Zuckerberg Affirms Role as Chairman -- WSJ
November 21 2018 - 3:02AM
Dow Jones News
By Deepa Seetharaman
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (November 21, 2018).
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg pushed back
against calls for him to step down as chairman and said he hoped to
continue working with his longtime chief operating officer, Sheryl
Sandberg, in a TV interview on Tuesday that addressed a myriad of
controversies shrouding the social-media giant.
In an interview with CNN, during which he sometimes stammered,
Mr. Zuckerberg said stepping down as chairman in the near term is
"not the plan" after some big shareholders proposed to push him out
of that role following a string of management missteps. Last week
in a call with reporters, Mr. Zuckerberg rejected the shareholder
proposal, saying it doesn't benefit Facebook.
According to Facebook's latest proxy, his share of the voting
power among Facebook investors was 59.9%, meaning shareholders
can't force him out.
In the CNN interview, he was asked if he could definitively say
Ms. Sandberg would stay in her role. In response, he called Ms.
Sandberg an "important partner" who is overseeing Facebook's
efforts to tackle some of the biggest problems the company is
facing. "I hope that we work together for decades more to come," he
said.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Mr. Zuckerberg
has strained relations with Ms. Sandberg in recent months as he has
adopted a tougher, more assertive management style. He and Ms.
Sandberg have come under fire for Facebook's slow response to
uncovering evidence of Russian manipulation during the U.S.
presidential race in 2016 and stopping the spread of misinformation
on the platform. They have also faced scrutiny for Facebook's
privacy practices and its role in inflaming violence in countries
like Myanmar.
During the interview, Mr. Zuckerberg repeated earlier talking
points that Facebook should have acted more quickly to detect signs
of Russian manipulation. He also addressed concerns raised in a New
York Times report last week about the company's use of Definers
Public Affairs, a consultancy and opposition-research firm tasked
with exposing critical information of Facebook's detractors.
On Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg said he was reviewing Definers's work
with Facebook, which included asking reporters to probe the funding
sources behind one group called Freedom from Facebook.
"So far, it doesn't appear that anything that the group said was
untrue, " Mr. Zuckerberg said in the interview.
Definers has said only a "fraction" of its work for Facebook
included research into critics and that work was based on public
records, not misinformation.
But Mr. Zuckerberg reiterated that he didn't like some of the
firm's tactics. Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg have both said the
decision to employ the firm was made by Facebook's communications
officials and Definers has been fired.
The question of who hired the firm has vexed Facebook employees.
On Tuesday, Facebook's departing policy and communications chief,
Elliot Schrage, took the blame for the hiring Definers.
"I knew and approved of the decision to hire Definers and
similar firms, " Mr. Schrage said in the memo, earlier reported by
the technology site TechCrunch and reviewed by The Wall Street
Journal.
Mr. Schrage said in the memo that over time more people at
Facebook worked with Definers on more projects, making the
relationship less centrally managed. "I should have known of the
decision to expand their mandate." He didn't address who made the
decision to expand the mandate.
"Responsibility for these decisions rests with leadership of the
communications team. That's me," he wrote. "Mark and Sheryl relied
on me to manage this without controversy."
The recent critical media coverage adds to Facebook's mounting
worries, which include slowing user growth in its most lucrative
markets. "In a slowing growth environment, controversies prove a
liability," Evercore ISI analyst Anthony DiClemente wrote in a note
to clients on Tuesday.
Earlier Tuesday, Facebook's ad management system was down for
several hours, making it difficult for advertisers to buy ads ahead
of a heavy Thanksgiving shopping weekend.
Facebook said "a server configuration caused intermittent
problems across all apps globally creating a degraded experience
for users." The company said the problems have since been
resolved.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 21, 2018 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)
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