IANS | 06 Dec, 2018
Facebook's board of directors has defended Chief Operating Officer (COO)
Sheryl Sandberg's request to look into billionaire critic George Soros'
alleged interest in tarnishing the image of the social networking
giant.
According to a report in CNET on Wednesday, the board said
in a letter that Sandberg "asked her staff to look into Soros'
financial motivations after he called companies like Facebook and Google
a "menace".
"Facebook staff immediately initiated research to
attempt to understand the motivations driving the criticism, financial
or otherwise," read the letter.
"Sandberg's question was entirely appropriate given her role as COO," it added.
A
New York Times investigation in November suggested that the social
network hired a Republican-owned political consulting and PR firm that
"dug up dirt on its competitors" including Soros.
Facebook hired
Definers Public Affairs, a Washington DC-based conservative firm which
did PR work for the social networking giant "and dug up dirt on the
company's competitors and its critics", said the report.
Reacting to the report, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg and Sandberg denied they had any prior knowledge about this firm.
