Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg seems to be the scapegoat for the mounting problems at Facebook, relating to its ethics. Once held out as the golden girl of US business, she is now facing mounting criticism over data scandals and particularly for the hiring of Washington lobbying firm Definers a hard-nosed “dirt digging” research firm to investigate critics.
They have since cut ties with the firm but not before the damage was done. The hiring and subsequent stories it published were publically slated with The George Soros’ Open Society Foundation putting out a statement out that said the content was a deliberate strategy to distract from Facebook’s own scandals and that the methods threaten the very values underpinning our democracy. Even more damning was the NBC News story that alleged Definers had its own an “in-house fake news shop”. So Facebook, while steeped in scandals regarding the Rusian involvement in the presidential election and the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, chose under Sheryl Sandberg’s watch to hire their own fake news agency to try and make it all go away.
There is no chance that she is the only one to blame, however as the second highest profile person in the firm she is the obvious sacrificial lamb.
