Mark Zuckerberg just can’t seem to catch a break. His company, the social media platform known by an elite few as Facebook (FB), which has more users than the entire population of China, has had a year awash with scandal, data breaches, and controversy, and last week’s events seemed, at the time, to be the icing on the cake. A story published by The New York Times described, in gruesome detail, how Facebook’s (FB) executives, notably Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, lobbied lawmakers looking to pin down the company, and employed a Republican research firm named Definers to discredit company critics by linking them to liberal billionaire George Soros, according to Vox.
One would think that after a story like this got out, Facebook (FB) would try to stay out of the limelight until temperatures surrounding the company cool down. However, what we think doesn’t always line up with the events that end up taking place. In some bizarre turn of events, Damian Collins, Chair of the UK parliamentary committee responsible for investigating disinformation and the use of people’s data, obtained internal company documents Facebook (FB) would prefer not to be released to the public.
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As for the contents of the secret Facebook (FB) documents currently in the Great British Baking Show’s possession, the cache of files all relate to a lawsuit brought against Facebook (FB) at the behest of app company Six4Three. The lawsuit, stemming from a business dispute between the two companies, has evolved for years now. Initially, Six4Three accused Facebook (FB) of changing the terms and conditions for how third-party applications access Facebook’s (FB) Graph API and its Friends’ Photos Endpoint. According to ArsTechnica, Six4Three made an app, years ago, called “Pikinis,” that dug through the Facebook (FB) profiles of users’ friends to obtain bikini photos…Yes, incredibly weird. Regardless, in April 2015, Six4Three sued Facebook (FB), blaming them for the app’s worthlessness.
When Damian Collins, that dastardly old UK parliamentarian investigating Facebook (FB), decided that he required documents from Six4Three, Ted Kramer, the company’s CEO, humbly honored the request. According to reports, Kramer met with Collins, panicked in fear that he’d be arrested for his company’s relationship with Facebook (FB) and downloaded the requested documents to a USB drive and handed them over to the committee.
“I can’t give you an exact date, but I would hope we would be in a position to publish them very soon. Certainly, within the next week or so, that would be my hope. We are going through the documents we have received. You probably understand there is a very large number of them.”
–Damian Collins, Chairman of British parliamentary committee
Amid all the drama and headlines surrounding the company, Facebook (FB) has heard calls, on end, from investors and critics asking for significant C-level changes. Some critics have gone as far as to suggest the board remove Mark Zuckerberg from his chair position, but remaining true to character, Zuck resisted these demands and spoke out against anyone who dares tarnish his family name.
Zuckerberg gave an exclusive interview with CNN Business on Tuesday saying that:
“A lot of criticism around the biggest issues has been fair, but I do think that if we are going to be real, there is this bigger picture as well, which is that we have a different world view than some of the folks who are covering us. There are big issues, and I’m not trying to say that there aren’t. But I do think that sometimes, you can get the flavor from some of the coverage that ’s all there is…”
–Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Facebook
It’s almost painfully ironic that the brains behind a platform where most people consume media, despite users never checking the accuracy of what’s posted or shared, is complaining about honest reporting and journalism.
