessed for ourselves, so I supposed that Sandberg, who's their Chief Operations Officer, might well have been the person who signed off on some of the details of that process, but that's the only new detail, here.

Still, Sandberg's belated public re-emergence might mark a shift in tone, at the very least, which might work in Facebook's favour. Zuckerberg's vague and evasive interview responses were clearly not working, even just in PR terms, and with him now prepping for his appearance before Congress, he wasn't going to have time to continue the apology tour, anyway. Whether Sandberg will be any more effective in the role remains to be seen, but it would be hard for her to be less so.

Of course, the admission that Facebook have secret tools that let them delete their own messages from their users' feeds, effectively enabling them to erase evidence, is hardly likely to help.